Three Fergus Falls Area Learning Center students embarked on a field trip to the Holocaust museum in Washington DC. This trip was sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Committee.
Each student fund raised the cost of their trip, $400.00. Students left at 7:15 am from Minneapolis, and arrived at 10:30 am in Washington D.C. They toured the Holocaust museum until 3:30. Students then took a pedicab tour of the mall area seeing various monuments.
Students that participated are: Jennifer McDermott, Rebecca Wahl, and Brody Casey-Borstad. Kacie Holcomb is the instructor that supported students in fund raising and preparing for this trip.
As a part of our U.S. History and World History courses at the ALC, students were to create a timeline of historic events. For U.S. History, students could choose to create their timeline on a portion of the Civil Rights Movement or the Cold War; for World History, any person or series of events during the “Age of Exploration.” These topics had been covered in our textbook as part of our regular curriculum, and I wanted an authentic assessment of students’ knowledge on these topics that allowed them to express what they had learned in a creative way.
That is when I came across the website timetoast.com. After looking at timelines on timetoast.com, I thought a project that required the selection of significant events, research on these events, the synthesis and summarizing of information they gathered, the finding of corresponding graphics, and the compilation of it all using technology would be an excellent challenge for the students.
All of these processes are among the many that students were engaged in while creating their timeline on the Timetoast website. It turned out to be a wonderful project that the students and I similarly enjoyed!
Below are some examples of the timelines created by students:
Listen to an ALC Promotional recording created by ALC students Sarah Dorsey, Damon Motz, Leni Drewelow, Christy Emerson and Dustin Tiffany for the 14th annual MAAP STARS Spring Events Conference at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Minneapolis.
This team took 2nd place in a field of 32 entries at the conference in March.
The Area Learning Center is an
education program sponsored by the Fergus Falls Public Schools (ISD
#544) to offer secondary-level students an "alternative" way to earn
their diplomas. There are two programs available to students -- a Monday through Friday Seat-Time Program and an Independent Study Program.
