There is no dearth of teaching materials available on the web. These include lesson plans and online archives targeted at middle and high school students and teachers, and they are provided by everyone from small historical associations to large academic projects at major universities. But at first glance, the web betrays a silence on teaching teachers how to teach history. Aside from DoHistory, which, we agreed in class, has problems living up to its claim to allowing users to explore on their own how historians do their dirty work, how is the web teaching history teachers (and students, and the interested general public) how to teach history? What does the web say about how to be a historian, and then how does it teach students and teachers that they can be historians and how they can be historians? In my Review Essay, I will examine the sites currently available that try to teach historical thinking to teachers and students, such as DoHistory, The Learning Curve, and Picturing Modern America . I also hope to determine if the web scholarship on this topic in the United States differs significantly from the scholarship in other countries.
Posted by Kristin at September 24, 2004 08:31 PM