Spotlight on Innovation: World History Teacher Jay Renaud
The Challenge — Engage high school students in creating history
The Assignment: Jay first introduced students to major world events between 6000 BCE and 600 CE. Working in pairs, World History students then chose ten events from around the world and placed them in Knightlab’s interactive timeline. Students composed information about each event and its continuing influence today. See Jay’s complete assignment here.
The Tools: For full functionality, Knightlab’s web-based tools work best on a desktop computer or laptop.
The Result: Jay’s history students have taken their learning a step beyond understanding, sharing their knowledge through public storytelling while learning to master the web-based tools used by professional journalists.
See an example of a finished product from Jay’s class below.
Further Ideas: Knight Lab’s tools are ideal for projects in a wide variety of classrooms. English teachers can use the timeline feature as a way of enhancing student understanding of a novel. The Juxtapose and StoryMap features are ideal for student research projects. The SoundCite function has application not just for journalistic writing, but also for projects in music classes.
More reading about Knight Lab:
4 Tools From Knight lab to ‘Make Information More Beautiful
Pulitzer-winning paper used online tool from Northwestern’s Knight Lab
Follow Jay Renaud’s innovative teaching @YouRenaudIt.
