ICT in History Teaching

Some websites which illustrate the differing ways in which the internet can be of use/interest to history teachers and trainees As I suggest in the book, there is a danger that a great deal of time and energy can be spent in collecting and keeping under control a vast number of websites, which you never quite get round to using in any way. It is important to keep a balance between keeping an eye out for useful sites, and spending time actually doing something with them- either just in terms of augmenting your subject knowledge, or incorporating elements in your teaching resources (for example, inserting images), or thinking of the ways in which you might use them in your classroom teaching. The sites above are chosen to try to illustrate the variety of ways in which the internet might contribute to improving teaching and learning in history. Making progress in ICT: If someone asked you….? In addition to the ‘ICT Quotient’ exercise in the book (pages 181-5), there are other ways of thinking about progression in your ability to maximise the potential of ICT for enhancing teaching and learning in history. It can be helpful to think about what you might say if someone (your mentor, your curriculum tutor, an external examiner, an HMI, an interviewer…. ) asked you a question about ICT and history. This can be especially helpful in the spring and summer terms, when you will be going for interviews. For the last several years I have obtained feedback from my students about how often a question about ICT featured at interview; the percentage has always been quite high; last year it was over 90%. Click on the link above to test yourself on possible ICT and History questions. Collections of sources/resources Where someone has done all (or a lot of) the hard work of putting together a collection of sources or resources on a particular topic, in order to set up a good enquiry activity. (A great example of this is Simon Harrison’s collection on Battalion 101, on Neil Thompson’s website Key Stage History, to go live in September 2008). Some other examples of collections which have been put together are given below: a) Soldiers’ quotes from World War One b) Some soldiers’ attitude to war in the C20th c) Using ICT to teach the Cuban Missile Crisis d) Quotations about aspects of the Holocaust Some quotations which relate to various aspects of the Holocaust. These can be for discussion, can be put up on classroom walls, or used to see which questions about the Holocaust they are relevant to (see Chapter 8 of History, ICT and Learning). Using new technology to make a particular point in an effective way

1. How do you get pupils to understand an abstract concept such as inference?

Ask pupils to look at the sequence of images in the ‘Inference’ PowerPoint, and to make an intelligent guess as to what is happening over the sequence of images. After they have watched the sequence of images, ask them for their ideas about what the images show.  Probably, most of them will have some ideas about what has happened between David and Victoria Beckham (as will you). Then ask them how they are sure that they know what has happened. They weren’t there. They couldn’t hear and don’t know what was said. The Beckhams might have been arguing about where to live or where to send the kids to school.  But we have made a guess relying on their facial expressions and the direction of David’s gaze in the pictures. We can’t be certain, but only possessing some of the evidence about the encounter, we have nonetheless made the best guess possible in the light of the evidence available  We have made an inferential judgement, on the lines of ‘it seems likely that’, or ‘the most plausible/likely explanation of the encounter is that…’.  As historians often do not have all the evidence available about a particular historical incident, they have to make judgements based on inference. This exercise might seem ‘corny’ or unscholarly, but sometimes, it can be helpful to try and get across an idea in a way that draws on pupils’ understanding of events in everyday life, with which they are familiar. Inference PowerPoint

2. The difference between cause and correlation

A PowerPoint presentation to try and make the point that correlation and cause are not the same thing, but are sometimes conflated in a way that leads to misunderstanding and misapprehensions about what causes things to happen in history (and life). You need to know the facts about Turing’s life (and death), and to understand why, overall, people with small feet are less good at maths (people’s feet grow as they get older, babies aren’t much good at maths because they haven’t had any maths lessons, but as they get older (and their feet get bigger), they do have more instruction in maths so become better at maths. It does not mean that we can say that adults with big feet are better at maths than adults with small feet. If you wanted, you could try and get them to understand correlation coefficients, or get them to find out this for homework by googling it (it’s not that difficult an idea and I speak as someone who is not good at maths). tsignifcorr PowerPoint Impact Learning A short video introduction to the power of ‘impact resources’ taken from Terry Haydn’s contribution to the e-Help meeting in Toulouse in February 2005. This is followed by examples taken from YouTube of short video clips that can capture the attention of your class. e-Help Seminars The European History e-Learning Project brings together history teachers from around Europe to share experiences and good practice of using ICT in the history classroom. Contributors include most of the leading practitioners from Britain and further afield. School History Seminars Hosted on the Teacher’s Forum of Andrew Field’s SchoolHistory website, the seminars section contains a number of contributions about how ICT can be integrated into history teaching. The forum also has an excellent section dedicated to mutual support on technical ICT issues.