Account Registration: To make purchases, you must register for an account on our platform. Your account information will be used to manage your purchases and provide access to downloadable content.
Purchasing and Downloading
Download Link: After completing your purchase, a download link for the purchased PDF file(s) will be displayed on your screen. The link will also be saved in the “Imports and Purchases” section of your account dashboard for future access.
Limited-Time Availability: Download links will remain active for [e.g., 7 days] after the purchase date. Please download your files within this period. Extensions may be granted at the discretion of the store administrators upon request.
Content Updates
Updates and Changes: We reserve the right to update, modify, or remove PDF content at any time without prior notice. Updated versions of a purchased PDF may not be automatically available unless explicitly stated.
Usage and Restrictions
Intended Use: Purchased materials are intended for personal or educational use only. Redistribution, resale, or unauthorized sharing of downloaded files is strictly prohibited.
No Refunds: Due to the nature of digital products, refunds or exchanges are not provided once a purchase has been completed and the download link displayed.
Responsibility
Technical Issues: We are not responsible for technical issues, such as incompatible software or hardware, that prevent you from using downloaded files. Ensure your system has the necessary tools to open and view PDF files.
Account Security: You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and password and for all activities under your account.
Disclaimers
Accuracy and Quality: While we strive to ensure the accuracy and quality of our PDF materials, we do not guarantee that every document will meet all user expectations.
Modifications to Terms
Changes to Terms: We reserve the right to modify these terms and conditions at any time. Changes will be effective immediately upon posting on this page.
By completing a purchase, you agree to these terms and conditions. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact our support team.
If you teach high school social studies just about anywhere, working with primary source documents is likely a central feature to your course. This has been a major shift in teaching social studies in the past thirty years and it is a good one!
Retired now, I taught high school social studies for 18 of my 35 years on the job. Over that time, I developed a large collection of document-based tasks and training lessons to teach students to use them properly to reconstruct the likely past.
Most of my document-based tasks followed the structure of the New York State Regents Examinations for social studies: the enduring issue essay and constructed-response question (CRQ) in grades nine and ten and the short essay and civic literacy essay in US History grade 11. But incorporating one lengthy primary source text in each unit was also important to me and having students respond in a standard essay format was key for my units. I invite the reader to read more about using extended primary source tasks here.
In the DBQ shop, you will find document-based tasks that I edited and created. They are arranged by category. The sources are cited and this is especially important because students are supposed to consider the sources carefully. If you are interested in lessons for teaching students about primary sources, you may find something you like in the PowerPoint shop!
You need to be a subscriber to make purchases from the Innovation shops. Download links for purchased items are stored in your dashboard. The resources are all in PDF format. Please review the terms and conditions.
This year, I am enjoying teaching French remotely, both one-on-one and in whole group configurations. In a whole group situation, encouraging engagement is important and synchronous chat is a great way to do this.
Most video conferencing apps like Zoom and Teams have chat features. But I don’t like using this for instruction for a variety of reasons. I need something that provides structured synchronous remote conversations in an environment that I can moderate, monitor, and record for possible later assessment. The Innovation synchronous chat is like a chat breakout room for education. Read more about the theoretical underpinnings of this app.
Permit me to describe how to use this handy educational app.
Step 1: Create a New Chat
First, the instructor creates a new chat. Select the course in which playlist you wish to post the chat. Click any of the green plus-sign buttons to add a new task. From the top, select “Chats”.
Now you can set up your new chat with a title and optional accessories. “Accessories” are additional elements that your assignment may need, such as a PDF document, a video, or just a simple description.
When you create the task, it places the link in the course playlist just like any other task. It will be listed as a “forum” type task and, while it can be viewed in form format, it will be a chat. Read more here about asynchronous discussion forums. When you are ready to use it, click on the link to start the host teacher session.
The Host Controls
Your teacher’s host controls are on the right. “Live Link” creates a URL that you can send to students so they can join the session. You can, for example, post this in the video conferencing app chat or in an email.
Another way students can join is by logging in to their Innovation dashboard, navigating to the course where the link is posted, and clicking on the link to the chat. Students cannot use the chat session if there is no teacher host. Teachers can hide links in the playlist for a course as needed.
There must be at least two students for the app to proceed.
My preference is to start up the chat and then copy the live link URL and paste it into the video conferencing chat so students can join easily without searching for a link.
As students join, their names appear in the participants list on the lower right.
Conducting a Chat
Once your students have joined, click on the “Assign Partners” button control. This will randomly and anonymously assign students to a chat partner (if there is an odd number of students, one group of 3 is created).
Now that partners have been assigned, you will see each team listed in the column to the right. Teams are nicknamed by world cities. You can click on these any time to view the current chat. You can share this screen so you can conduct instruction while chats are going on and share with the class anonymously what students are chatting about.
The chats need to be started. You can optionally set a timer to end the sessions after a certain number of minutes.
Students now have full functionality to conduct their assigned chat.
When the Session is Completed
Once the session is completed or is to be paused, you click the Disable Chat button. Now you can move to Debriefing Mode if you wish to display a shared screen with each teams chats and offer advice and commentary or discussion.
Other Features
Scoring Mode
Scoring mode is for the teacher. In scoring mode, you can assess students’ participation using a built-in rubric. Just click the team name to view the chat and the form for grading the chat. The rubric’s dimensions are quality, etiquette, appropriateness, and form. You can save the score. You can also just score it manually.
You may also find it useful to view the chat in a forum format. This is good for lengthier discussions with longer post sizes. You can grade the work here as well.
Viewing in forum mode lets you grade it based on other installed rubrics such as those for online discussion.
What if a student joins after we have started?
Students who join after the chat has been enabled cannot participate. In order to bring them in. the session will need to be restarted by refreshing the page for everyone.
Teachers can delete all posts if necessary to start from scratch.
What if we want to resume the chats?
If the teacher enables chat again after a stop, the teams are the same and the chat picks up where it left off.
When I took up my first full-time job teaching at a small, rural school in 1991, I inherited a vast trove of teaching materials from the former instructor. A lot of it I pitched (some was dated from the 60s!) but some I kept and was grateful to have.
So, I’m retired. But what about all my stuff? Well, dear web-site-visitor, here is my stuff! I would like to invite you into my virtual classroom archives, kind of like a virtual garage sale. There are two shops here I hope you will browse to find many valuable purchases: one features online learning activities from my recent and current online courses (I continue to teach part-time in retirement) and the other shop features my old PowerPoint slide shows. Some of them date back 25 years, if you can believe it!
You need to be a subscriber to buy from either shop. The annual fee to subscribe to Innovation is extremely reasonable! Your purchases are saved to your account, your virtual classroom, in a course your students cannot see that is called “Purchases and Imports”.
Log in and shop across my recent and current courses for teaching world history, US history, and French levels I through AP French and even French V!
As you browse, you can preview items you might like. Click for pricing details to see what the activity contains (questions, images, audio, etc.). Checkout when you are ready and when you’re entering credit card data, don’t forget to enter a coupon or promo code you may have come across!
Upon transaction completion, the activities are copied from my class to yours in Innovation. You will find them in a class called Purchases and Imports.
Log in to make purchases here too. These are downloads of PPTX files of all different sizes and on many different themes. I have taught French all levels, social studies middle and high school, and even computer science courses. At this writing, the shop already has over 300 PowerPoints and I have not even uploaded them all yet!
Once your purchase is complete, you will get links to download each file you purchased. The links also are posted to your own virtual classroom here at Innovation, that class called Purchases and Imports.
Account Registration: You must register for an account on our platform to make purchases. Your account information will be used to manage your purchases and provide access to downloadable content.
Purchasing and Downloading
Download Link: After completing your purchase, a download link for the purchased PowerPoint file(s) will be displayed on your screen. The link will also be saved to the “Imports and Purchases” section of your account dashboard for future access.
Limited-Time Availability: Download links will remain active for [e.g., 7 days] after the purchase date. Ensure you download your files within this period. Extensions may be granted at the discretion of the store administrators upon request.
Content Updates
Updates and Changes: We reserve the right to update, modify, or remove slideshows at any time without prior notice. Updated versions of a purchased slideshow may not be automatically available unless explicitly stated.
Usage and Restrictions
Intended Use: Purchased materials are intended for personal or educational use only. Redistribution, resale, or unauthorized sharing of downloaded files is strictly prohibited.
No Refunds: Due to the nature of digital products, refunds or exchanges are not provided once a purchase has been completed and the download link displayed.
Responsibility
Technical Issues: We are not responsible for technical issues, such as incompatible software or hardware, that prevent you from using downloaded files. Ensure your system meets the necessary requirements to open and use PowerPoint (.pptx) files.
Account Security: You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and password and for all activities under your account.
Disclaimers
Accuracy and Quality: While we strive to ensure the accuracy and quality of our slideshows, we do not guarantee that every presentation will meet all user expectations.
Liability: We are not liable for any direct or indirect damages resulting from the use of purchased slideshows.
Modifications to Terms
Changes to Terms: We reserve the right to modify these terms and conditions at any time. Changes will be effective immediately upon posting on this page.
By completing a purchase, you agree to these terms and conditions. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact our support team.
