December 12, 2005

An "enthusiast" site worth visiting

Hi all:

Here's a website I'll be using next semester in my Western Civ class: Casebook: Jack the Ripper. This is an "enthusiast" site founded by a guy named Stephen Ryder who, by his own admission, began this project just because he was interested in the Jack the Ripper case and wanted to start collecting resources online. The site has mushroomed into a huge project with thousands of primary sources, a message board with something like 70,000 posts on it, etc., etc. For our purposes, it also has a "then and now" page that shows you the look of four prior versions of the site's homepage.

If you can get past the incredibly annoying flashing ad in the left hand margin, it is quite the resource. And it is an example of how a digital history project can take on a life of its own.

See you in a bit.

Mills

Posted by mills at 06:17 PM | Comments (1)

December 09, 2005

Interview on Technology and Education

I hope you all are enjoying the snow.

Here's an interview with an English prof. on the use of technology in the classroom. I'd be interested to hear your take on this. He doesn't seem that cutting edge to me, but is a guy who gets lots of buzz.

Mills

Posted by mills at 07:04 PM | Comments (7)

November 27, 2005

Suzanne's Thoughts on Teaching and Learning

With this entry, I am finally caught up with my blogging. I reread your other blogs on digital classroom, and it looks like we could have a couple discussions on the topic. I found a lot of good insights that spur my thinking further. I had to stop contemplating and write the blog, so here it is...

I’ve been thinking a lot about the effect of digital media on the classroom as we know it. After our class discussion, I posed the ideas we bantered about with friends of mine that are presently college and high school teachers. The jury is still out, I think, because it poses a shift in their paradigm that they have to think about for a good while. In high school, accessibility to computing at home can be an issue, but I think it’s a reluctance to change themselves. I’ve been going to High School Open Houses meeting my sons’ teachers for six years now. Gradually over time, I noticed that even the most reluctant, technically challenged teacher has email, posted their syllabus and the student’s grades, and more and more utilize the Blackboard system. It is difficult for the working teacher, secondary or college level, to embrace new technologies. Their lives are busy enough staying current with lesson plans and grading. Having said all of that, I think the emergence of new media in the classroom is inevitable. The wide use of the Internet combined with the digital savvy young generation is something that teachers and administrators cannot ignore. Teachers who find it difficult to change their paradigm will be left behind by their students. I think back to the Takeshita article and my response is “the internet is here to stay, so why don’t we teach our students to use it intelligently instead of ignoring it.” This is pretty heady stuff from someone of my limited abilities. I speak for myself when I say I think I’ve learned more from Clio Wired than my technically savvy classmates. I still can’t DO the stuff you all can do, but my web worldview has been greatly expanded. I learned early on that teaching is my passion (whether I get paid to do it or not), and I funnel all this information into ways to become a better teacher.

Our discussion centered more on the scholarship aspect of teaching and learning, and, at this point in the profession of teaching history, I understand the importance of this concentration. College professors have not been traditionally trained in teaching methods the same way a secondary teacher is required to be. Effective teaching cannot be analyzed or measured without the reciprocal look as effective learning. Mills’ quest to determine the effectiveness of using digital media to teach and learn will go a long way (hopefully) to move the scholarship of teaching with new media along its inevitable path. The student’s are using the internet, and they are not going to change. I agree with David Pace’s article that the type of thinking we historians and teachers are requiring of student’s is not natural or easy for them. It is as important to understand how student’s learn as it is to understand how to teach them to think at higher, more analytical levels. The expanse of the internet will need to shape that teaching process as the articles pointed out how student’s will form their own meta-narrative because they are not being led by the nose along a path to discovery. The challenge to teachers is how to keep them inside the ballpark of the intended assignment as they wander off the path to self-discovery.

The discussion about the art of teaching and learning is ongoing, and the introduction of new media can only expand it. One other aspect I want to mention in this blog, because it has me thinking differently, is the point that the teaching of history should reflect the thinking processes of the professional historian. Chemistry courses make you do the experiment and write up labs similar to a working chemist, and law students definitely imitate the work of a professional attorney. Why not teach introductory history students to analyze and think like the historian? I have personally only taught up through middle school, but I have helped my high school and college age children with their AP History courses. And I just started TAing for HIST 120 this semester. I am immersed in the grading of a college level survey course with 180 tests to grade three times this semester. My professor uses the lecture approach, but his lectures are thoughtful and provide the current thoughts on the history profession to these students. His essay questions are a series of questions designed to make the students thinks analytically about the information they have absorbed. As you would expect, the majority of essays are what Pace calls “lists, series of lists, and causal lists,” but periodically, a refreshingly well written essay passes me by. They are learning, and are some able to articulate what they are learning at that higher level of thinking teachers long to see.

My understanding of the use of new media in the classroom has certainly changed, and I consider this a challenge to learn how to use and incorporate new media in any future teaching I do. I would have agreed with Takeshita a couple years ago, but my experiences with my children coupled with my own experiences at Mason lead me to believe that the digital age is here to stay. I’ve got to get on the bandwagon or be left behind. I look forward to pondering this further with my friends and teaching colleagues.

Posted by scarson1 at 12:57 PM

November 26, 2005

Woopsies, forgot

Guess who forgot to post my homework before I went on the honeymoon? Yes, that’s Tai.

Digital media MAY change the teaching and learning of history:

Teaching

Certainly digital media changes the power structure of teachers traditionally ruling over students. Similarly, students have more control over their method of learning and viewing sources. If using digital source material, students have a level of autonomy never before provided by printed texts. Students can access, view and analyze a range of sources even beyond the Internet-prolific professor’s capability. As stated by T. Mills Kelly, “[a]n intricately interlinked set of primary source documents makes it possible for students to construct or reconstruct their own meta-text in ways that an assignment in print alone, no matter how well designed, cannot, except for the most gifted or motivated learners.” Thus, both professors and students are embarking on an educational adventure because the digital media prevents the teacher from having complete control over probable learning outcomes.

Yet beyond being outsmarted, instructors more often fear, as Kelly argues, “the web discourages our students from using the library, or even books at all.” However, this is addressed by what an instructor’s course goals include: Does the educator not wish to provide the student with historiographical context and background for what is being studied? Historiography must be addressed in print, in libraries and hence, through books. It would be irresponsible in any sense for a professor to instruct students, even with digital primary sources, without providing the students a foundation of previously purported knowledge.

Perhaps the question should not be what changes digital media has on teaching. Rather, the emphasis should be, what are the goals of history educators? Hopefully it isn’t, and never was: regurgitation of facts. Whether primary sources were provided in hardcopy or through digital media, analysis should be independent and unpredictable, with students being instructed on the historiographical background of a particular topic.

Learning

Just as we do not consider primary sources without a historiographical context, we should not consider students outside of their cohort context. Example cohorts: survey course students, history-major students and graduate history students. Professors teaching various courses should have varying goals for these diverse cohorts. Survey courses should be working to provide a general background while combating what David Pace calls the “ideological spin” primary and secondary schools give to history, “overwhelmed by creations of popular culture, such as Forrest Gump and even Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.” With digital media, instructors can utilize similarly visually enduring relations of history with more historical viability than box-office productions. History-major courses should be introducing students to primary sources and developing analysis with historiographical framework. Kelly indicates how digital media aides in this, “web certainly encourages students to focus on primary sources, especially what they mean and how they relate to one another, rather than simply memorizing some fact about them.” Graduate students can then use a wealth of digital and print materials to analyze and create new theories within an extensive historiography for further understanding of a particular historical topic.

A dilemma results for all cohorts, as Kelly reveals, because “student satisfaction is not the same thing as student learning, but such resounding endorsements are difficult to ignore altogether.” Students today are accustomed to using the Internet for both leisure and learning. Therefore it was inevitable historians would begin to use the digital media to enhance their own profession, which has in turn benefited students; “exploring on the web does seem to encourage original thinking about the past, thereby helping students to make more sophisticated connections between various sources, events and people than they generally do with a textbook or monograph (Kelly).” With this, the teaching of history appears to be improved by digital media. Nevertheless, students “not only do not know how to judge the quality of what they find on the web, they do not even think much about the potential risks of bogus, or simply sloppy, websites (Kelly).” Just as with printed texts, instructors again need to provide either instruction on how to evaluate history websites, or need to provide previously screened Internet resources. Fortunately, organizations such as the Center for History and New Media here at GMU are doing such screenings for other instructors to identify worthwhile Internet sources, thus eliminating the need for professors to fear the breadth of inaccurate knowledge and primary sources littering the web. [Western Civ Webography, World History Matters]

Needless to say, digital media has definitely changed the availability and accessibility of sources for instructors and students. Although the teacher may be giving up some of the control in the “right-answer compromise,” the students are gaining a level of autonomy in their learning, which cannot be accomplished in traditional printed texts. The goals of teaching should have been and thus should remain centered on (when relevant to the cohort) developing a historiographical background allowing students to evaluate primary sources for new and unique conclusions. As stated above, the use of digital media allows students in this process to make original deductions about a range of primary sources, previously impossible – meaning digital media has changed the teaching and learning of history.

Posted by tgerhart at 03:22 PM

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 01:42 PM | Comments (1)

November 18, 2005

Matt on the Digital Classroom - I got yer flashcards right here.

Damn, people are posting their stuff for next week even as I finally get around to blogging about last week's assignment. What did Dr. Kelly say about students getting more paranoid as their work (or obvious lack of it) is posted on the Internet?

After reading Pace's article, Dr. Kelly's article about his experiment at Texas Tech, and reviewing the on-line heuristic tools such as Who Killed William Robinson? and the CHNM's Webography Project, I read through everyone's responses to the topic. It seems that most people are "on board" with this digital revolution, willing (if not always eager) to see the utility and promise in digital media for instructional use. To no one's great surprise, I'm sure, I agree for the most part.

But after class last week, it seems to me that the toughest nut to crack is how to measure whether a student is learning in a better way through digital media. Indeed, in considering my future career as a professor, I wonder how I will judge whether or not my students are learning at all. Will I encourage what Dr. Kelly called the "compromise answer?" Lecture for a semester, hold a couple review sessions, field student questions about the exam, and then present questions that they have a reasonable expectation of providing the answers I have hinted to them throughout the semester. To be perfectly frank, and to echo Scott's nostalgia, such was my experience in undergrad classes not even ten years ago. We had one professor in my History department interested in utilizing the digital medium for instruction. The result? For a couple of semesters, every history class has a "discussion board," not unlike this blog, but with limited student interaction. Also, I recall my wife having to develop a web project for a class with this particular professor way back in 2000. But that's it - readings were still books or packets purchased at the bookstore, primary sources were located through legwork in the university library or in local archives, etc.

Are we much further today? Judging from the sites we viewed last week, I would suggest that we are. The digital medium allows access to sources and didactic tools in levels unheralded a decade earlier. But I don't think it's the ease of access that promotes "better" learning now opposed to then. Rather, I submit that it is the immersion and interactivity engendered by such powerful access that can potentially motivate a student to greater achievement.

Now, I may indeed be blowing smoke here. My teaching experience is limited to instruction in basic military tasks given to young recruits in an environment that can only be described as draconian and the embodiment of rote memorization. Alas, the joys of living expenses in NoVA have precluded me from looking for an assistantship to practice my instructional method. However, I can recall that in the truly exceptional classes I had as a student myself, the common element among them was offering me a level of agency with regards to my own education. Whether it was being presented with forms of primary sources I had never used before (personal journals, troop manifests, etc.) or being asked to do more in a classroom environment than taking notes or participating in discussion (actually teaching one module, perhaps), these were the times that learning became internalized and contextualized.

Such, I feel, is the great promise of the digital classroom. By giving the students not just the freedom to access the material, but the license to manipulate, deconstruct, and reconstruct the information, the knowledge gained is quantifiably better and qualitatively more useful.

Posted by mhobbs at 03:52 PM

November 17, 2005

Liz ... digital classroom

Sorry for not getting up sooner … E.P. Thompson was consuming my brain all week.

• Sources
The Internet has already allowed both teachers and students access to sources they would have been unable to peruse in the pre-digital age. I did not use the Internet until my freshman year in college, and I could not imagine doing research without it, as it would take hours, days, months, perhaps even years to find the resources I can find within a minutes with Google, Dogpile, or any number of avenues (I find what the Canadian government has done especially useful … check it out! http://collections.ic.gc.ca/E/view.html).


• Expand the classroom
On Monday, we looked at a site that allowed students to post critiques about books. This activity is an expansion of the classroom—much like our own blog. If students in a GW class—or even a class at a small school in Nebraska—were to join the conversation, the sharing of ideas would be expanded. Sure, we’re all vastly intelligent individuals, but living in the greater D.C. area undoubtedly affects how we think, irrespective of where we grew up. By having a more open classroom (i.e., not confined to a single teacher and 12 students) we are exposed to fresh ideas and perspectives (and vice versa).

• Teachers would be expected to do more
With current high school students growing up in this wired age, I think teachers will increasingly direct their students toward Internet assignments/research. The days in which somber lecturing about history sufficed are long over—it is time that history teachers catch up with the times.

• Syllabi
The syllabi finder at the Center for History and the New Media is an intriguing resource. It allows teachers/professors to view what their colleagues are doing and further develop their curriculum.

There’s much that’s been done; however, we still have a way to go…

Posted by ejonese at 10:41 PM

Ergonomics

I guess I'll try to stick to the themes I have hammered at for most of the semester: the unique features of the medium of digital scholarship and the democratization of scholarship.

What struck me particularly in the readings and our discussions this past week was that there is not simply a discussion of a shift in method, but of a change in educational philosophy. David Pace described this as a "rejection of an older vision of education that saw students as empty vessels waiting to be filled with knowledge. Pace describes a new model which hopes to better engage students and contextualize the material in the world around them. Pace's proposals suggest a model by which students and their ideas might be taken more seriously, creating an environment which encourages and rewards a willingness to think creatively about problems, historical or otherwise.

Whether or not this changing attitude toward the student/teacher dynamics is commensurate or independent of the use of digital media is debatable. However, if one looks to move in a direction of treating students as more than "empty vessels," changes in methods seems appropriate, and digital media seems to offer unique opportunities for symbiosis. First, rather than a "my way or the highway" approach, the very assessing ways in which students might be best engages shows a willingness by faculty to work in part on the students terms. As Dr. Kelly has related in his stories of students about to graduate without stepping foot in the library, there seems to be a growing aversion to text based learning. While these are certainly extreme cases and do not implicate the need for a complete abandonment of the book as a tool, the facility and popularity of online information is apparent. As we have continually noted throughout the semester the improved access offered by the web is one of digital media's most valuable assets. As Dr. Kelly notes in "For Better or Worse," in placing class materials online, particularly with regard to primary sources, it seems that students appreciate their ready availability and flexible use.

The democratization of scholarship seems apparent in the potentials on the student production side of the educational equation. This blog is a great example. It extends the dialog of the classroom, offering improved opportunities for collaborative learning. It encourages students who might feel uncomfortable voicing their opinions in the classroom, and allows for greater development and refinement of ideas. Moreover, while offering the student more control and opportunity for expression, this is accompanied by greater accountability and responsibility, factors which might potentially improve the quality of learning.

Shifting the emphasis of education away from simply infusing students with knowledge, but rather toward encouraging them to think critically, collaboratively, and creatively is a positive development, and digital media seems a worthy companion in the process. Moreover, it is a medium students are increasing comfortable with, in fact, often more so than with the traditional tools of learning. How it will be integrated into the classroom setting remains to be fully explored, but its presence and utility are no longer in doubt.

Posted by kalbers at 10:29 AM

November 16, 2005

Digital Classroom -- Scott -- Hey, where are the flash cards?

As someone who doesn’t plan to teach after grad school (although I did teach one U.S. history survey course after I got my M.A. and it was quite an experience), this week’s assignment covered areas I hadn’t really considered before. All I could think of after reading the assigned articles, checking the websites, and the class discussion was that perhaps we’re seeing the final death throws of the traditional Survey course I remember so fondly from my freshman year oh so many years ago?

Memorizing dates, names, places, battles, and all of that! Was that so bad? Although I don't remember much from my World Civ survey courses I had to take except that 1453 was a big year, so was 1066 (French kicking Saxon butt?); Napolean shouldn't have invaded Russia, the 30 Years War were not kind to the residents of whatever Germany was called then. . .Elizabeth I was an amazing queen, etc., etc.

To what end, I wonder, is this new thrust towards getting students (most who aren't considering a History degree??) think like historians? Isn’t it important to remember some key dates, figures, battles and events? Begin such training to think this way that early in the college career? Wouldn’t it be better to cram the information down them like ducks being force-fed in a foie gras factory just like me and what I had to go through? It's not fair! I had to suffer, so should they. But heck, what do I know.

If recursive reading is a sign that the student is actually “learning,” then the professor is right to head in the direction of the digital classroom at flank speed. Just think, students today will never know the joy of making flash cards with dates or the names of key figures, battles, and events on the front with descriptive narratives on the reverse, staying up way past midnight with fellow students, “flashing” each other until your brain no longer functioned effectively and you barely made it to the final exam that next morning. Are we witnessing the passing of the old guard or are students in my age-ballpark going the way of the Dodo?

Did anyone else like Professor Kelly’s quote from Samuel S. Wineburg that historical thinking is a “fundamentally ‘unnatural act [that] actually goes against the grain of how we ordinarily think.’” Never thought of it this way, odd, isn’t it? I always assumed that we, as historians, thought along the lines of lawyers, scientists, doctors, etc. in developing hypotheses, logical thinking, objective evaluation of sources, etc. But perhaps I have been off-base here. If the “unnatural” argument is true, then this new way of teaching, really introducing, I guess, the subject of the study of history, through a greater use of technology, is the only way to go. How better to achieve all of the competencies that Professor Kelly notes as a measure of how effective teaching is for the study of history? After all, as Pace noted in paragraph 12 of his essay, each discipline is unique and that “all academic learning is discipline specific” and there are no “generic strategies” to improve teaching across the board; we as historians are free to pursue our own strategies to teach students in a better manner. If Professor Kelly’s semi-scientific test results are any indication, then he is on the track to get young scholars to “learn” better.

Although in his concluding paragraphs he notes that once a professor uses the web in his class, students really begin to understand the use of primary sources and also it encourages “original thinking.” Doesn’t this ultimately lead us down the road of making the academically-trained “historian” obsolete? If you’re basing your lectures on having students really peruse original sources, why have the “filter” of having a historian’s narrative get in the way? That was what was so interesting about the “Who Killed William Robinson” website. I couldn’t access the interpretive essays so I had to form my own opinions based on the original documents. Whether or not it was a better learning tool than say a lecture on 19th century race relations in Canada or not is something I’m not sure I am qualified to answer. The whole map exercises too were interesting and in a sense got me to think in an “unnatural” way. I did enjoy listening to the explanations given by GMU historians, including Professor Kelly, on interpretive techniques for various forms of documentation in the “Women in World History” website. Discussing our actual craft, how these different sources are important to achieving and overall understanding of a period in the past was interesting! But then again I’m a graduate student in the field and not a freshman who plans to study aeronautical engineering and find myself having to take a mandatory history class. Will the web change teaching such courses for the better? Yes, I think so but I won’t have to worry about it. Good luck to those who plan on teaching, it is a noble profession and attempting to do it in a better, more comprehensive manner is a worthy goal. I just wish that such thinking was in place in the late-1970s so that I might have benefited when I started college. Although I do miss those flash cards. . .

Posted by sprice7 at 04:24 PM

Digital Classroom-Amy

Some factors that I think are important to consider when evaluating the digital classroom...

It seems that when we speak of teaching and learning with digital history, the difference between using the Web as a resource for finding and viewing information and learning to “think like an historian” is often muddied. The web is clearly transforming the access to various kinds of information. This is not to say that access has been totally democratized, but that there is a wider range of materials available to an increasing diverse set of learners and educators (in terms of geography, learning style, etc.) I think that Web at this point opens up a world of information for students looking for resources and other interpretations.

My trouble is the suggestion that History on the Internet allows students to more easily assimilate complex thought processes of an historian (or any discipline). The Internet provides easier access to more resources which, if studied, could in turn lead to the development of thought patterns. In this way, the Internet is a facilitator in that process but not necessarily the cause. Some tools that try to teach the thinking process of history are simple and do not display the subtleties that often characterize historical research. Obviously these Internet resources are meant as an introduction to novice scholars, but if this type of exercise becomes the favored version, we run risks of distorting the process of historical scholarship.

Students will come to expect historical problems to be framed in an either/or, multiple choice, etc. format with answers that proceed accordingly. This could (and probably does) occur with other types of learning, but this is something educators should keep in mind when evaluating Net resources. While they may be different and/or better than a linear narrative with names and dates to memorize, they can pose similar problems.

Not to be overly negative or critical, but before being able to speculate on the values of the digital Net medium for teaching historical thinking, I would like to see more about some of the consequences on learning. Beyond the fact that access to technologies is far from democratic and even if the equipment is available, many expected to be able to teach with those technologies have not been trained in the literal use and the pedagogical issues, much study is yet to be completed. The values of learning historical thinking on the Internet are not without cost (I’m thinking of the video gamer problem solving test for example). These costs may be negligible in comparison to benefits, but currently those using history on the Web are a fairly self-selecting group. We might not see some of the ways learning history digitally detracts from education as these learners probably have some kind of “predisposition” to the types of thinking required to benefit from digital presentations.

So to summarize: Basically I believe we should be cautious of the ways we use any resource. The Net allows new and exciting options acquiring information from archives, but actually learning to “think like an historian,” I’m not so sure. When we look to future, we have to remember that the benefits we ascribe to digital learning will have deep effects—it requires its own learned way of thinking and will probably change the ways we learn and think in any discipline. These are not bad in themselves, but require foresight and awareness.

Posted by alechne1 at 03:54 PM

New Media and Teaching and Learning

This is just a jumble of half-formed thoughts, and mostly they deal with the internet as it affects teaching and learning.

I have to agree with previous posts--that the expectations of digital mediums have often outpaced our understanding of how to utilize these new tools. But I think there are some other angles on this issue that deserve some attention. First, I think the Internet encourages learning in ways that academic classrooms are not structured to honor. Also, I think the kinds of learning rewards offered by the Internet place a greater burden on students' initiative, in the same way that the web skews the balance of power to the user in other circumstances. Plus, I think teachers (and those training to this end) could benefit from thinking about how living the new digital lifestyle can impact students' thinking process.

My first point is that that we keep talking about the power of the internet to provide a "choose-your-own-adventure" learning experience. For young learners, surfing through 1000s of google hits and other portals usually leads to a very broad and often only loosely connected body of information. These sources can be woven together in creative ways that could produce meaningful and worthwhile results, but unfortunately (to me at least), schools seem to obsess about depth, focus, and standard interpretations to predetermined questions (i.e. "right" and "wrong" answers) rather than independence, resourcefulness, creativity, and artfulness. While I would not suggest accepting any random thing a student might write, I do think if we could adjust the value we place on certain academic skills, without sacrificing rigor, the Internet could be a greater asset in the classroom.

Also, this arrangement seems to transfer more of the responsibility in the teaching/learning relationship to the student, who is now expected to individually explore and discover the materials that will be the sources of information. The teacher, then, would ideally spend less time collecting or distributing source material and more time guiding the students in its use. However, in reality, the teacher might spend more time policing the legitimacy of hundreds of random sources their students find. We talked about this, and the Webography Project was offered as a partial solution to this problem. But I wonder if constraining the boundaries of the internet actually limits some of the benefits of the medium (more on this below).

Finally, the more and more ubiquitous the Internet and digital mediums become, the more they are likely to shape not only the methods of teaching and learning, but also foundational thinking processes with which students will approach the task of building historical understanding. The David Pace article gave numerous examples of the disconnect between professional academics and the students they hoped to teach in order to argue that historians should pay more attention to being "scholarly teachers" (paragraph 11). Pace's call for more informed teaching rests on the fact that students approach learning with a variety of thinking patterns that shape how they are able to process, evaluate, and produce information and ideas. With this in mind, I would argue that the greatest impact of digital mediums lies not in how they can be used to teach or learn in different ways, but rather in how they affect the habits people form in their thinking processes.

One classic clio example of this is Prof. Kelly's story about the poor kids who couldn't figure out impossibility of the answerless puzzle because they had been playing peasant quest too much. But kids' exposure to digital forms has expanded vastly since the days of the apple IIe, and it would be interesting to see the same test offered again for kids who spent significant time on the Internet, IM, and massive online gaming communities. Would the new phenomena of perpetual distraction (Ken's term from earlier in the semester? or constant partial attention maybe?), habitual skimming, ambiguous online identities, continual surfing of links, and the formation of non-geographically-dependent relationships improve children's ability to form mental connections, ask new questions, and become more critical of motives and meaning? Or will students simply become masters of compartmentalizing their world and expect to have ready answers handed to them at only a few key strokes? The reality will probably fall somewhere in between these extremes, so finding and responding to this will be the job of the successful digital teacher of the future.

I know this is quickly becoming a dissertation that is too long for any normal human to read, but I just thought of this--if digital mediums do change the way people think and economics still make a huge difference to kids' access to these resources, will there be more of a difference between how affluent kids learn compared to their disadvantaged counterparts?

Posted by miles at 01:21 PM

Challenges of Digital Teaching/Potentials of Digital Learning-Debbie

This was my week to teach our collections management system and it was hard for me to be inspired to write about the digital classroom after dealing with all day and all week long with overly enthusiastic interns, technology challenged curators, and a frustratingly unstable network. Granted, my experience for many years has been in a very narrow segment of public history and material culture, as a parent, and occasionally as a student, so my perspective is probably different from academic historians and traditional history teachers.

I feel there are some very real benefits to a digital classroom as long as we can survive the technology is working properly. At its best though there is know denying that digital mediums provide greater accessibility of research and sources, which probably results in a greater efficiency in problem solving by reducing what Pace referred to (Paragraph 46) as reinventing pedagogical wheels. Digital assets are constantly expanding, and many of these are very worthwhile. As we discussed in class, the electronic stage provides greater opportunity for collaborative learning; when you combine the individual’s pride with their own contributions with the accountability/embarrassment factor the results of these team efforts is often more creative and of a higher quality than if individuals work on their own.

Through our World History Matters map assignments, most of experienced first hand the type of enthusiasm and excitement that result from on-line educational games, and the value of student engagement is certainly favors the continued use of technology. By making historical documents and syllabi available electronically, there can be greater accessibility for disabled, handicapped, the organizationally challenged, or for anyone for that matter who has a computer. I also firmly believe that people have different learning styles and that needs to be addressed within the digital classroom but often for expediency or due to lack of resources it is not considered.

But just as there are benefits in learning digitally, there are also negatives. As Professor Kelly pointed out in his article, students often have difficulty judging the quality of websites. It is easy to post misinformation and mediocre history. In a fast paced world, where information is expected to be instantaneous, answers are also expected to be immediate, and errors are bound to occur. I think the digital environment can be so focussed on products that there is little time to be inspired or to sit and ponder a problem or thesis. Also, students rely so heavily on the electronic medium that they often neglect the more traditional library sources as I can attest through my experiences as a National History Day judge. Students often neglect actual primary sources and historical evidence found in material culture because the computer makes it easy to use a 2 dimensional representation (images) in place of artifacts. While many teachers now make homework assignments and syllabi electronically, they often have limited skills to take advantage of teaching with technology. While collaborative efforts may work quite well in some situations (We live for mentoring), I have also seen historians withholding research results for the very reason that technology can make them instant celebrities in their field and they are not comfortable enough with their results to be held accountable to the international community of the Internet.

I agree with David Pace that digital teaching and learning can be both more interesting and effective and less so than more traditional methods. The general use of the Internet is still relatively new and still full of unrealized potentials and challenging in its use. I don’t believe anyone who has used either pen and paper or manual typewriter and then gone on to use a word processor can deny the advantages that technology brings to the technical production of historical information and documentation. But that same technology is a double edged sword, a mixed blessing that amounts to two steps forward and one step back. We live in a world where we are rapidly loosing our linguistic heritage and our children use instant messenger punctuation, rely on spell and grammar check, and in increasingly more cases can type 90 words a minute but barely are able to write. This while many of our seniors struggle to use E-Mail to communicate but mainly use their computers -if they have any- for Internet shopping, and not for intellectual stimulation. If Weinburg is correct in his premise that historians think differntly than the rest of the general population, than perhaps future historians will have a bright digital future. I tend to think though that it will take a lot of hard work by current members of the profession to get to that there. As the number of digitally available sources continues to grow exponentially, and accessibility and comfort level in technology usage becomes less of an issue, the main challenge in teaching will continue to be how to help students work with and analyze these readily available sources, and how to apply the knowledge in a meaningful way. I think it is useful to remember that the early computer mantra "Garbage in -garbage out" can apply both to budding historians and the digital resources they rely on. I often remind my students that the technology is only a tool; it's what you do with it that counts, particularly in terms of the quality and usefulness of the information. Electronic media can be a help or a detriment because even with intelligent data mining techniques there is still the human factor of input and at some point judgment and analysis in both using and producing quality digital assets.

Posted by dschaef1 at 12:27 AM

November 15, 2005

Digital Media and the Teaching and Learning of History -Kurt

Digital media has changed the way students learn in general and specifically in history but not in ways one might expect. The hype that surrounds the internet and the promise of rapid dramatic change has not occurred in the way Internet Visionaries had once proclaimed. Despite this, however, things have in fact changed at all grade levels.

At the time I finished graduate school in 1990 students (a handful) waited in the basement of the university library waiting their turn to get time on one of the two IBM PCs. Large floppies in hand we were thrilled to have the opportunity to edit our work, refine it, clear out the mistakes and then let the dot matrix printer sing. It spit out the results of our hours sifting through both the card catalog and the newly computerized version. One had to do both because the computer version only contained half of the library's records. I practically lived in the stacks of Joyner Library but also shared my time physically at many other research facilities in Virginia, DC, and New York. Fifteen years later may seem like an eternity in computer years but it’s only 6 years older than my current vehicle and only one year older than my son whom I still consider a fairly new addition to my life. And yet we speak of those days as if they belonged in an ancient history course.

In that time the arrival, and beginning development, of new media has changed both teaching and learning. The changes however may seem to some slow and imperceptible. My children, ages ten and fourteen, have grown up and begun their school careers in this period. To them the internet and computers are old hat. The ten year old (fifth grade) participates in a computer lab every six days. Those lessons have involved search methods on Google for text and images, visits to historical websites such as Colonial Williamsburg, and research on everyday life in distant cities on far away continents. The closest I came to that at that age was a trip to a woefully under stocked library at the Catholic school I attended where I flipped through the pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica for a few paragraphs and a couple of photos. Today the student not only finds more abundant information but has to make decisions as to which items to collect. Teachers work with the students to guide them in evaluating which items are most appropriate for the task at hand. Fresh from that revelation I discovered that my fourteen year old and his cohorts were beyond that data collection stage and were focusing on how to synthesize it into presentations not on flat paper but through programs such as Power Point (admittedly this may not be a good thing). Certainly exposure to the vast array of data available has changed both teaching and learning. Teaching because of the increased responsibilities for teachers to add the latest modes information retrieval to their already full curriculum and learning because these young minds are exposed to the reality of an interconnected world that didn’t exist when I was young. Faced with such a different scenario where one can see they are not living in isolation, where choices are available, and even being informed, subtly perhaps, that there are dangers out there that teachers and parents must shield them from, there must be a difference in how their minds view the world and all the new challenges that come with it. Their first reactions to not knowing something isn’t to consider a trip to the library or to just move on and forget it, no their reaction is to go see for themselves (with mom and dad’s ok) on the internet. That awareness that most answers are within reach and much less mystical is certainly a result of a different type of learning. But to these younger students this is not a change as they are growing with the Internet and increased exposure to new media. That it should grow along with them seems natural and not a change at all.

For college history students such as myself who have been away for several years the changes seem dramatic but again not in obvious ways. I work in the Internet industry and so have been aware of the presence of new media, multi-sensory experiences, and the latest immersive technology. But what has been dramatic to me is the way that technology has been put to use in the field of history. Up until now I’ve had little exposure to massive amounts of archival material that has been put online. I can’t help but wonder how my MA thesis might be different were I doing that same research now. No doubt my bibliography would be twice as long and my arguments twice as informed. Sources inconvenient or unavailable back in the early 1990’s might have led me in new directions. Teaching and research aids and exercises found on the Center for History and New Media might have better prepared me as a researcher. Like my children I needed some instruction and guidance in evaluating the sources and websites now so readily available. By having to step back and say, “exactly why should I trust this source?” it has reinforced critical evaluation skills that perhaps are not as challenged when one picks up a book in the library. I don’t think we are quite as wary as we should be (of course in reality we should be, lots of garbage makes it into print).

I have seen my goal to be a university professor change dramatically since beginning this program. I was excited by the potential to teach archaeological research methods to historians should I be so fortunate to obtain a post. And while I still maintain that goal I am just as excited by the potential for using new media in the class room or perhaps more accurately in the dorm room. The increase in writing associated with blogs such as this one along with the chance to help students make sense of this behemoth known as the Internet is an exciting challenge. Just as younger students have learned that the world is far more available than they realized older students will discover there classmates are far more important to their own learning via collaborative study and discussion that is facilitated through publicly posted writing assignments. Articles such as For Better or Worse? The Marriage of Web and the History Classroom will no doubt continue to teach us what works best and how. Other articles such as Internet Teaching and the Administration of Knowledge by Tara Brabazon inform us of the dangers that teachers face through more interactive class rooms. Dramatic increases in time required to respond to student email and to create and manage class web sites places further strain on instructors. Dangers too lie in the poor use of new media and reliance upon it to replace face to face time and effective teaching skills.

In the end then we can see that like any change in technology there are over inflated expectations and grandiose claims that fall far short of reality. When the dust settles and natural selection has eliminated these failures what we hopefully will find are those techniques that have worked. Over time we will remember those when the others are long forgotten.

Posted by kknoerl at 09:07 PM

Digital Classroom - Ammon

I think digital media is still in the infant stages of teaching usage, and as such is caught in a middle point as to what it has done and what it can do. To be uncharacteristically short for a historian, I think digital media has added no real new dimension to teaching and learning. On the other hand, I don't feel that the full potential for digital media has been reached. I shall explain (in true, long-winded historian fashion in the 'Extended Entry').

First off, I think the affect of digital media will have a similar impact on the field of history as with other fields. For the purpose of this post, I had K-12 teaching and learning in mind.

I don't think digital media has added anything new to teaching and learning. It seems to me that anything that can be done with media of the digital persuasion, can and has been done with conventional forms of media (pictures, movies, slides, film strips – a personal favorite, et.). In effect, it is my belief that digital media, as we know it today (and bits of yesterday, too), is basically another teaching and learning tool, not unlike what we already have. Examples: A student goes to a web page (the principle form of digital media) to learn more about subject X. The student is presented with words, pictures, and if the budget was big enough, interactive games and movies. These things were already available. Said student could open a text book and find words and pictures. The teacher could provide a movie or film strip (my personal favorite). The student could interact with fellow students (wo, can they do that nowadays?) and play a game. All with relatively the same level of teaching and learning quality. I admit that there are some blatant generalities in my analysis, but this is pretty much off the top of my head, and not a detailed research here. I've thought about it, but nay the less, off the top of my head.

While digital media may not provide much new, I do believe that it has the extreme potential to benefit in ways other media cannot. As in all things, it must be used in moderation and with wisdom. The surveys and research being done about the use of technology in teaching and learning is the necessary step in determining how best to apply digital media. An example of good use of digital media (in this case a very interactive computer program used at a K-12 school). I worked at this school where I was able to observe the results in the reading skills of students before and after using the computer program for an extended period of time. The program was set up for students who had problems reading at their grade level. They would be taken out of class for 10-20 minutes each day to 'play' this game on the computer. With nary an exception, each student improved their reading because of this digital media. With proper usage, such as vaguely described, digital media can have a great impact on learning and teaching.

Anyhow, in a historian nutshell, that's how I think digital media has and will have an affect on teaching and learning history.

The End.

[The above was written as such with total awareness and apprehension that someone, somewhere, would actually read it.]

Posted by ashephe1 at 05:11 PM | Comments (2)

Teaching the Millenials

There were several things that we talked about in class and that was covered in our readings that indicated that this “new medium” has been instrumental in changing the teaching and learning of history.

As Meagan said in her post and you mentioned in your article, the accessibility issue has greatly influenced the learning and teaching of history. Sources that would have been expensive to provide are now available and that availability is one click away. This is so crucial. Not because this new generation of scholars are lazy (though, that is debatable) but because they are different and their expectations are different. They, the Millennials* (as some call this generation), grew up with the internet, grew up with instant access whether it be via email, text messaging or hyperlinked pages. They are not only used to multitasking, the key word for them is simultaneity (text messaging several friends while surfing the web). The accessibility afforded by the digital medium allows for us as teachers to use that already developed skill to aid in the learning of history.

Another point that echoed throughout our discussion is that technology is not the end; but a means to the end. This holds true not just for PowerPoint but for other mediums as well. There are great and maybe untold possibilities for teaching and learning of history through this medium. I’m convinced of it. I saw it as a high school history teacher. I had students that were more engaged, that had more thoughtful questions that were better able to provide historical context for their musings, and that initiated independent queries not because I and others on my teaching team simply sent them to the internet but because we used the digital media in a thoughtful way. I am excited about what can happen if more collaborative learning is introduced and more legitimately useful ways of digital media is used.

*Further reading on the Millenial Genertation:


Posted by nmartina at 06:18 AM

November 14, 2005

You've Come A Long Way Baby...

...but you've still got a ways to go...

Imo, the current focus of the majority of digital history is on accessibility and interactivity--making the information available to the public and making it fun to look at and learn about.

For example, the "purpose" of the Valley of the Shadow Project is to act as "as a research library in a box, enabling students at places without a large archive to do the same kind of research as a professional historian."

My own experience with new media up until this point was at UVa in the American Studies Master's program where we constructed and maintained Xroads, a repository for student work and "tools" for studying American Culture. Frankly, I just thought working with new media was neat; I never really had any underlying motivation in mind to start. I wasn't even aware that we had an m.o., but checking out the website now, we apparently did:

We agreed early on that the site's primary objective was to be useful to students of American culture; each of the sub-pages in AS@UVA is designed as a service, a utility, something to do work. In effect, the whole thing seemed more real in the sense that they weren't just accumulating course credits that would eventually be exchanged for a diploma -- they were building something tangible, something useful. And they would leave with the usual transcripts and diplomas but also with a portfolio of their work, examples of what they knew and could do.

Interestingly, Alan Howard, my advisor at UVa, also presented a paper entitled "New Paradigms for Teaching and Learning: Four Case Studies" International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities at the University of the Aegean in Rhodes, Greece in 2003. In it, he looks at Four sites at UVa (Uncle Tom's Cabin, Xroads [of course], Salem Witch Trials, and The Valley of the Shadow) as "transformative" educational tools:

In my judgment, we are now at something like the cast-iron storefront stage in our educational use of the new technologies. We understand them primarily as the means to teach with greater efficiency and flexibility at lower per-unit costs... But the highest and best use of the technologies can't be simply to provide a more cost-efficient way to massify the retailing information, some sort of high-tech successor to the correspondence school. I think they should be understood, instead, as a new kind of lens that allows us to create different kinds of knowledge, more complex and credible models for describing the way the world works and that will be arrived at by different means.

I agree with Alan that the technology can be used to do so much more, but I really don't think that any of the sites he mentions are really there yet. They present us with the information, maybe give us a different way to look at it, maaaaybe a different way to think about it, but not yet a different way to learn.

I think CHNM is really blazing the trails in terms of changing the way we teach and learn with new media. Not only do they "incorporate multiple voices, reach diverse audiences, and encourage popular participation in presenting and preserving the past," but with projects like the "Matters" Projects (History, World History, Historical Thinking) and Women in World History, etc., they are actually showing the reader a new way to think and learn--mapping out a path, explaining how to use the sources that they are making accessible, why they are important and what it all means.

This is where I think digital scholarship should be taking us...

...and I'm spent. Bed. now.

Posted by mhess3 at 10:37 PM

Example of currernt Teacher survey in museum exhibit development

Hi Class
This is an example of the kind of teacher survey we now send out when we are developing exhibits, this one for On the Water. Note that a lot of the educational materials are or have the potential to be web based. Not only does it provide quicker and easier access, but there is a big cost benefit to not using snail mail. PLEASE DO NOT FILL THIS OUT as it is live and will be tabulatated but I thought it was timely for tonight's discussion.
Debbie

Posted by dschaef1 at 09:34 AM | Comments (2)