On the Trail of the First People is a standards-based social studies unit that seeks to incorporate information literacy skills with communicative technologies. The project requires the use of some web 2.0 tools in order to enhance educational networking amongst schools. Below is a suggested way to implement this project in your classroom.

Project will begin October, 2007 and will run through January 2008.

Essential Questions: Location, location, location!

• How is culture affected by the environment?
• How does the natural habitat (geographical environment) help to shape the culture of Native American tribes in (your state)?
• How does geographic location, climate and natural resources influence the diversity of Native American tribes and nations?

STEP 1: Teacher Preparation

• Register to participate in the project. You will receive invitations to set up a free account at CommunityWalk and to join the teacher wiki.
• Set up an account at CommunityWalk to access the digital map. If you are not familiar with CommunityWalk, spend some time exploring the website to learn how to manipulate the map, add markers and insert information into the markers. You do not have to register your students with CommunityWalk... when they are ready to add markers to the map, login under your name.
• Using your email invitation, join the Teacher Wiki. Introduce yourself!
• Set up your classroom blog or wiki.* If you are using Classroom Blogmeister for the first time, go to the Cool Cat Teacher Blog to see how to set up Blogmeister. If you decide to set up a wiki instead, go to Wikispaces or PB Wiki and set up your class wiki. Which one to use is up to you - what are your familiar with? Have you used one of these communication tools in the past?
  • Divide your class into groups by tribe.
  • Create a blog or wiki page for each student in your class.*

*After experimenting with both the blog and the wiki, I have decided to have my students publish their research on a wiki and self-assessment and reflection journals on our blog.

Please keep in mind that:

1. Classroom Blogmeister does NOT require students to have email addresses.
2. You can register your students for Wikispaces with or without an email address. See this page for more information.
3. If you can set up email addresses for your students, you might want to think about using gmail. Once they have a gmail account, they can use Google Notebook (see below), Google docs, even Google Blogger, if you wanted to use that for blogging.
4. Most web 2.0 tools require an email to register.

STEP 2: Project Introduction

Introduce project to students. Show them the project Community Walk map. Have them locate your school on the map and place a marker on the map with your school's name, location (city & state), and a photo (optional).

Tell them that they will be working in groups, to research a Native American Tribe indigenous to your area.

Tell them that they will gather information about their assigned tribe and will share them with other classes around the country. Brainstorm with students the kind of information they might want to share with other classes around the country - you can use a mindmapping program such as Inspiration or use a free one at Freemind or Mindmeister. Your mindmap might look like this:

You may want to have your group write a Native American legend, or record and/or illustrate a legend they have read. These are suggested areas for research. You may add or delete topics for your class.

Introduce students to their class blog or wiki. Demonstrate how to use the blog/wiki and have them practice by editing their pages; perhaps putting in their research topics and an image (if you are really adventurous, you could have them create an avatar for their page.)

STEP 3: Student Research

Students can use books, websites, and encyclopedias to conduct their research. You might want to create a note-taking page for your students. You could also download Google Notebook to their computers. They can use Google Notebook or Furl to not only take notes, but to save images and record their website URLs for citations.

Students should enter their research into their wiki/blog - teachers can read, monitor, and comment on their work in the wiki/blog.

Student Groups should work together to create the information that will go into the map marker. The marker should be put on the map in the correct location and should contain the following information:

• Name of tribe with a brief introductory sentence or two.
• The name of the tribe should be linked back to the group's research wikipage.
• An image can be included - the image can be related to the tribe, an image of the students (if permitted), or a scanned original related peice of art.
• REMEMBER: This information is editable; however, the map is set up so that classes can only edit their own markers.

When all topics are researched, tribe group members should collaborate to create the main page that will be linked to the communitywalk map.

STEP 4: Research Product

The possibilities for the final research product are exciting and variable. Much depends on the technical comfort level of the teacher. Suggestions:

• A group PowerPoint which can be uploaded to the wiki/blog using slideshare
• A digital story report using Microsoft Photostory
• A podcast
• Keep it simple and just have the research typed into the wiki
• and so on...

STEP 5: Sharing

This is a telecollaborative project. Classes can choose to communicate with each other through video conferencing, and/or by leaving comments on each other's blogs/wikis. Of course, this would have to be arranged in advance, between teachers, and monitored. The Teacher Wiki for this project would be a great place for teachers to plan sharing events. Don't forget to have your students check the communitywalk map each week to see who has joined and what new information they have posted!