Information Technology in the Teaching of History

International Perspectives

Allan Martin, Lez Smart, David Yeomans

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134397693
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Information technology offers powerful tools to facilitate and to assist learning across the whole curriculum; the computer is certainly the most significant development in educational technology in the twentieth century. History may be thought of as a staid and perhaps tradition-bound subject, more resistant to change than some areas. Yet in history too, information technology is making an impact. This volume shows how information technology is currently contributing to, and bringing about changes in the way history is taught and learned. The international selection of the contributions shows that these phenomena are not restricted to just one country. The impact of information technology on history curricula is explored in depth in one section of the book, whilst other sections focus on classroom activities and issues, on the development of software for history, and on the relevance of current information technology developments. But the question which lies at the heart of it all remains that of how information technology can enhance the teacher's ability to offer situations in which learners can form and develop a real understanding of the nature of historical processes, and the ways in which they can be studied.

Part I
The History Curriculum and IT

The first part of this volume focuses upon the impact of IT upon the history curriculum. It opens with a powerful statement of the possible from Jim Schick. Schick begins by speculating on the characteristics of the IT-using history course in higher education. He then goes on to outline the whole range of resources which just one facility — the compact disk — will enable the history student to have at his/her disposal for the study of just one course. The example serves to emphasise that IT is more than "yet another gadget" being pressed upon the teacher and the student. The power of the medium is able to astonish again and again. Schick also reminds us — what we should never forget — that the study of history is absorbing, fascinating and enjoyable, and that a big part of the reason we are involved with history is that we like it. If using IT can make it more absorbing, more fascinating and more enjoyable, so much the better.

In chapters 2 to 6 the curricular significance of IT in five different countries is considered. The UK was probably the first country to address the role of IT in schools, and Alaric Dickinson considers the fate of IT in history teaching in England and Wales in the period 1985-90. He provides evidence of the substantial increase in hardware; yet there is no evidence of a corresponding incerease in the use of computers in history classrooms or in teachers' confidence in their use of IT. Terry Haydn (1996) has shown recently that even those statistics seeming to show a high level of usage can be very misleading. It seems that in order to convince many more teachers that IT can make a substantial contribution to the teaching and learning of history there needs to be much more provided than just initial awareness training for teachers, and much more rigorous and public evaluation of the value of IT in history classrooms. The approach adopted in Luxembourg, outlined by Jean-Paul Lehners, is more tentative than that in the UK, and is focused on particular pieces of software which it was felt would be of particular use in the history classroom, and would help to persuade both teachers and students of the value of IT. Once again, the need to bring both teachers and pupils along with innovative practice is emphasised.

The necessity of working with and through the average teacher in the classroom (as opposed to the computer enthusiast) is directly addressed by Conceigao Canavilhas in her exposition of the way in which IT usage within the curriculum can be nurtured and developed. Mass programmes of innovation are notoriously unsuccessful: short-term and superficial adoptions peter out as soon as the boosting support is removed. This chapter demonstrates the success of the alternative strategy: working on a long-term basis alongside teachers until they are confident in their own right. It may take longer, but it has the advantage of working. Canavilhas also brings out the strategies available in software choice. Whilst other programmes chose to develop or adopt history-specific software, the approach taken in her work was to make use of generic software tools, which could be turned to good account across the whole curriculum. This is not to suggest that this is a more successful approach; only that both approaches have viability and can be used to achieve history teachers' goals.

The chapters by Daniel Letouzey and by Sten Larsen and Lars Bluhme discussing computing in history in French and Danish schools respectively serve to indicate that whilst each country has its own approach, the elements and the choices involved in each approach are common. Letouzey notes the skewing of policy through political strategies, the notion that teachers will have the time and knowledge to write educationally successful computer programs, the desire to boost domestic computer products, the variability in quality of software, the constant over-expectation. Often the same mistakes are made, the same lessons learned. In identifying data handling and simulation as elements for particular emphasis, Larsen and Bluhme are consistent with colleagues internationally in considering first the facility which most historians and history teachers see as the most useful IT technique to be applied in history teaching, and then that which they would consider the most contentious.

Wayne Birks and David Yeomans focus upon characteristics of the school itself, and show how important is the organisational and resource context in enabling the adoption of innovation. Birks considers how the computer-using history teacher can be made much more effective in the context of an IT-using culture within the school. This culture is rooted within an organisational strategy which incorporates a clear impression both of how IT will be developed and supported across the whole curriculum, and of the contribution which each subject area, including history, can make to this. In face of an organisational culture which is negative, or even merely indifferent, to the role of IT in learning, the lone enthusiast, whether in history or any other department will achieve only very limited success. Yeomans opens up in detail the institutional contexts within which history teachers are being encouraged to adopt IT into their classroom practice. Resourcing and support are factors of crucial significance in allowing IT to be diffused across the curriculum, and without adequate resourcing and specialist support, the actions and achievements of individual departments are restricted in effectiveness. In the conclusion that the advances gained have been disappointing compared with the predictions made, there are echoes of Alaric Dickinson's chapter in this volume. Evidence from various sources suggests that there is still a good way to go before the IT-using culture is a common feature of the school.

The theme of culture is taken in a different direction by Jane Jenkins. Developing IT usage within history involves constructing an understanding on the part of teachers and pupils of the role of IT applications within a culture of history that set of assumptions and aspirations, questions and issues, and mode of discourse, which are uniquely associated with the study of history. By the time they have reached the upper part of the secondary school, pupils have begun to enter the world of the discourse of historical inquiry. A goal of the HiDES work has been to permit worthwhile interaction with the computer to be carried out in the language and on the terms of serious historical discourse. To such aspirations, the proper response must be cautious but open-ended: it is not difficult to write computer programs which can engage in a superficially believable conversation. The computer can in no sense "be" a real teacher of history; but it can be programmed to draw the student through the process of historical inquiry, and oblige him/her to make use of the language of historical discourse. The inquiry and the language can be reinforced, made more meaningful and taken forward in face to face interaction with a teacher in the classroom. Whilst the computer may be a powerful facilitator, we return again to the crucial role of the teacher.

Chapter 1
The Future of the Survey Course in American History

James Schick

Introduction

As one who has spent many hours worshipping history in the British Library and the British Museum, I always welcome the opportunity to mingle with the tourists gawking at the Rosetta Stone or Egyptian depictions of the Afterlife or to sit under that magnificent dome reading an 18th-century tract dealing with the American Revolution. For a teacher of history, even a teacher of United States' history, there is much from which to profit, for much of what we do as teachers is teasing evidence from unlikely sources or trying to understand some new thing from looking at some old thing.

The Assyrian reliefs are one of my special places in that magnificent collection. They are inviting of themselves, of course, but as I looked at these objects with my son — then 12, now 24 — we tried to find as many insights about the people who made these monuments as we could. We could see a state and a faith triumphant, how to bring humans and animals and mythical beings to life in such subtle ways, how to conduct siege warfare and what was new in military technology, how to confirm Biblical history and see events as they might have happened, how an artist conveyed an interpretation of the past through size and detail, what victory and defeat meant in cold stone (sometimes shown by a subsequent ruler who had the face of a rival chipped away to make him a non-person), what the absence of women in these reliefs might tell us about the society, what hubris means, how governments use public art for self-inflation and propaganda, how the persistence of memory and the very human attempt to shape the future's understanding of the past can be seen from the distance of time and cultural change, and how governments today pursue similar goals. All these are to be found there. These reliefs demand — invoke — a teacher.

In fact, they stand in relation to us in the same way history stands in relation to the student: while scholarship can tell us something about the lives of the people who carved and looked upon these reliefs, there are many questions we can ask and there is more we can find on our own if we but look. Much of what I am about in teaching revolves around helping others find out for themselves. Being a midwife, if you will, to knowledge, rather than its father. Someone with experience to serve as guide, interlocutor, mentor, Boswell, Socratic gadfly, Diogenes, collaborator, conscience, and best friend who will listen to one's silly notions and sound ideas and say what needs to be said even if it might hurt. Midwife seems about right as a metaphor to sum up all of these guises the teacher must assume. Someone who will never forget that the important person here is the student and the reason everyone is here gathered is to attend the student's birth of knowledge.

My remarks concern the survey course in American history the basic undergraduate course taken by history majors and non-majors in the United States, most often together and with a significant majority of the latter in most colleges. My time frame is 2006 or ten years from now. Let me begin by listing my assumptions about trends influential in the next decade.

Part I

First, that some form of the compact disk (CD-ROM, CD-I, etc.) will be the preferred medium for publication, and such works will contain text, still and motion images, and sound, when appropriate. Present disks hold about 275,000 pages of text, so space will be available for complete citations, perhaps whole books or chapters, articles, and other relevant data. 'Editions' of articles and books will change frequently to update research, respond to critics, or add new topics; instead of 'second edition', it will be 'edition 2.0924.04' to designate the month, day, and year of the change. It will become common, after the fashion of Who Built America?, to publish both a printed edition and an expanded CD version.

Second, that the teacher's role will shift away from an emphasis on lecture. Rather than serving as the fact provider, I think college history teachers will work with students to find facts, analyze facts, and relate facts across a spectrum of time and place. Teachers will come to rely on computer-based tutors to build basic competency and on videotape and computerized tutorials to tell the story of the past. These computer assistants may well be created by the teacher by means of authoring programs that rely on the principles of cognitive theory. Videotape histories will be available in hour-long surveys and shorter, more focused modules. (I assume that teachers will continue to do that which they do best. If the professor in question delivers powerful lectures, then it would be criminal not to do so. If the professor, instead, orchestrates discussions in the manner of a symphony conductor, then by all means I would want this teacher to emphasize that talent. I am thinking here of the rest of us who may do many things well, but not spectacularly so.) Class time will primarily involve multi-media mini-lectures (10-20 minutes), videotapes, discussion, Socratic dialogue, computer simulations, student presentations, and other mind-stretching activities. The search for meaning will be a key part of what we do.

Third, that teachers will emphasize skills transference at all levels. Building on the success of 'writing across the curriculum' and similar activities, teachers will be asked to sharpen students' skills in thinking, communicating, and information processing. Bringing all the cognitive skills into play will become more important in education and relatively less effort will be devoted to short-term memory. Teachers will also attempt to address alternative ways of learning. If the purpose of college is to become educated, these skills are a key component of that enterprise. Of course familiarity with a broad range of fields and their insights is an important aspect of education, history certainly near or at the top. But because historians have remained relatively free of jargon and emphasize nuanced prose and careful thinking, we have a major responsibility to undertake in the survey course, and I believe computers can play an important part in meeting this challenge effectively.

Fourth, that 'focus groups' will become common in teaching history. Based on the ability to tailor readings for individual needs, I think teaching survey courses may evolve into a multi-track smorgasbord. For instance, while all students would be responsible for the basic information, such as that found in today's textbooks, they would also choose one or more topics for special emphasis. Those which come to mind are gender studies (both male and female), Africans in America, the Hispanic heritage, the core of English institutions and culture, Europe in America and America in Europe, the Asian connection, popular culture, the arts curriculum (literature, music, theater, art), science and technology, historiography, and research methods. These tracks may be dictated by the student's major or simply by interest. In this way we will be able to serve students more effectively and provide enrichment for all of them, and will make the survey course more stimulating and rewarding for the student and the professor as well.

Fifth, that most schools will divide this course into thirds from the present two parts. I think the breaks should occur at about 1789/1815/1828 and 1898/1914, so we have a 16-18th century course, a 19th-century course, and a 20th-century course. This will mean the teacher can dig more deeply into the past being covered, demonstrate firsthand what it means to be a historian, and expect students to try their hands at it as well, all in an undergraduate survey course. Learning history takes time, time for reflection and time for reading more widely. While changing the time frame might simply allow the teacher to add more depth to the entire course and thus more closely resemble an upper-level period course, I would hope, instead, to provide both the sweep of the past and extensive looks at a few interesting topics, what is often called 'post-holing.'

Sixth, that custom-built readers drawing on articles from virtually any journal published in the world, book chapters, and newspapers and newsmagazines, along with images from photo archives, full-color artwork, and sound libraries, will be widely used for ancillary readers and for composing the basic textbook. Increasingly, I think these will be used in electronic form shown on large, high resolution desktop and laptop monitors, not on paper. This will mean the teacher can add and subtract readings at any time during the school term in response to recent discoveries or student interest in a particular subject, or to the focus groups I have mentioned above. It is possible today for an individual to order a music compact disk entirely made up of selections taken from a master list, a disk unlike that created for anyone else. It seems likely the same could be assembled for text documents.

Seventh, that history teachers will borrow the format of in-class student presentations from their colleagues in the Business School. These will be multi-media discourses on topics related to the student's interest area and will feature original research undertaken in conjunction with the class. It may be given wholly on the computer screen or simply feature computer-based segments. Shifting some of the responsibility for teaching to the students themselves will immeasurably aid their education. As teachers know, the most effective way to learn a subject is to have to teach it.

...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Foreword
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction Perspectives on Teaching History with Information Technology
• PART I THE HISTORY CURRICULUM AND IT
• PART II THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING AND LEARNING
• PART III TECHNOLOGIES FOR LEARNING
• Bibliography
• Index