Part I – Intro and Background
Intro to Project
Albany Congress Background data
NYPL Digital Gallery
Part II – Visual Interpretation
Architecture of the Capitol – central scene mural
Part III – Primary source documents
Roger Trask’s article Pennsylvania and the Albany Congress – inclides primary source quotes
Proceedings of the Colonial Congress held at Albany
Part IV - Role playing exercise - determining Albany Plan
Part V – Post-role playing exercise
Actual Albany Plan
Franklin’s reflection in 1789
Albany Congress of 1754 Project
The objective of the project is to provide a learning module that exposes high school or undergraduate college students to primary source documents, gives the students experience in interpreting these documents and historically thinking about the issues and decisions that faced the Indians, American colonists, and the Board of Trade in England. The module would occur sometime during the middle of a course on colonial America and is estimated to take approximately two weeks to complete. In the weeks leading up to the module we would have sessions giving the students a sense of the historical landscape from the perspective of the Indians, colonists and English in Britain. (more…)
Don’t let the spartanesque look of the initial web page on the website fool you (http://www.virtualjamestown.org/. This project is rich in primary and secondary sources as well as ways in which both students and teachers can interact. There are ten teaching scenarios ready for use that students, or any user for that matter, can work on that require historical thinking. The maps amd images show how the area was settled and populated from 1607 onward as well as photos of aritifacts with explanations of the artifacts which allow the user to get a good idea of what kind of tools, pottery and various items were used by the Jamestown population of the 17th century. (more…)
I reviewed three web projects on the CHNM website: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity; History Matters; and DoHistory. All three we well-designed projects that evidenced significant forethought and consideration of the potential users, yet their primary audience and intent differed.
History Matters contains a lot of good practices that any institution of learning should consider before designing a web project. The History Matters project has a variety of uses for students and teachers at the secondary and university level. History Matters provides access to primary and secondary sources that have been reviewed by professional historians, an important aspect for K-12 teachers that want to be able to direct students to trusted, reliable web sources with breadth and depth of data covering over 1,000 web sites. (more…)
Sara Horton’s Web Teaching Guide: A Practical Approach to Creating Course Web Sites, and the Bass-Rosenzweig article “Rewiring the History and Social Studies Classroom: Needs, Frameworks, Dangers, and Proposals,” provide a handy framework, set of guidelines, and best practices for using new media as part of the interaction with the students. These two works show that there is no one formula or recipe — design and content really depend on the teacher’s goals and objectives, the students, and facility resources (h/w, s/w, it support staff, availability of computer facilities).
Horton’s reference to shovelware (p. xi) and Kelly’s warning in his article “Using New Media to Teach East European History” not to use new media for the sake of it are spot on. I would guess that all of us have experienced several courses or training where the presenter feels they have done their job of being “with it” by incorporating new media in their course by dumping a bunch of website links in the students’ lap, basically pointing to web and saying “There is it, go get it,” with no thought, organization or purpose. So if just using new media to use is not the answer, then what is, or should be the purpose of goal of using new media. Should it just be easy to use with information easy to find at the fingertips of the student, a mechanism for instilling enjoyment or amusement, or can it, should it be more, a medium to enhances learning?
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It is very encouraging, once again, to read about many professors who possess the initiative and strong desire to strive for profound improvements in the classroom. Every article/website left me with the impression that not only did they demonstrate a passion for designing better syllabi and classroom instruction, but they did so by investing significant amounts of personal time and effort. I was impressed by Adrienne Hood’s willingness to learn new skills so that she could see if student-constructed web sites were worth doing for research projects. Like her students, Hood had to drastically improve her own web and html skills in order to have the knowledge to lead the class through this new approach. (more…)
It would seem from the various articles assigned this week that some common themes are shared by many of the historians: cognitive approach is important and valuable approach for improving teaching and learning history; lecture, textbook reading, and exams are less effective, if not the least effective teaching method, and high school students lack the analytical skills to employ historical thinking, however, this deficiency is not linked to age or mind not yet capable of analytical thinking. Instead, the various authors submit that high school students can be taught to think like historians.
The onus is not solely on the student, according to Robert Bain, who states in his article “Into the Breach: Using Research to Shape History Instruction,” that history teachers must be subject matter knowlegeable, too. Bain relies on research to aid in his design and implementation of his curriculum and class activities. He suggests creating courses where the student becomes a mini-historian, thus utilizing a practioner role for the student where they are experiencing history and exhibiting historical thinking attributes such as corroborating, contextualizing, and sourcing. His approach is reminiscent of Wineburg’s in “Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts.” Bain concedes that he does not have enough evidence to begin drawing any conclusions, but he does mention that the students found the class more enjoyable and that they thought their thinking and analytical skills had improved. Bain utilized the research from many leading education and history researchers, some of which we have read over the past two weeks such as Peter Stearns, Peter Seixas, and Samuel Wineburg. He also utiliized research from a renowned cognitive development psychologist, Lev Vgotsky. (more…)
This is Gary and this is what I want to talk about this semester. I hope to discover new methods of teaching using various forms of media. I would like to learn which media is more or less effective given topic, classroom situation, class size, and other elements that a teacher must consider when planning lessons. I also would like to learn more about how students learn and how they perceive the various media formats relative to comprehension, retention, and recall.