The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory

Alright, I'll admit it, I'm a huge Philippa Gregory fan. I know her books aren't exactly historically accurate, but they're interesting and usually take a very interesting take on historical events. Well, the latest Philippa Gregory book I just finished is The Red Queen, the second book in the Cousin's War series, about the War of the Roses, the civil war that put the Tudor family on the English throne.  What I really liked about this book was how it clearly outlined how the Lancasters had a direct line to the English throne while the Yorks didn't have such a solid claim to the throne.  I have read the first book in the series, The White Queen, although I would highly recommend reading these books back to back.  They definitely can be read independently, although it would be a little more interesting to read them one right after the other.  What's nice about the Red Queen was that it jumps right into the plot.  Sometimes, Philippa Gregory takes a while to get into the thick of things with her plot, but that definitely wasn't the case here.  If you know someone who is into Tudor history or are into Tudor history yourself, this is definitely a good book to read since it talks almost exclusively about how the Tudors came to the throne in the first place.

Book Builder Review

Alright, it's Friday, which means another Web 2.0 review!  Today, I'm reviewing Book Builder.  This is a wonderful tool you can use in the classroom no matter what grade or subject you teach.  Book Builder allows you to create digital story books.  Obviously, this is really helpful for elementary school, especially when students are learning to read.  The video below shows a little bit about Book Builder.  For this video, please make sure your sound is on, because there is dialogue that goes along with it.  You can also click here to see my digital storybook.  Once again, make sure your sound is on so you can hear the audio clips I recorded.


Overall, I really like using Book Builder.  It is straight forward and easy to use.  You can use it in the classroom by either having your students read a book you created or a book someone else created or by having students create their own storybook.  The possibilities are endless.  This is a tool that really can be used in any subject and any grade level, you just have to think outside the box.

Wordle Review

Alright guys, sorry I didn't post my Web 2.0 review yesterday, I moved back home for a few weeks from college, and it was a little chaotic. Anyway, today I'm reviewing a program called Wordle. Wordle is a wonderful program where you can make word clouds. Below, you can see the word cloud I created using my research paper on Henry VIII. The more often the word is used, the bigger it is. As expected, "Henry" is huge because it is used so often in my paper. The words "Anne" (as in Anne Boleyn), "England," "Wolsey" (as in Cardinal Thomas Wolsey), "religious", "Bible" and "Cromwell" are fairly big as well since they were key parts of my thesis.

Wordle is nice to give students if you plug in your lecture notes, which is exactly what I did with the word cloud below. This one is based on a lecture I wrote about the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War. Perhaps you could put one of these in the beginning of a PowerPoint presentation and encourage students to predict what exactly they'll be learning about based on the words used and how important they appear based on size.

Wordle is very easy to use, although there's no way to create and save your work specifically under your username, which can be a huge drawback. I just created mine, took a screen shot and photo shopped it in Paint. It wasn't hard, but it would be nice to be able to save them online. Also, a word cloud may not always be helpful in the classroom. As a teacher, I recommend just using your discretion to decide if it is helpful for your students or not.

Poll Everywhere Review

Once again, it's Friday, so time for me to review and share a new Web 2.0 tool.  This week, it's Poll Everywhere.  This is a wonderful tool for the classroom if you want to poll your students and get immediate feedback but don't have clickers to go along with your interactive whiteboard (or don't have an interactive whiteboard at all, it can be sent right to your computer screen for your viewing only).  Simply create the question with multiple choice answers.  The poll can be downloaded and added to a PowerPoint presentation, or you can just give students the number and the codes.  Students will definitely get a kick out of being told to get out their cellphones and having to text in their answers to the question on the board.  There are a few things to be careful of though.  First, not all students may have a cellphone, so be prepared to deal with that so those students don't feel left out.  Also, not all phones have the capability to use short codes, but, luckily, there is a regular 10 digit number students can text in as well if they can't use short codes.  As a teacher, you cannot see students' individual answers, so they can't be graded on their answers. The purpose of Poll Everywhere is to gauge how much of the information students understand and see what needs to be reviewed in the next class period. Finally, student's can't answer questions more than once, which can be either good or bad.  This can be bad because students can't change their answers if they wanted, so make sure to emphasize that fact. Refer to the video below to see what a Poll Everywhere poll looks like.

Overall, Poll Everywhere is a very useful tool.  Try it out in your next lecture or presentation to see how much your students enjoy it.

Prezi Review

Recently I found a wonderful list of Web 2.0 tools on Pinterest, and I thought that it would be cool to take a look at some of them, and review them in regards to how they can be helpful in a middle school or high school history/social studies classroom. I'm going to try to post a new one every Friday, so keep an eye out! The first Web 2.0 tool I'm going to share with you is Prezi. Prezi is like a PowerPoint presentation, but it's different, I really don't know how to explain it. You'll find a video of a Prezi I created on Jane Grey, the Nine Days' Queen of England. This was a presentation I made just to get used to Prezi, so it isn't anything really fancy. When I first started using Prezi, it was very confusing, and it can take a lot of work to make a presentation. If you like to print out your PowerPoints for students to take notes on, then this definitely isn't for you. You cannot print Prezis out for students to use, so keep that in mind. All of the movement, however, can be engaging, so students may pay attention more. What's nice about Prezi now is all of the "slides" are organized on a sidebar, like PowerPoint. This is a new feature. Before, it was very hard to organize the presentation, but that isn't the case now. I would definitely encourage you to have your students explore Prezi for classroom presentations, but just keep in mind how much more work it can be for a presentation. This should only be recommended to students who have a firm grasp of PowerPoint already and are ready to move on to something else. Check it out though, it is definitely worth your time. Please excuse the quality of the video, Prezi is not as shaky as the video, that is just the recording program I used.