Using New Technologies To Enhance Teaching And Learning In History

Nearly all history teachers are interested in how new technology might be used to improve teaching and learning in history. However, not all history departments have had the time, expertise and guidance which would enable them to fully explore the wide range of ways in which ICT might help them to teach their subject more effectively. This much-needed collection offers practical guidance and examples of the ways in which new technology can enhance pupil engagement in the subject, impact on knowledge retention, get pupils learning outside the history classroom, and help them to work collaboratively using a range of Web 2.0 applications. The chapters, written by experienced practitioners and experts in the field of history education and ICT, explore topics such as: how to design web interactivities for your pupils what can you accomplish with a wiki how to get going in digital video editing what to do with the VLE? making best use of the interactive whiteboard designing effective pupil webquests digital storytelling in history making full use of major history websites using social media. Using New Technologies to Enhance Teaching and Learning in History is essential reading for all trainee, newly qualified and experienced teachers of history. It addresses many of the problems, barriers and dangers which new technology can pose, but it also clearly explains and exemplifies the wide range of ways in which ICT can be used to radically improve the quality of pupils' experience of learning history.

Nearly all history teachers are interested in how new technology might be used to improve teaching and learning in history. However, not all history departments have had the time, expertise and guidance which would enable them to fully explore the wide range of ways in which ICT might help them to teach their subject more effectively. This much-needed collection offers practical guidance and examples of the ways in which new technology can enhance pupil engagement in the subject, impact on knowledge retention, get pupils learning outside the history classroom, and help them to work collaboratively using a range of Web 2.0 applications. The chapters, written by experienced practitioners and experts in the field of history education and ICT, explore topics such as: how to design web interactivities for your pupils what can you accomplish with a wiki how to get going in digital video editing what to do with the VLE? making best use of the interactive whiteboard designing effective pupil webquests digital storytelling in history making full use of major history websites using social media. Using New Technologies to Enhance Teaching and Learning in History is essential reading for all trainee, newly qualified and experienced teachers of history. It addresses many of the problems, barriers and dangers which new technology can pose, but it also clearly explains and exemplifies the wide range of ways in which ICT can be used to radically improve the quality of pupils’ experience of learning history.

First released in the Spring of 1999, How People Learn has been expanded to show how the theories and insights from the original book can translate into actions and practice, now making a real connection between classroom activities and learning behavior. This edition includes far-reaching suggestions for research that could increase the impact that classroom teaching has on actual learning. Like the original edition, this book offers exciting new research about the mind and the brain that provides answers to a number of compelling questions. When do infants begin to learn? How do experts learn and how is this different from non-experts? What can teachers and schools do-with curricula, classroom settings, and teaching methods--to help children learn most effectively? New evidence from many branches of science has significantly added to our understanding of what it means to know, from the neural processes that occur during learning to the influence of culture on what people see and absorb. How People Learn examines these findings and their implications for what we teach, how we teach it, and how we assess what our children learn. The book uses exemplary teaching to illustrate how approaches based on what we now know result in in-depth learning. This new knowledge calls into question concepts and practices firmly entrenched in our current education system. Topics include: How learning actually changes the physical structure of the brain. How existing knowledge affects what people notice and how they learn. What the thought processes of experts tell us about how to teach. The amazing learning potential of infants. The relationship of classroom learning and everyday settings of community and workplace. Learning needs and opportunities for teachers. A realistic look at the role of technology in education.

A collection of scholars and teachers of history unpack how computing technologies are transforming the ways that we learn, communicate, and teach.

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.

How ed tech was born: Twentieth-century teaching machines--from Sidney Pressey's mechanized test-giver to B. F. Skinner's behaviorist bell-ringing box. Contrary to popular belief, ed tech did not begin with videos on the internet. The idea of technology that would allow students to "go at their own pace" did not originate in Silicon Valley. In Teaching Machines, education writer Audrey Watters offers a lively history of predigital educational technology, from Sidney Pressey's mechanized positive-reinforcement provider to B. F. Skinner's behaviorist bell-ringing box. Watters shows that these machines and the pedagogy that accompanied them sprang from ideas--bite-sized content, individualized instruction--that had legs and were later picked up by textbook publishers and early advocates for computerized learning. Watters pays particular attention to the role of the media--newspapers, magazines, television, and film--in shaping people's perceptions of teaching machines as well as the psychological theories underpinning them. She considers these machines in the context of education reform, the political reverberations of Sputnik, and the rise of the testing and textbook industries. She chronicles Skinner's attempts to bring his teaching machines to market, culminating in the famous behaviorist's efforts to launch Didak 101, the "pre-verbal" machine that taught spelling. (Alternate names proposed by Skinner include "Autodidak," "Instructomat," and "Autostructor.") Telling these somewhat cautionary tales, Watters challenges what she calls "the teleology of ed tech"--the idea that not only is computerized education inevitable, but technological progress is the sole driver of events.

This book reflects on how teachers and students use new technologies in classroom settings in order to improve the capacity of teaching and learning in history to successfully meet the challenges of the twenty-first century through a complex understanding of the relation between past and present. Key authors in the field from Europe and the Americas present a comprehensive overview of the central questions at the heart of the book. They contribute to this process of reflection by taking diverse methodological, pedagogical and conceptual approaches to analyse the ways in which digital tools could advance the development of historical comprehension in the fields of formal and informal history education in different settings as schools, museums, exhibitions, sites of memory, videogames and films. Drawing together a disciplinary diversity that approaches the topic from the viewpoints of collective memory, global history, historical thinking and historical consciousness, the book’s cutting-edge content offers interested academics and practitioners with a broad-based view on the current state of debate in this area, examined via theoretical exploration in-depth case analysis.