Academics

Recording History as it Unfolds!

Lynn Novak, School Library Media Specialist

On April 24th, students received an invitation to participate in the Ram Reflections project. This is our opportunity to record history as it unfolds!

The announcement: We are living in an extraordinary time! Our daily lives have been altered, our relationships have been altered, our expectation of the future has been altered. While the level of uncertainty can be unnerving, let us consider this from another perspective. The opportunity to create our own record has been handed to us! Throughout your educational experience, there has been an emphasis on evidence and primary sources. Now is the time to gather your thoughts and assemble a set of primary sources accessible to students in the future.

Students have the link to join the Schoology course allowing them to upload documents that fit their personal learning style. Google Docs, Google Slides and Google Drawings can be submitted for future students to use when studying the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. They are encouraged to be as detailed and concise as possible. Journal entries, letters, poems, photographs, songs, etc… are all primary sources with which students are familiar when conducting research for class projects.

Suggested topics include: descriptions of typical days before March 15, 2020 and then changes after that date, reactions to school, local, state and national news events, new-found hobbies or self-care activities, and social distancing experiences. They should be mindful to identify themselves so that their contributions can be cited by users. A sample sentence excerpted from a journal entry could read: “My day began with a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal; but, now I eat steel cut oats with nuts as it is more nutritious.” Lynn Novak, Media Specialist

This is an ongoing project. Sample of a “Bento Box” shows some artifacts related to how I have spent my time.