Week Six
The article is a bit dated in regards to not applying the use of podcasts and video conferencing in the classroom, but that's to be expected as research moves rather slowly and technology and the private sector continues to boom with the integration of Youtube, phone applications and interactive add-ons constructed for standard programs like PowerPoint. The general argument of the article is essential to understanding its lack of effective utilization in schools of technology and its use mostly as an accessory item rather than an integrative and essential element of lesson planning and test assessment in which the materials taught via technology are just as likely to be tested as the traditional lessons. That being said, I think it's time to take a look at how recent technology has eclipsed the original preface of the writer that in many respects it is being priced out for use in most school districts. There has been a dramatic democratization of media materials since the explosion of Youtube beyond just silly clips in the late 2000's to a vlog, archive and entertainment mecca in which almost every subject is now available, at least until a copyright claim is made and the material is taken down, to be put up again and the same pattern to follow.
Youtube has especially opened the realm of possibility for teaching history because many historic moments (primary sources, especially when the narration is cut off and the historical moments are left to speak for themselves) from the 1920's onwards have been captured through first hand media coverage via radio and television. This allows for remarkable interactive learning exercise in which students can see things like the Civil Rights violence in Alabama or the 1968 demonstrations in Europe and have a general idea what they are about without those moments having been filtered through a modern political lens or scripted narrative.
Phone applications have given students a new way to travel and learn history, architecture and city planning on the go without carrying bulky specialty books on architecture by integrating historical explanations and interactive histories using various multimodal means that allow the app user to choose their own adventure in real life.
The alternative sources argument made by the author is an excellent way to introduce the value of using multimedia in the classroom and integrating actual video with secondary and primary texts is a great way to narrow the dialogue regarding issues like racism, where the alt-right has recently crafted a new narrative which denies the extent of the Holocaust and the Civil Rights movement, by showing the actual events of violence as they happened (Freedom Riders, Ole Miss, Little Rock, the Sit-ins, etc) and not allow pseudo intellectual revisionist history to make inroads on legitimate classroom narratives of what actually happened. As someone who had a conservative teacher in 5th grade who used his science class to get us to be comfortable with guns and eventually have us all pass a firearms exam culminating in a field trip in which we shot the guns at a class field trip at the shooting range, it's hard not to look back at my schooling and not acknowledge that teachers are sometimes going to try and shape history to fit their lens and encourage students to think similarly on both the left and the right spectrum.
What makes technology such a remarkable too for teaching history is that one can sometimes eliminate the middle-man agent by giving students the primary material in video and audio and thus weaponizing them for opportunities for critical thinking, especially if one was to integrate news reports from Fox News, Breitbart, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, etc. and allow kids to see the sometimes extreme element of deliberate bias and opinion shaping that envelops are political culture and realize that history is in itself a political tool when constantly being re-envisioned by political opportunists to give historic credibility to certain political arguments (for example, Trump's claim that the US trade imbalance is due to incompetence of government officials and non-elected bureaucrats in Washington).
I've already covered much of the Wineburg insights, but I think the concept of historical thinking utilizing technology has the potential to be a remarkably interactive and liberating experience for students if done right by the teacher. It requires excellent transitions in which technology is integrated directly into the texts, for example, when a teacher does an effective job of narrating a subject and problem and then transitions into the children being able to see the problem first via multimedia, without being biased by indicators a teacher might give off about where they might stand on the issue.
Youtube has especially opened the realm of possibility for teaching history because many historic moments (primary sources, especially when the narration is cut off and the historical moments are left to speak for themselves) from the 1920's onwards have been captured through first hand media coverage via radio and television. This allows for remarkable interactive learning exercise in which students can see things like the Civil Rights violence in Alabama or the 1968 demonstrations in Europe and have a general idea what they are about without those moments having been filtered through a modern political lens or scripted narrative.
Phone applications have given students a new way to travel and learn history, architecture and city planning on the go without carrying bulky specialty books on architecture by integrating historical explanations and interactive histories using various multimodal means that allow the app user to choose their own adventure in real life.
The alternative sources argument made by the author is an excellent way to introduce the value of using multimedia in the classroom and integrating actual video with secondary and primary texts is a great way to narrow the dialogue regarding issues like racism, where the alt-right has recently crafted a new narrative which denies the extent of the Holocaust and the Civil Rights movement, by showing the actual events of violence as they happened (Freedom Riders, Ole Miss, Little Rock, the Sit-ins, etc) and not allow pseudo intellectual revisionist history to make inroads on legitimate classroom narratives of what actually happened. As someone who had a conservative teacher in 5th grade who used his science class to get us to be comfortable with guns and eventually have us all pass a firearms exam culminating in a field trip in which we shot the guns at a class field trip at the shooting range, it's hard not to look back at my schooling and not acknowledge that teachers are sometimes going to try and shape history to fit their lens and encourage students to think similarly on both the left and the right spectrum.
What makes technology such a remarkable too for teaching history is that one can sometimes eliminate the middle-man agent by giving students the primary material in video and audio and thus weaponizing them for opportunities for critical thinking, especially if one was to integrate news reports from Fox News, Breitbart, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, etc. and allow kids to see the sometimes extreme element of deliberate bias and opinion shaping that envelops are political culture and realize that history is in itself a political tool when constantly being re-envisioned by political opportunists to give historic credibility to certain political arguments (for example, Trump's claim that the US trade imbalance is due to incompetence of government officials and non-elected bureaucrats in Washington).
I've already covered much of the Wineburg insights, but I think the concept of historical thinking utilizing technology has the potential to be a remarkably interactive and liberating experience for students if done right by the teacher. It requires excellent transitions in which technology is integrated directly into the texts, for example, when a teacher does an effective job of narrating a subject and problem and then transitions into the children being able to see the problem first via multimedia, without being biased by indicators a teacher might give off about where they might stand on the issue.
Comments
Post a Comment