The Synthesizing Mind: Educlipper

Educlipper is a website similar to Pinterest, as it allows users to visually display links to websites, images, or videos, and create boards of related links. Educlipper offers teachers a few more options that are useful in an educational setting. Teachers can create classes, and allow students to design their portfolio of clips. Teachers and students can share boards, comment on the information and interact with the class. Teachers can also create assignments for their students and comment on student progress.

I created a board on US Imperialism during the 19th century as the United States started its journey to become a world power. The 19th century was a critical and exciting period of history, but one that is often skimmed over in a rush to get to World War I and World War II. In my search for resources, I found that there is not a lot of interactive sources. I put their videos on the board the first is an overview of Crash Course US History and the others expand on specific topics for the unit. I also linked two websites for lessons plans. An EDSITEment lesson the Spanish American War that includes a web-quest the students could explore. Multiple lessons plans on US Imperialism from the Stanford History Group were added to link students to the resources available there. Both of these lesson plan sites are well known for their powerful lessons. I added some primary source pictures from the Library of Congress.

Recently “Fake News” has been a popular topic, but it is nothing new, but it was known by a different name. Yellow Journalism used sensationalist stories and pictures to gain support for a cause. An interesting article I added discusses the stories and shares some political cartoons from the Library of Congress on the subject.

My US Imperialism: Becoming a World Power Board: Educlipper

I am not entirely sold on the usefulness of Educlipper. I still prefer the visuals and ease of Pinterest, but I can see the value of this website. I found the interface confusing and clunky at first and I had to search different sites to understand how it worked. After some trial and error, it was easier. The search feature was also weak and offered very few clips whenever I searched. These clips would often be completely unrelated to the search. There is potential for this site, but as it stands but I’m not sure my fellow teachers would choose it over Pinterest, despite the educational connection.

Originally Posted on my Wilkes Blog: http://wilkes.discoveryeducation.com/kristenmccarty/2017/11/05/the-synthesizing-mind-educlipper/

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