« Interesting article | Main | "What Else Is On?" Effective Use of New Media - Kurt »
November 21, 2005
learning for a lifetime
Amanda von Argyriadis
November 14, 2005
Digital history has certainly changed the way we “do” history in my lifetime.
When I was a kid we were simply given a book and told to read through it, memorise the important dates and figures, and perhaps be able to identify the various nations on an unmarked map. We were lucky to get a slide show. Films were a once in a semester treat. Today, history is more interactive thanks to the new technologies and the advent of the internet. With digital history available to us, both students and instructors alike can actively participate in the quest for knowledge. I urge instructors to take advantage of the ample teaching tools readily available on the web. It means instructors will have to be better informed about what is out there and must know themselves what the accurate history is. Busted! Perhaps we could all stand to learn something from this new age.
Perhaps historians will have to be more well rounded with all the information that will be readily available to them and forgo the excuses previously used, the all too familiar, “I don’t know, that’s not really my field” remarks.
Some historians and instructors are challenged by the autonomy that follows independent investigation. I embrace that independence and see it as research experience, which cannot be learned too soon or exhausted in a lifetime of investigation.
Experience tells me that when I look through a site and follow the things that are interesting to me I remember them more readily. Aided by photographs, film clips and other visual and audio influences, I am more submerged in the subject, more surrounded by the themes, facts, and nuances that accompany the subject. The experience is more like visiting a museum with a guide. Some sites ask questions for the visitor to respond to; others simply direct and advise. To those instructors who feel threatened by a student’s undirected self exploration and journey into history while on the web I would ask, “what is more important; having the student learn exactly what you wanted on that day for an hour, or something that interested them for a lifetime?”
I think our challenge as instructors will be to help students learn what reliable evidence is and what constitutes good history versus what is rubbish and propaganda. Perhaps as use of the web grows within the classroom, there will be more awareness made of this conundrum at an earlier age so that when students reach my classroom as freshmen they aren’t ignorant about how to gauge the accuracy or bias of a site.
The bottom line is I don't care how they learn it, as long as they really learn something and it sticks.
Posted by avonargy at November 21, 2005 01:42 PM
Comments
Hi:
Unrelated to this posting, all my emails to you are bouncing...
Mills
Posted by: Mills at November 21, 2005 03:42 PM