For my first Web 2.0 tool, I used ThingLink to make an
interactive image of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Leon Trotsky,
containing biographical information, speeches, historical videos, and an
overview of the Bolshevik Party, which counted all three as members. I would
use this as part of a larger lesson in middle school social studies about the
Russian Revolution and World War I. I have made two more Web 2.0 tools for this
unit, which I will cover further in subsequent blog posts.
ThingLink is extremely easy to use, and I will definitely
use it again once I get my teaching licensure and my own classroom. ThingLink
allows you to create interactive images for educational purposes. There are
both free and pay versions of the service, and although there are more
functions available with the pay version of the website, I found the free
version more than suitable for what I was trying to do. Moreover, I feel that
this service would be just as easy for students to use as it was for me. The interface
is very intuitive, and it is very to input text and links into the image you
use. It would be very easy to integrate ThingLink into class projects.
Using a photograph of these three figures in Russian
history, I linked to BBC bios of all three, a short history of the Bolshevik
Party at Marxists.org, and a video for each figure. For Stalin, I linked to a
history.com video about the violent purges that characterized his thirty-year
reign as dictator of the Soviet Union. For Trotsky, I used a video of an
English-language speech of him speaking out against Stalin’s show trials and
purges. Finally, in the case of Lenin, I used a TED Ed animated video of Lenin’s
legacy on trial, in which two people debate Lenin’s actions and the actions
carried out in his name. Together, all seven of these links provide a good
jumping off point for a larger discussion of this era of history and can help
students make some sense of the complex nature of the Bolsheviks.
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