I am teaching history course called International Affairs (History 3) in Muurame Senior High School. Course lasts 6 weeks and after that we have exams. We wondered how would be nice to use modern tools and technology. We chose three simple tools to made more like Flipped Classroom idea.
First we founded course blog in Blogger. It was the easiest way, because we have 17 iPads in class. I put lesson material to our blog and students do their homework mostly via blog. It was easy to check their homeworks in one sight. And we had more time to discuss and have dialogue in lessons. Students wrote their "mini-essays" also in our blog. http://muuramenlukio.blogspot.fi/
We try to discover every hour one new iPad app. Students or teacher can present one if they have founded a great one. So far we have checked Blogger, Wolrd War II, QRReader, HistoryMaps, Popplet etc. There are plenty of good free educational apps available in AppleStore.
Then we founded Facebook profiles to "great dictators". In our closed Facebook group there are Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Franco and Lenin. Students have attached fotos, videos, national anthems, stories about their characters. Teacher is sending all the time good questions to dictators to guide them to the right direction. It is marvellous dialogue with students. Everything is linked to real history events like:
-Europe after I world war
-early 1920's
-Great depression
-rise of the right wing and facism
-happenings before II world war
-dictators ruling their countries
-II word war itself and peace
-collapse of nazis and facists
Our dictator persons follow us three weeks and after course we vanish them. This has been new perspective to history. Students have to think and act like dictators in real life during those miserable times. And students might understand why it was earlier really (his)story when men ruled to world.
