Many schools are talking about doing online schooling to contain coronavirus, and we'd like to help. The problem is, we have close to zero expertise in online delivery. I'm very interested in crowd-sourcing what's working for you (or even what you are trying.) So, if you have time in between completely transforming your lesson plans, email me and I'll share it out.
Meanwhile, here are a few preliminary thoughts about the resources and lesson plans we have posted on our site.
1. At the suggestion of Dillon teacher Kim Konen (thanks, Kim!) we've changed most Montana: Stories of the Land worksheets into editable PDFs so students can type their answers directly on the documents. The exceptions are worksheets where students are asked to graph data or label maps, and worksheets where they are told to record their answers on a separate page since there isn't room on the sheet itself. To do this, I had to remove the lines for students to write on. If you print the worksheets, let me know if this is a problem for your students. I *could* post two versions (ones with lines and ones without) but hope that isn't necessary.
2. Of course, all chapters of Montana: Stories of the Land, along with online tests, and Teaching with Primary Document assignments are available online. (The tests make most sense as open book tests anyway.) Remember: If you are using the online tests to SAVE a copy to your own Google drive. Otherwise, i'll get your students' answers.
3. Most of our lesson plans are written with the assumption that learning is social and teacher led. That means that they are challenging to do alone, so you might consider using elementary worksheets/lessons with middle school students and middle school worksheets/lessons with high school students. Almost all of our lesson plans have all the resources needed to complete the lesson online, including worksheets, PowerPoints, and readings. You can use AdobePro to extract the PDF pages with the readings and recreate worksheet questions using Google Docs. I'm guessing the more creative activities (say “An Artist’s Journey: Transform a Painting into Poetry”) might work better than some of our other lessons.
4. All twelve Montana Mosaic: 20th Century People and Events are available to watch on YouTube. Each episode is about 20 minutes. Most have two segments that are about 10 minutes each. All of them use original footage, historic photographs, and interviews with historians to explore important moments in Montana's twentieth-century past.
5. Now might be a great time to check out our Digital Projects, including Montana and the Great War (for which we have a scavenger hunt), Virtual Tours of the capitol and Original Governor's Mansion (an Interior Scavenger Hunt for the Original Governor's Mansion is available on pages 47-48 of the OGM footlocker User Guide), Digitized Newspapers (see past posts for ideas on how to use these), Women's History Matters (which can be used with this poetry lesson), Historic Montana (which has information on historic properties in almost every Montana county), and Montana Place Names (used with the lesson plan Mapping Montana--but that requires access to a state map--I bet you could have students chart their route on Google maps, though.)
6. I was introduced to Mission US through the online game Cheyenne Odyssey, which I think is really good (fun and good history.) None of their other games relate directly to Montana but seem like they might be a good way to learn about American history, from the American Revolution to the Great Depression. Also not Montana-history related is this list that OPI's Donnie Wetzel Jr. on Facebook of education companies offering free subscriptions during school closings.
7. Finally, one of my favorite education bloggers, Larry Ferlazzo, came up with this list of The Best Advice on Teaching K-12 Online (If We Have to Because of Coronavirus)
Please share what's working for you! And if there are ways we can support you (additional web quests using our resources, for example), let me know and I'll see what I can do.
Good luck--and know I'm thinking about you and your students!
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