Author: Lori Morse

Lori has been teaching social studies (or as she calls it, “Life”) to 7th and 8th grade students at Crossett Brook Middle School since it opened in 1997. A proud Ivy League dropout, she searched for meaning in many jobs, until she realized that teaching was one of the few areas that provided what she needed to be happy: creativity; working with kids; a degree of autonomy; and most importantly, doing something that had the potential to make the world better. Lori wants her students to believe that progress is possible and that there are actions that lead to that progress. She is a 10th generation Vermonter who loves the ocean and pandas, neither of which are easy to find in her native state.

History from the Inside Out

Every two years our team does an interdisciplinary unit on the European Renaissance. I’m a big believer in learning history from the inside out, by asking students to really look at individual people. I also wanted to do something that connected things that kids were interested in to this time period. To get them to really feel as if they were some of these people, it just made sense to connect modern technology using the smartphone, since many of them are on their smartphones a lot of the time anyway.

So what would happen if you found Leonardo DaVinci’s smartphone?

Continue reading “Leonardo da Vinci’s Smartphone”