George Washington Elementary School
Project Title: Kingston, New York - Historic Sites
Fourth grade students in George Washington Elementary School study historic sites in their community. Each student chooses an historic site in Kingston, New York, to study. Students do research, visit the site personally, talk to site caretakers, take digital photos, write descriptive paragraphs, and summarize what they have learned about their particular historic site. Using PhotoStory, students create photo "stories," complete with voice recorded narrations and export them to YouTube. The finished video stories are imported to Google "My Maps," as a final collaborative, class project on their home town - historic Kingston, New York. Most people don't know that Kingston was the original capital of New York State.
Their final culminating activity is a class picnic at one of the historic sites, to celebrate the completion of their project. They were invited by the staff at the site to hold their class picnic there.
We are part of "Google Historical Voyages and Events," a site dedicated to showcasing teacher and student projects related to history. Fourth graders have cataloged historic sites in their community including the Ulster County Courthouse, the Old Dutch Church, the Trolley Museum, and the Senate House. They learned about their own community as they share it with others who access their Google Map.
Learn about Kingston, NY by visiting our project in Google's "My Maps" below.
Click on the placemarkers.
You will see a map like the one below.
Click on the picture at the top. This will open the video so you can watch the students' narrations.
The videos will play in your browser. You can also click at the bottom to watch the videos on YouTube.
Some of the placemarkers also have image slide shows in the bottom of the left sidebar.
Project Includes:
Essential Questions:
Why is it important to preserve old, historic buildings?
How do these buildings help define a culture?
Objective: Through books, Internet, and site visitation, the student will learn how to research local history and begin to develop a more in-depth interest and an understanding of history.
Goal: The students will post research and photographs of their chosen historical building in a Google Map, which is part of a global history project entitled, "Google Historical Voyages and Events," so that all members of the community will be able to view them.
Materials: Lesson plan, form created by students, bibliography
Procedure:
Students may work individually or in pairs.Choose an historical house
Research and compile information on that building . Attention is focused on the past and present use of the building.
Student will write a statement about the site to use for narration in the finished project.
Students will store statements in a folder on the school's network drives.
Click the map below to see the finished project
To View The Contents Of "My Maps":
Click on the picture of the left map (above) to open the project in "My Maps." Then, click each placemarker in the sidebar, or click on the placemarkers on the map itself. You can drag the map with your cursor so the placemarkers open in the center of your viewing area.
Watch the videos at the top of each placemarker by clicking on the image. This will start the video playing. Then, see the slide show of images at the bottom of each placemarker.
Documents To Download
Learning Standards
Lesson Plan
Student-Created Form
Bibliography
The Historic Sites Of Kingston, New York
Background:
Students study about their own community, visiting historic sites in Kingston, NY. Kingston was the first capital of New York state in the year 1777. The capital was moved to Kingston to protect the Colonial seat of government from the British. Kingston is rich in history, with different historical sites. Students chose a particular site to study. They visited the sites, interviewed the staff and caretakers, learned about the history of each site, recorded their findings, took digital photos, and created videos which they narrated.
Final Project Task:
Using PhotoStory, students summarized their findings. They used photos they had taken and wrote their own narrations, which they used for their final projects. Final projects were done in PhotoStory and uploaded to YouTube. A Google Map was created with placemarkers showing where each historic site is located.
Procedure:
Lesson Plan:
1. Explain project concept to students.
2. Each student picks an historic site in Kingston (i.e. Old Dutch Church, Senate House, Academy Park, etc.)
3. Each student researches his/her site and writes one paragraph about it.
4. Students visit the site and take digital photographs. Photos are saved to the school's “S” drive.
5. Students begin generating Photo Story 3 digital files with help from teachers and computer TA.
6. Students write narrations for their digital accounts.
7. When all students have completed their work, the individual photo stories are saved as Windows media files.
8. Each individual photo story is then sent to You Tube, one at a time.
9. The photo stories are uploaded to Google Maps, as a collaborative, class project. (See details below)
10. A webpage is created for George Washington Elementary School’s section of the online history project.
11. Lesson documents are uploaded to the George Washington Elementary School webpage for visitors to view.
Google Tools Uses: My Maps, Google Docs, Search Engine, YouTube:
1. Students did research using the Google Search Engine
2. Lesson plan and lesson documents were uploaded to Google Docs. Documents:
- have searchable text
- can be accessed online by other teachers and students
- can be downloaded and printed
- can be emailed to others
3. Students summarized their findings in a collaborative, class project using Google My Maps:
- Students insert placemarkers on a Google Map of Kingston, NY
- Placemarker "pins" indicate where each historic site the students researched can be located on the map
- Students link to their completed photo stories, which were uploaded to YouTube
- As visitors click on each placemarker, the students' narrated photo stories "play"; placemaker windows open and the students' finished projects can be viewed