Builder Boards through Discovery Education

Check out my Board Builder through Discovery Education on the cultural contributions of African-American slaves on the United States here: Cultural Contributions of Slaves


Reflection

After completing my Board Builder on Discovery Education, I have decided that this one of the simplest ways to condense our information in to one location, almost as if it is an interactive worksheet. Students can come to one location and find information to read, videos to watch, audio to listen to and assessments that are written in to the assignment. It's pure genius. Many of my students are not as computer literate as they are "texting-literate." Trying to cope with this is a problem I face when using programs such as Schoology or a Moodle. By continuing to use the Board Builder I can help minimize the struggles they will have in shifting from link to link or assignment to assignment. 

The board I created, Cultural Contributions of African-American Slaves, is one that I plan on using in my classroom within the next two weeks. I find that using this board will help teach cultural respect as well as ethics in multiple ways. The first thing is the concept of respect for a culture that adapted to their surroundings and used these experiences to create a lasting influence on modern culture. I think, as a history teacher, so much of the history taught regarding the institution of slavery seems to focus only on the negative. The life of a slave, the whippings, the plantation picking all seem to be the focus of our teaching, rather than the important contributions made. From music, food, and medicine, the African American slaves contributed so much more than simply picking crops. 

Using a set-up such as board builder will allow me to create lessons and units that not only present information, but specific positive information regarding culture that will breed respect for other cultures while also presenting the students the opportunity to delve in to online respect. The one thing I am not exactly happy with using the board builder is the inability to link YouTube or Skype videos. I would like to at some point be able to flatten my room and have conversations with other classrooms around the globe. Perhaps I did not find the way to do it on Discovery Education or they do not have it yet, but in a 21^st century classroom this is imperative.