Creating Historical Timelines with Glogster (Part I)

Right now my students are working through a chunk of Canadian History, examining a series of events that lead up to Confederation. In order to have them understand this flow of events, and how they lead from one to another to the final creation of our country, I have asked students to create a timeline. Last year, on a similar chunk of history, I had students use xTimeline, but in the end I wasn't that pleased with the products the students created.

This year we're trying Glogster, (thanks to Jared Nichol for sharing again!) and so far both me and the students are excited about the potential. Glogster lets you create multimedia posters, where you can embed text, image, voice, sound and video. When I signed up for Gloster, I was very impressed with the way they quickly set up student accounts - a very slick and effecient system to set up a teacher and class of students.

Last week my students began researching the historical events, and I was really pleased with the way it worked. Instead of focusing on the Glogster, I've been really stressing the historical understanding. Since this particular time in history leads to the creation of bilinguialism in Canada, I've assigned students either a Francophone or Anglophone perspective, and they are interpreting the causes and impacts of a list of events based on their assigned group. I then put them in work groups of 5-6 students, where they are working out their historical understanding. Students were given information charts to fill out - asked to collect the basic facts about the events on their own time, and then come to class ready to discuss deeper questions about meaning of the events with their groups. After collaboratively filling out the charts, the students decide how to summarize and express the information on their Glogster. They can use text, voice and video to communicate their topic's perspective on the events.