NJ Council for the Social Studies Conference

Yesterday I attended the New Jersey Council for the Social Studies Annual Fall Conference, “From Local to Global: Social Studies and the iGeneration,” at Rutgers University.  The conference included "a wide variety of plenary and breakout workshops by teachers, supervisors, faculty as well as the opportunity to see the most up-to-date resources available and to talk with colleagues." 

I had the opportunity to learn about the use of the National Archives DocsTeach, which has billions of primary sources and over 4,000 document-based lesson plans.  I also participated in a role-playing activity with the president of NJCSS to simulate immigration debates.  At the TeachUNICEF presentation, I learned about some Internet-based tools and techniques for promoting global citizenship, such as their map page (http://teachunicef.org/map), Voices of Youth, and digital empowerment efforts by UNICEF in countries around the world.  I am planning on integrating TeachUNICEF resources into our Problems in Modern Africa podcast PBL this year.  I am also planning on sharing selected podcasts on their Facebook page.  A picture of the presenter, who is also the moderator of the TeachUNICEF Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/TeachUNICEF, is below: