My thoughts about Education Humanities, Technology and Digital Culture. Interested on social media tools in educational contexts and
gamification in education.
"We have a duty to ensure their names will be remembered for generations to come."
Philip Hammond
D-Day is synonymous with June 6, 1944, the day the Allied powers crossed the English Channel and landed on the beaches of Normandy, France. The Allied landing led to the liberation of France, and marked the turning point in the European theater of World War II
The morning of June 6, 1944 marked the largest amphibious military assault the world had ever seen. More than 160,000 American, British and Canadian troops battled their way along a 50-mile stretch of beach in Normandy, France to give the Allies a foothold in Nazi-occupied western Europe and a path to victory in World War II. More than 9,000 Allied forces were killed or wounded seventy-three years ago today.
Each year, ceremonies, US camp reconstructions, historic march, military fairs, historic parachute drops, parade and exhibition of military vehicles have place in The Bay of Cotentinan area laden with history. At the heart of the Battle, Sainte-Mère-Eglise, Utah Beach and Carentan witnessed the landings and the first airborne assaults.
On D-Day 1944, 150 000 soldiers crossed the Channel to land in the Bay of Cotentin, a strategic place in order to reach Cherbourg and its harbour.
Resources:
The heroism and bravery displayed by troops from the Allied countries on D-Day has served as inspiration for several films, most famously The Longest Day (1962) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). It was also depicted in the HBO mini-seriesBand of Brothers (2001).
D-day landings scenes in 1944 and now – interactive : Peter Macdiarmid has taken photographs of locations in France and England to match with archive images taken before, during and after the D-day landings.
A fair tribute as an introduction to my Review of the most read posts of May 2017.
Here are the most popular posts of the last month:
My usual readers know that blogging is a free contribution to inspire new and young teachers, sharing some resources and activities no matter the subject, when I have the time between work.
Hope you enjoyed my pedagogical proposals published in May. Have you include some in your lessons? I'm happy!
Spring is here. Time to pick the inspiration to final months of the school year. You feel stressed. Students are already thinking about holidays. I know. But everything will be all right till the end of school time.
Olympic Games 2012 just start and will end during Summer season in Europe and some other continents.
In the United States and other countries, the students come back to school perhaps the final part of the Games. They will be talking about their heroes, the athletes from different sports. Teachers are already preparing their lessons and they will include the Olympic Games into school curricula, for sure. They can't lose this wonderful experience! Such a great resource for different curricula.
Olympic Games London 2012
credits: Getty Images
via BBC.co.ok
I'm sure that a lot of students will want to talk about it. English students are the luckiest because some of them are at the Olympic stadium with their parents watching live. But there will be a great number all over the world that are watching live on television or on the Internet, day by day, their favourite athletes and sports. And the most curious will know a lot about OG to share in the classroom. Teachers have been watching the Olympic Games too, and they are wondering how they might include the OG London 2012 into the curriculum. As I wrote before, along July and August, I will write about some subjects that could interest teachers for the next school season.
London 2012credits: Mark Makela/ ZUMA Press/ Corbis
Here are couple of ideas and resources to evaluate and share in your courses about London 2012.
Sciences: The Olympic Flame
How do you create the perfect flame? - An interesting question to start a Science course! Well, the Ontario Science Centre explored the technology behind the Olympic torches - past and present shown on the video below:
Wow! That is great! You can't miss this digital resource to explore the technology behind the OG flame! I am sure that your students will love it.
Geography | Sports:
Google Earth: The Google Earth Blog has pushed out July 27 ashort list of Google Earth toursbased on the Olympic Games in London. The list includes a fly-over 3D imagery for much of London, including the Olympic Park area. "Google's Olympic Games London 2012" page includes London street view, Teams (students will choose teams by country), Medals, (the distribution of Olympic medals) and Doodles (every day a sport doodle since the open ceremony).
Google is publishing a Doodle every day since the Opening illustrating some of the 36 sports present at the Olympic Games 2012. The Olympic Games Doodles will be an excellent digital resource to include into school curriculum.
Teachers could use Doodles to start a lesson in Sports and/or Geography curriculum inviting the students to explore the page and find all the stories about the games. It might be a simple but good motivation for cross-curricular projects.
Sports:To take it a step further, you might ask students to make a research why a country produces exceptional athletes in a given sport. For example, you might challenge students to find out why United States are strong in swimming or soccer. Don't forget to teach about values!
Google Maps
Geography: Google Maps of medal distribution will start a simple Geography lesson. Invite students to browse for medal winners by countries, then research those countries. A good intercultural activity.
BBC Olympic SportsLive 2012 will be a fantastic daily reporting to explore. There are 36 Olympic Sports that your students can choose. During the Games, you have theOfficial London 2012website to explore or get inspiration by news or stories to motivate your students in your lessons. For example the Lithuanian swimmer young teenRuta Meilutyte said on Tuesday that she was "shocked" (in a good way) to have won women's 100 meters breaststroke gold medal on Monday. At just 15 years old, this Olympic star had to do it the hard way, surviving a fierce challenge from American Rebecca Soni, the reigning world champion in the event. Such an inspirational true story!
Did you know that before sport, there was music. Music as a prelude during the 19 days of the Games London 2012
iPad has a new app! Piano Summer Games from JoyTunes.The app provides directions and feedback for playing the national anthems of forty countries. Awesome! Propose your students the choice of a national anthem. Then, play on the piano at the Music classroom and ask your students to play on their own iPad. Students and teachers can download the Piano Summer Games apphere. They can compete between groups in the classroom using JoyTunes by earning points for playing the anthems correctly.
They will do wonderful progress in Music curriculum. JoyTunes could be a good piano tutor for students who have iPad.
English Fiction:
As the opening ceremony got underway, its sense of magical realism started to remind us many of recent fantasy films or English fiction and fairy tales. The Lord of the Rings featured strongly in initial history of Britain about how much the "green and pleasant land" reminded people of the Shire.
There was Harry Potter saga in part driven by the participation of JK Rowling reading a short text in the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012, July 27.
Although the Harry Potter character Voldemort was not officially part of the proceedings, he was linked to Mary Poppins when a flashmob mass of Mary Poppins clones appeared to vanquish one of the odd monsters in the ceremony.
Curiosities:
Inventor of the protocol upon which the Web is based, UK scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, live-tweeted from the stage. This is real social culture!
Sometimes, at the end of a lesson, we must give some 2 minutes for relax. In Portugal, we have lessons of 95 minutes. It's important to make a break and let the students have 2 minutes of fun in the middle (45 minutes) learning and playing.
"Good evening Mr Bond," the Queen said on the clip, before they left together, apparently heading towards the Olympic Stadium in a helicopter.
James Bond & and the Queen:
There has been a great speculation if James Bond participad at the opening ceremony, and about what his role would be. At the Overture, we all watched him collecting the Queen and brought her to the ceremony in a spectacular manner. Oh! My! Just awesome!
In a combination of pre-filmed and live footage, James Bond escorted the Queen to her helicopter.
Then, above the stadium, Bond escorted the Queen out of the helicopter with a parachute. This was rapidly packaged into image macros of the jump captioned with mimetice acronym. Social media users were very enthusiastic about this episode. And we as well.
BBC page entitled Your Olympic athlete body match is a funny page: adding details for height and weight, students can match with some athlete. No matter what they hang up, they are probably a similar size to an amazing world-beating athlete!
