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Onsite Professional Learning: Social Studies
GPB Education offers customized, no-cost professional learning sessions and workshops at your request and convenience. Live sessions can be held either virtually or onsite at your location.
Are you interested in free professional learning support at your school or district? Request a session or workshop via the link below:
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The Early Childhood SS Educator’s Guide to the GPB Galaxy
Grade Level: K-1
Join GPB’s education team for an exploratory overview of our comprehensive no-cost digital resources for Early Childhood Education in the Social Studies, including interactive expansions of GPB’s virtual learning journeys throughout our state. Participants will also learn more about how to meaningfully engage students with the thousands of digital PBS resources adapted especially for the classroom through PBS LearningMedia.
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The Elementary SS Educator’s Guide to the GPB Galaxy
Grade Level: 3-5
Join GPB’s education team for an exploratory overview of our comprehensive no-cost digital resources for Elementary Social Studies, including interactive expansions of GPB’s virtual learning journeys throughout our state. Participants will also learn more about how to meaningfully engage students with the thousands of digital PBS resources adapted especially for the classroom through PBS LearningMedia.
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The U.S. History Educator’s Guide to the GPB Galaxy
Grade Level: 6-12
Join GPB’s education outreach team for an exploratory overview of our comprehensive digital resources for secondary social studies with a focus on U.S. history, including GPB’s immersive virtual learning journeys and engaging game-based approaches to financial literacy and Georgia history. Participants will also learn more about how to meaningfully engage students with the thousands of digital PBS resources adapted especially for the classroom through PBS LearningMedia.
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The American Government & Civics Educator Guide to the GPB Galaxy
Grade Level: 6-12
Join GPB’s education outreach team for an exploratory overview of our comprehensive digital resources for middle and high school social studies with a focus on American government and civics, including instructional videos and teacher resources from our series Peach State Politics and Things Explained. Participants will also learn more about how to meaningfully engage students with the thousands of digital social studies resources available through their free teacher and student streaming accounts with PBS LearningMedia.
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The World History Educator's Guide to the GPB Galaxy
Grade Level: 6-12
Join GPB’s education outreach team for an exploratory overview of our comprehensive digital resources for middle and high school social studies with a focus on world history and government. Participants will also learn more about how to meaningfully engage students with the thousands of digital social studies resources available through their free teacher and student streaming accounts with PBS LearningMedia.
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Nine Ways 'Til Historical Thinking: Teaching and Learning United States History With the "Best Social Studies Instructional Solution" From PBS LearningMedia
Grade Level: 6-12
Participants will engage in an overview of the no-cost United States History Collection from PBS LearningMedia, named the best social studies instructional solution of 2023 at the annual SIIA CODie Awards.
This collection expands student understanding of U.S. History with culturally inclusive resources that bring the major people, events, and trends in history alive while integrating often untold stories into the curriculum. Curated clips of trusted PBS programs and a diverse array of other media and interactive resources develop historical thinking while broadening appreciation of history’s multiple perspectives and complexity. This session will focus on the uniqueness of this online resource where teachers can sort content by nine different historical thinking skills and 16 different eras.
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The Secondary SS Educator’s Guide to the GPB Galaxy
Grade Level: 6-12
Join GPB’s education team for an exploratory overview of our comprehensive no-cost digital resources for Secondary Social Studies from Georgia Studies to the world beyond. Participants will also learn more about how to meaningfully engage students with the thousands of digital PBS resources adapted especially for the classroom through PBS LearningMedia.
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Bringing Map and Globe Skills Down to Earth
Grade Level: K-12
Learn how to navigate through GPB’s multimodal content, and explore hands-on activities for teaching map and globe skills. From basic understanding to advanced content delivery, inquiry lessons, and authentic assessment, get the lay of the land with PBS LearningMedia content collections and find your way to GPB’s many other engaging resources for building geographic reasoning.
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Rights and Freedoms at the End of the World: Exploring the U.S. Bill of Rights Through the Dystopian Novel
Grade Level: 6-12
Mass surveillance, thought crimes, book burnings, blood sport. How do the day-to-day realities of our great dystopian novels hold up against the rights and freedoms that we so often take for granted in American society? Join GPB Education on a harrowing exploration of the United States Bill of Rights in the context of frightfully relevant dystopian fiction. With dozens of associated online resources available to you at no cost and free from unjust censorship, your students will enthusiastically thank our Founding Fathers for the first ten amendments to the Constitution.
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Georgia Grown Greats for 2nd Grade: Jimmy Carter
Grade Level: 2
Join GPB Education for a special second grade perspective on our own Jimmy Carter as we explore his exceptional life from birth to present through GPB's free interactive virtual learning journey. Teachers will trace his inspiring leadership journey from Georgia to the White House to the world community and model engaging learning activities that can be shared immediately with their students.
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Georgia Grown Greats for 2nd Grade: Martin Luther King Jr.
Grade Level: 2
Join GPB Education for a special second grade perspective on our own Martin Luther King Jr. as we explore his exceptional life and enduring legacy. Teachers will explore GPB's inspiring Civil Rights Movement virtual learning journey, along with comprehensive content from partner PBS LearningMedia, and will model engaging learning activities that can be shared immediately with their students.
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Money, Me, and GPB: Exploring Economic Choices that Make Cents
Grade Level: K-3
Join GPB Education for a special early education perspective on making excellent economic choices. Teachers will explore GPB's comprehensive content from PBS LearningMedia, including Making Cents financial literacy lessons, and will model engaging learning activities that can be shared immediately with their students.
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Project-Based Teaching and Learning for Change With GPB’s Global Citizenship Resources
Grade Level: 6-12
Join Georgia Public Broadcasting for a survey of our free digital resources and strategies for helping students identify the characteristics of global citizens, understand the challenges of practicing global citizenship, recognize the connections between global citizenship and personal growth, and explore meaningful ways to apply global citizenship skills and actions in the classroom and beyond.
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Enhancing Visual Literacy in the SS Classroom with Digital Teaching Tools
Grade Level: 6-12
According to Adobe’s Visual Literacy White Paper, “Visual images are becoming the predominant form of communication across a range of learning and teaching resources [and] visual literacy is now crucial for obtaining information, constructing knowledge and building successful educational outcomes.” Join Georgia Public Broadcasting for an exploration of free digital content and professional development resources from PBS LearningMedia with a focus on building visual literacy through engaging strategies for the social studies classroom.
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Virtual Learning Journeys Through History: Exploring the Civil Rights Movement (Mobile VR Lab)
Grade Level: 6-12
In collaboration with the Georgia Department of Education, Georgia Public Broadcasting has produced a free, standards-based virtual learning journey that transports students to a critical period of time in United States history. Brimming with comprehensive, cross-curricular content, including videos, primary source images and documents, compelling photo galleries, interactive maps, artwork, music, and more, this virtual collection invites students into an engaging exploration of some of the most significant events of the Civil Rights Movement.
Session participants will explore virtual content using Oculus Go headsets or their own devices while presenters model instructional strategies to elicit creative responses to the experience. Following this session, educators will better understand how to implement their own virtual exploration in the classroom.
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Virtual Learning Journeys Through History: Exploring the Civil Rights Movement
Grade Level: 6-12
Marching forward from a broken beginning, pressing on through resistance and changing tides, and taking a stand for educational equality - embark on a multi-media journey through the Civil Rights Movement as experienced in our state and nationwide. Georgia Public Broadcasting and the Georgia Department of Education have partnered to produce this comprehensive, visually stunning digital experience for elementary through high school students as they delve into a virtual reality of the Civil Rights Movement.
Step into scenes, photos, and works of art from this pivotal period, and explore the associated figures and events that shaped history. Join the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, hear the stories and testimonials of participants in the protests, review the critical Supreme Court decisions and laws that galvanized the movement, and feel the spirit of this impactful time through video footage and songs of freedom.
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Behind the Times and Ahead of the Game: VR and GBL for the Social Studies Classroom
Grade Level: 6-12
Game-based learning is a tried-and-true educational approach, made more effective by the growing availability of interactive digital content. In this workshop, participants will become familiar with virtual and game-based learning resources created by GPB Education and distributed through our streaming partnership with PBS LearningMedia. Explore ideas for how virtual and game-based approaches can pair meaningful learning activities with appropriate assessment challenges, and enable students to enthusiastically engage in mastering knowledge and skills that are relevant to real-world experiences.
Participants will become familiar with the active-learning U.S history resources created by GPB Education while modeling ideas for how virtual reality and game-based learning can pair engaging activities with appropriate assessment challenges and enable students to master knowledge and literacy skills that are relevant to experiences beyond the classroom.
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Introducing DBQs to the Social Studies Classroom
Grade Level: 3-12
As inquiry-based approaches to social studies become more prominent, all levels of education are finding the Document-Based Question to be both useful for teaching critical thinking yet challenging as students are expected to learn more difficult skills in earlier grades. In this session, GPB Education will share clear steps enhanced with creative teaching strategies for introducing DBQs into the elementary, middle, or high school classroom.
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Meaning & Myth: Inspiring Student Engagement With History Inquiries
Grade Level: 6-12
Join Georgia Public Broadcasting for a hands-on exploration of inquiry teaching strategies around the always intriguing and often puzzling perspective of primary and secondary source analysis. Further increase student engagement with GPB’s free social studies content collections, offering thousands of multimodal resources and implementation activities designed for all different types of learners.
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Promoting Inquiry in First Grade Social Studies
Grade Level: 1
Participants will first receive an introduction to GPB’s free social studies resources for first grade, with a concentration on Discovery Education’s comprehensive learning management system. We will navigate through the latest upgrades and learn how to find and organize relevant content, interact with classes and students, apply meaningful teaching strategies, and create output using the productivity tools. To cap off the session, we will use our enhanced knowledge of the resources to model inquiry learning activities around some engaging historical figures from first grade history standards.
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Promoting Inquiry With GPB's Resources
Grade Level: K-12
As Georgia’s trusted provider of free digital media for the classroom, GPB Education continually enhances and expands its dynamic collection of digital content, while providing supplementary streaming services to teachers and students across all grades and subject areas. In this session, educators are introduced to digital collections of streaming media, interactives, primary sources, and integration strategies from GPB and PBS LearningMedia to foster innovative instruction promoting inquiry and engagement. NOTE: Inquiry learning sessions can also be scheduled around content aligned to 1st, 3rd, 5th, or U.S. History social studies standards.
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Building Visual Literacy Practice Into Social Studies Exploration Using Ken Burns Collections From PBS LearningMedia
Grade Level: K-12
It is important for students of all ages to develop and practice visual literacy skills so as to effectively find, analyze, interpret, implement, and even create images in their learning across the curricula. Visual literacy is especially crucial when investigating today’s economic, historical, and political topics.
In this session, educators will explore the powerful primary source collections from PBS Ken Burns in the Classroom and model associated strategies for practicing six components of visual literacy: setting, focal point, objects, facial expressions, gestures, and clothing.
Participants will come away with engaging activities and resources for building visual literacy that can be immediately used in their classrooms, plus a greater knowledge of Ken Burns in the Classroom and its associated images, media galleries, interactives, and lesson plans, all free and open from GPB Education and PBS LearningMedia.
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Teaching for Change With GPB’s Global Citizenship Resources
Grade Level: 6-12
Join Georgia Public Broadcasting for a survey of our free digital resources and strategies for helping students identify the characteristics of global citizens, understand the challenges of practicing global citizenship, recognize the connections between global citizenship and personal growth, and explore ways to apply global citizenship skills in the classroom.
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The Ayes Have It! Inspiring Student Engagement in Civics & Government
Grade Level: 6-12
Join GPB Education for a survey of our many free government and citizenship resources created and curated specifically for Georgia educators and students. Participants will be introduced to the thousands of civics-related primary sources, interactives, lesson plans, and more available through PBS LearningMedia and will explore GPB's unique state government education materials via Georgia Stories, Things Explained, and Peach State Politics. We will pair a few examples from these comprehensive collections with hands-on teaching strategies designed to help engage and inspire your students.
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Building a Social Studies Inquiry Mystery
Grade Level: 4-12
WHY did prehistoric Native Americans build ceremonial mounds? WHAT led to the Trail of Tears and the associated death of 4,000 Cherokees? WHO besides Boll Weevil and the Dirty Thirties were among the cast of characters that brought about the Great Depression? WHERE have Georgia's rivers most impacted the flow of U.S. history? HOW did a peanut farmer become president of the United States? Investigate the thousands of digital learning resources created, curated, and sponsored by Georgia Public Broadcasting, and engage in hands-on exploration for building an inquiry mystery around fascinating historical questions. NOTE: Inquiry mysteries can also be scheduled around content aligned to 6th, 7th, or 8th grade social studies standards.
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Building an Inquiry STEMystery of the Civil Rights Movement
Grade Level: 5-12
Join Georgia Public Broadcasting for a virtual journey into the Civil Rights Movement and engage in hands-on exploration for building an inquiry mystery around primary sources from the period. Step into photos and works of art from this pivotal time, and explore the associated figures and events that shaped history through visually stunning video footage, unique testimonials, primary source analysis, and vibrant songs of freedom. Participants will build an associated STEM engineering design project as a model output for the unit.
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Investigating the Local to the Global: Geo-Inquiry With GPB
Grade Level: 6-12
Utilizing geographic information systems (GIS) across content areas, examine lessons, activities, and strategies for classroom integration of mapping technologies and primary sources, including Georgia-centric content created by Georgia Public Broadcasting. Educators can support inquiry-based learning and geo-literacy using online tools for instruction through the innovative programs GeoInquiries and StoryMapJS.
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Ready Reader One: Promoting Literacy With Virtual Learning Journeys
Grade Level: 3-12
Join Georgia Public Broadcasting on a virtual learning journey through our new VR / AR enhanced social studies and STEM explorations into the Civil Rights Movement, Slavery and Freedom, and the Forests of Georgia. Participants will become familiar with the active learning resources created and distributed by GPB Education while modeling ideas for how virtual and augmented reality can pair meaningful learning activities with appropriate assessment challenges and enable students to enthusiastically engage in mastering knowledge and literacy skills that are relevant to experiences beyond the classroom.
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The Great Listen: Resources for Using Oral History and Interviews in the Classroom
Grade Level: 6-12
Join GPB Education and StoryCorps for a reminder about the power of storytelling and the blessing of family and friends. We'll be highlighting our favorite StoryCorps episodes (bring tissues) and sharing ideas for how your students can contribute their own unique and beautiful stories through the annual Great Thanksgiving Listen.
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Elementary Georgia Studies Road Trip With GPB’s Virtual Learning Journeys and Lesson Plans
Grade Level: 3-5
GPB is on the road again for an exploration of our ever-expanding virtual field trip catalog through Georgia geography, history, and economics. Join us for an overview of our 34 statewide virtual field trips with a focus on 4th and 5th grade social studies. Learn how to get the most out of these immersive experiences and incorporate the 5E activities from our new comprehensive lesson plans!
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Virtual Learning Journeys Through History: Exploring Slavery & Freedom in Antebellum Savannah
Grade Level: 9-12
Building on a reputation as a trusted source for educational content, GPB Education has created a virtual learning journey to explore the complexities of slavery and freedom in antebellum Savannah through the lens of the Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters. Educators, parents, and students can learn about the connections between the institution of slavery and the global economy and discover what one city can teach us about society and culture before the Civil War. Key concepts are presented through interactive elements like primary source letters and images, navigable maps, videos, and a virtual walking tour. Session participants will be able to explore virtual content using Oculus Go headsets or their own devices. Presenters will model instructional strategies to elicit creative responses to the experience. Following this session, participants will better understand how to implement their own virtual reality explorations in the home and/or classroom.
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Escape the Virtual Field Trip Adventures With GPB Education’s Immersive VR Learning Journeys: Andersonville Prison Camp
Grade Level: 3-12
Welcome to the Andersonville Prison Camp.
We hope you enjoy your visit.
We hope you learn something about the POW experience.
We hope you manage to escape.
Providing nearly 40 experiential virtual field trips to historical and cultural sites throughout our state, Georgia Public Broadcasting invites educators to a participatory interactive adventure and tool-building workshop modeled around the latest virtual field trip from our comprehensive Georgia Studies collection: the American POW experience. This collection is free and open to all educators and consists of the Our State and Our Nation digital textbook with teacher edition, the statewide virtual field trips, the Georgia Stories video series, and the Georgia Race Through Time formative assessment game.
Join GPB's Education Outreach team in an immersive group effort to escape the American POW virtual field trip by hunting standards-based contextual clues within the embedded images, VR videos, and walking tours. Participants will also preview how to build their own escape activities with PBS LearningMedia's free and open Lesson Builder tool paired with Flippity Virtual Breakout.
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Escape the Virtual Field Trip Adventures With GPB Education’s Immersive VR Learning Journeys: Regions of Georgia
Welcome to Georgia!
We hope you enjoy your visit.
We hope you learn about our unique and remarkable state.
We hope you manage to escape...
Providing nearly 40 experiential virtual field trips to historical and cultural sites statewide, Georgia Public Broadcasting invites educators to a participatory interactive adventure and tool-building workshop modeled around the Regions of Georgia virtual field trip from our comprehensive Georgia Studies collection. This collection is free and open to all educators and consists of the Our State and Our Nation digital course with teacher view, the statewide virtual field trips, the Georgia Stories video series, and the Georgia Race Through Time formative assessment game.
Join GPB in an immersive group effort to escape from the state of Georgia by hunting standards-based contextual clues within the text, embedded images, VR videos, and digital walking tours. Participants will also preview how to build their own escape activities with PBS LearningMedia's free and open Lesson Builder tool paired with Flippity Virtual Breakout.
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Poems in the Primary: Finding Poetry in Primary Sources
Grade Level: 6-12
Join GPB’s education outreach team for a creative take on social studies education in conjunction with National Poetry Month. We'll explore primary source sets from PBSLearningMedia along with instructional strategies in "found poetry" that will shift how students examine, analyze, and understand documents.
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Phenomenal Social Studies: Building STEM Skills by Exploring the Captivating and Messy History of Innovation
Grade Level: K-12
Social studies is often called social sciences because it invites us to use scientific approaches as we examine, analyze, elucidate, and apply our expanding knowledge of the human condition to our personal lives and our greater roles in the community. To be effective historians and understand how important lessons from our past can help promote us into a brighter collective future, we should also apply our STEM skills to the challenge. Key STEM skills include problem solving, creativity, engineering-design processing, critical thinking, and collaboration.
In this session, participants will explore how inspiring innovators from history used their STEM skills to identify a problem of the time, collaborate with peers to creatively envision a potential solution, persevere through the engineering-design process, and deliver an extraordinary output that changed our society. We will spotlight PBS LearningMedia collections and teacher resources from Benjamin Franklin: A Film by Ken Burns, Thomas Edison: American Experience, George Washington Carver: An Uncommon Life, and Hedy Lamarr: American Masters.
Join GPB Education on this interdisciplinary journey into the intrinsically messy reality of historical innovation and learn how making mistakes and failing forward can help us all continue working together towards an ever-advancing society.
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Safari Economics for 7th Grade Social Studies: Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya
Grade Level: 7
Join GPB on an educational safari (Swahili for “journey") through our collection of free digital resources exploring the factors that influence economic growth in Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya. Content and teaching strategies will focus on entrepreneurship and how the distribution of natural resources affects economic development.
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Generating Interest in Personal Finance With GPB
Grade Level: 6-12
Whether working on a financial plan for college and career readiness or making a career investment in the Georgia film industry, GPB’s free financial literacy content engages students in educational strategies that will help place them on a solid financial path and better understand the wider role of finance in their lives. Join Georgia Public Broadcasting in a hands-on exploration of our free partner programs, videos, games, and lesson plans, designed to encourage student mastery of crucial finance skills and standards.
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You Won't Need A Credit Card For These Personal Finance Resources, But They May Attract Interest
Grade Level: 6-12
Whether working on a financial plan for college and career readiness or making a career investment in the Georgia film industry, GPB’s free financial literacy content engages students in educational strategies that will help place them on a solid financial path and better understand the wider role of finance in their lives. Join Georgia Public Broadcasting in a hands-on exploration of our free partner programs, videos, games, and lesson plans, designed to encourage student mastery of crucial finance skills and standards.
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Start It Up Without Breaking the Bank: Game-Based Learning for Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurial Success
Grade Level: 9-12
Embark on an entrepreneurial adventure with Georgia Public Broadcasting and the Georgia Council for Economic Education! Join us for an interactive session exploring our free online learning game, "Start it Up," designed to ignite bold entrepreneurial spirit and enhance money management skills. Whether you dream of being an event DJ, owning a salon, or launching a dating app, this session is your ticket to turning those dreams into virtual reality.
In "Start it Up," participants delve into a decision-making journey, navigating the intricacies of starting a small business. From the initial idea to two years of critical choices, players determine their fate – will they achieve future success or face the challenges that could force their business to close?
Immerse yourselves in this game-based learning challenge where education meets entrepreneurship, a dynamic and enjoyable way to tackle complex money management concepts while experiencing the thrills of the small business industry. Don't forget to bring your personal device, financial curiosity, and your game face for a session that promises both entertainment and valuable financial insights!