I am learning as I go. For my next steps, I have tried different website builders and free software for this project. I have currently decided to use Scalar for my final teaching project. I picked Scalar because students can ask for a registration key and submit pages and media to my project. I think a hunt for primary sources and analysis of the different protests and people involved in women’s suffrage and anti-suffrage in 1918 and 1919 will be the project’s focus. There are many websites and teaching modules on women’s suffrage to draw from. This interactive Scalar book will allow students to comment, author pages, and document their work from a focused period between 1918 and 1919. As the book’s author, I plan to model lesson plans and learn as I go on this platform.
I reviewed previous students’ work and met with one of my fellow students today to evaluate their progress on this teaching project. In the earlier projects, some of the students were already teachers and knew how to do basic lesson plans, etc., that I did not know how to do. Their work was just an expansion into a digital format. Other non-teacher students, like myself, did an exhibit type of work with questions and lesson plans around a digital exhibit. As a reflection on this work and reviewing digital history websites, both seem valid as teaching history. One of the websites I checked, World History Commons, is an excellent example of a good teaching website that is also exhibit-like. It is all public domain and can be used by all teachers with cost constraints, as the website is completely free.
