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Digital tools in the #history classroom

7 min­ut­ters læsning

Presentation for plenary session on Council of Europe Belgrade seminar, 29/10 2015

This is my first vis­it to Bel­grade so I hope there will be time to see the city.

My name is Lars Hen­rik­sen and I have been teach­ing his­to­ry in upper sec­ondary school for 15 years. Over this peri­od of time, my use of text­books and paper in the class­room have slow­ly decreased, but not stopped entirely.

 

The online class­room and dis­trac­tions from social media

Online stu­dents can be dis­tract­ed from social media. But as Mark said, social media is just a nat­ur­al means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to a 15-year old, like the book was (is) to us . So if we ban and fight social media in the class room, I think stu­dents will com­pare their his­to­ry teach­ers to the catholic church in the case against Galileo – or even worse, the sub­ject of his­to­ry itself will be per­ceived as out­dat­ed and irrel­e­vant to the students .

How many of your stu­dents use online devices in the classroom?

Which com­pe­tences are need­ed from a teacher in an online classroom?

In the offline school, the teacher was a infor­ma­tion “gate keep­er”, choos­ing text­books and or mate­ri­als for the stu­dents. The teacher had a nat­ur­al author­i­ty, due to the knowl­edge in the teach­ers head. Nowa­days every stu­dent can google a sub­ject and find accounts and doc­u­ments on almost every his­to­ry sub­ject you can think of. Many facts are googleable, so author­i­ty does not come nec­es­sar­i­ly from remem­ber­ing a lot of names and dates.

Far from every­thing on Google lives up to text­book-stan­dards, but still this is dif­fer­ent. Online stu­dents can google every­thing the teacher says and poten­tial­ly cor­rect him. They can also find rub­bish and pro­pa­gan­da, so it is impor­tant to teach stu­dents to iden­ti­fy biased or even fake material

We have to look at this “com­pe­ti­tion”  as a resource in stead of nui­sance: I some­times ask stu­dents to look things up for me.

This means, that any account of a his­tor­i­cal sub­ject in any text­book can be com­pared  to 1000 oth­er accounts on the inter­net – at least on con­tro­ver­sial sub­jects — with­in a short peri­od. Some stu­dents might be con­fused: Is the text­book outdated..?

We have to accept this and some­times ask the stu­dents to find dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives and have them dis­cussed in depth in class. In many cas­es, we can­not insist on one author­i­ta­tive account over anoth­er – there will always dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, and we have to give room for that.

The cur­ricu­lum should be more open , in the sense that learn­ers can pro­pose doc­u­ments and mate­r­i­al to be includ­ed for class work. This will spur moti­va­tion among learners.

 

Will the stu­dents use facebook?

My claim is that if the stu­dents are on face­book it might be because they are bored!

I have noticed that when we have staff meet­ings, many of my col­leagues have been peek­ing on facebook

And – I have even done it myself! How many in this room have CONSIDERED to check their feed dur­ing the day. ?

Stu­dents should not be lec­tured for more than 10–15 mins. They should learn  by using their knowl­edge to pro­duce some­thing with dig­i­tal tools, they should be active.

 

Uti­liz­ing the pow­er of social media to achieve his­to­ry learn­ing goals

So some­times the out­side world attracts and dis­tracts our stu­dents on Face­book, Twit­ter, Insta­gram and what not. But what If we draw some atten­tion to his­to­ry and what if your stu­dents could actu­al­ly draw the atten­tion of their net­work and friends  away from their cat videos and self­ies? And edu­cate them with some local history?

A few ideas:

  • Use a local hash­tag like #MyBel­grade­his­to­ry and let users post images of mon­u­ments or oth­er traces of his­to­ry in their neigh­bor­hood with a link to some prod­uct telling the sto­ry behind the mon­u­ment. The post with the most likes and shares will earn a prize!
  • Set up a local his­to­ry YouTube Chan­nel on your school: Stu­dents take turns in pub­lish­ing a video with a his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive – inter­views with grand par­ents and so on.
  • Pub­lish stu­dent papers as free e‑books on the school’s web­site and share them on social media

 

Uti­lize stu­dent net­work: Cre­ate a list in class of stu­dents online friends in oth­er coun­tries – that could be used for assign­ments where stu­dents should find dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on class sub­jects from oth­er nations. Maybe they could com­pare their city mon­u­ments and his­to­ry from the afore­men­tioned competition.

 

 

Dig­i­tal tools

Dig­i­tal tools should be used in order to achieve learn­ing goals – not in order to please the head­mas­ter or the stu­dents. If you can’t explain the advan­tages of using a dig­i­tal tool, you shouldn’t use it!

It is my expe­ri­ence though, that using con­tem­po­rary tools moti­vates the students.

What is inques­tion­able facts and what is up for inter­pre­ta­tion? How do we assess or iden­ti­fy  ‘biased’ his­to­ry writ­ing? One could ask stu­dents to find, say 5 dif­fer­ent accounts on the out­break of world war 1, copy-paste  and com­pare them in a shared google doc­u­ment. High­light the words , that show the bias or point of view, if you prefer.

I think dig­i­tal tools can be used in the teach­ing of

  • Writ­ing his­tor­i­cal essays – accounts of his­tor­i­cal events.
  • Ana­lyz­ing pri­ma­ry documents 
    • Peer review writ­ing with for­ma­tive assessment

 

“His­tor­i­cal overview”

  • Sim­ply putting images togeth­er in cor­rect order.
  • Time­line tools
  • Car­toons

Videos – news flash­es with accounts of his­tor­i­cal events

There are tons of dig­i­tal tools out there and there will be more next month:

 

Which com­pe­tences do teach­ers need to cope with this?

In short: My rec­om­men­da­tion would be to use dig­i­tal tools in order to achieve his­to­ry learn­ing goals and raise atten­tion for his­to­ry out­side class­room. Let the stu­dents have an “authen­tic” audience.

We must cre­ate assign­ments, that acti­vate stu­dents with dig­i­tal and online tools to achieve aca­d­e­m­ic learn­ing goals.

Online stu­dents can be dis­tract­ed from social media. But social media is just a nat­ur­al means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to a 15-year old, like the book was (is) to us . So if we ban and fight social media in the class room, I think we would be like the catholic church against Galileo – or even worse, the sub­ject of his­to­ry will be per­ceived as out­dat­ed and irrel­e­vant to the stu­dents like Win­dows 95.

Uti­lize stu­dent net­work: Cre­ate a list in class of stu­dents online friends in oth­er coun­tries – that could be used for assign­ments where stu­dents should find dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on class sub­jects from oth­er nations.

Make assign­ments that involves pub­lish­ing on social media like Twit­ter and Insta­gram with hash­tags, for instance:

#Myhood: Ss. post a pic­ture of a mon­u­ment in their neigh­bor­hood and tell the sto­ry beind it. The pic­ture with most favorites and likes get a prize… (dis­cuss in class if peo­ple are reward­ing aca­d­e­m­ic or tech­ni­cal skills) — or use His­to­rypin

Set up a local his­to­ry YouTube Chan­nel: Stu­dents take turns in pub­lish­ing a video with a his­tor­i­cal narrative.

Or pub­lish stu­dent papers as free e‑book on the school’s website.

Invite stu­dents to curate teach­ing mate­r­i­al on a giv­en sub­ject: Youtube videos, OER

Or if pos­si­ble: Invite stu­dents to pro­pose subjects/or cours­es in the class.

This moti­vates stu­dents  — and frankly, also the teacher  — you learn with the students.

Stori­fy

Assign­ment: Write con­tent for Ser­bian Wikipedia articles

Pow­er Search­ing with Google – course.

Dis­sem­i­na­tion

If you are not famil­iar with dig­i­tal tools you need help from peers.  Like­wise, If you have suc­ceed­ed with smth, I think you should share it with colleagues.

Lots of teach­ers share ideas and mate­r­i­al on Twit­ter – fol­low the hash­tag

Fac­ul­ty dissemination:

Many Dan­ish upper sec­ondary teach­ers share their teach­ing ideas in face­book groups. Do you?

My rec­om­men­da­tion would be to use open online plat­forms to share ideas, teach­ing mate­ri­als and so on:

Two Dan­ish exam­ples that I have created:

http://itigymnasiet.dk/, http://historielaerer.dk/

 

Sum­ming up:

  • Acti­vate stu­dents in class­room – let them cre­ate prod­ucts and par­tic­i­pate in class via dig­i­tal tools
  • Dare to fail #fail­for­ward
  • Trust your stu­dents with knowl­edge of tools, that you don’t know.


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