5 ideas for a connected educator #history classroom

I would like to con­nect my class­room with a class­room in anoth­er coun­try. That should be tech­ni­cal­ly fea­si­ble with all the free social and col­lab­o­ra­tive tools avail­able today, right?

One pur­pose of his­to­ry edu­ca­tion is to empow­er stu­dents to be world cit­i­zens and lead the world in the future. To achieve that you need “cul­tur­al com­pe­tence ” — to be able to under­stand and lis­ten to oth­er peo­ple’s per­spec­tives. That would also pre­pare stu­dents for their future cross-cul­tur­al work­space — even if they are not becom­ing world leaders 🙂

I know, it’s not that easy, you have to know or meet a peer teacher in anoth­er coun­try who has “time to play”. Stu­dents will prob­a­bly have to work asyn­chro­nous­ly. And you have to estab­lish a com­mon online work­space that both groups of stu­dents are com­fort­able with.

I would like my stu­dents to work in groups con­sist­ing of 1–2 stu­dents from each classroom.

Here are 5 ideas for his­to­ry activities:

1) Create a cartoon of the history of the European Union.

- My guess is that Dan­ish stu­dents will look dif­fer­ent­ly on this than, say Pol­ish stu­dents. Maybe the car­toon should tar­get young peo­ple like them­selves who are not inter­est­ed in EU affairs.

 

2) Solve the Israeli-Palestinean conflict

Out­line a solu­tion for the Palestinean con­flict that should be pre­sent­ed in the UN. You have to teach the con­flict first.

 

3) Update the organization of the UN

Dis­cuss how the orga­ni­za­tion of the UN should change to reflect the world of 2014 instead of 1945. Again, this need some preparation…

 

4) Compare the history curriculum in your respective classes.

How does it reflect and affect your view of his­to­ry and the world today? Com­pose a new cur­ricu­lum. (maybe this is more inter­est­ing for teach­ers than students 🙂 )

 

5) Compare the use of historical artefacts in your town/city.

How does your city use his­to­ry to brand and dis­tin­guish itself? Which events are empha­sized and why?

 

Or alter­na­tive­ly, the two con­nect­ed class­rooms could brain­storm and agree upon a com­mon project them­selves with teach­ers as consultants?

This is just sketch­es — they all have to be devel­oped.  And I am open for oth­er ideas!

What are your thoughts? Please share them in a com­ment — thanks!