The digital history and pedagogy project: Creating an interpretative/pedagogical historical website
Introduction
Far too often students dread history classes as passive and irrelevant with subject matter reduced to consumable, socially irrelevant products. When history is delivered as a product, students are unable to make connections, develop sustainable interests, or establish relevance (Grant, 2001). Interest and relevance are best realized when students are able to answer the age-old question “why do I need to know this?” To alleviate the grind of typical history instruction, teachers can design activities that enable students to use authentic historical resources for engaging meaningful content directed at learning about the usable past. Some of the best content approaches for learning about the usable past are situated in the construction of public historical resources and re-construction of personalized stories of the past (Coles & Welch, 2002).
In an effort to create more meaningful experiences for students' learning about history, the authors have initiated the Digital History and Pedagogy Project (DHPP). The project is aimed at enabling high school and university students as they construct and use digital historical resources (DHRs). The authors are making a resolute effort to conduct work within the context of an emerging understanding of best practices in digital history. That is, the authors acknowledge that digital historical collections can take archival or interpretive forms and archival historical collections are typically less meaningful for students (Lee, 2002b). Consequently, the focus is on facilitating our students' as they develop interpretative collections.
In the present work, the authors are facilitating high school history students, pre-service social studies teachers, and graduate students of instructional technology as they develop original interpretative DHRs. This paper provides a rationale rooted in current literature on digital history and constructivist theory, describes five current DHPP resources, and discusses successes, lessons learned, and future plans for the design, development, and implementation of the project.
Section snippets
Digital history and constructivism
Digital history is the study of the past using a variety of electronically reproduced primary source texts, images, and artifacts as well as the constructed historical narratives, accounts, or presentations that result from digital historical inquiry (Lee, 2002a). Although digital history is at a nascent stage of development with regard to its usage in the high school and university classroom, several history and social studies education researchers suggest that integrating technology,
Conclusion
The work of the authors on this project reflects a commitment to a learning laboratory approach for developing historical learning environments using DHRs. At present, the primary focus is on enabling university students in teacher education and instructional technology programs as they develop subject and pedagogical knowledge. In the short term, these projects are continued with students in teacher education and instructional technology as a work space for developing knowledge about pedagogy
References (54)
- et al.
Radical constructivism and cognitive psychology
- Ayers, E. L. (1999). The past, present and future of digital history. Retrieved May 16,...
Historical research and electronic evidence: Promises and practice
- Becker, H., Ravitz, J., L., Wong, Y. (1999). Teacher and teacher-directed student use of computers and software....
- et al.
Promise and practice of computer technologies in the social studies: A critical analysis
Community support for constructionist learning
The Journal of Collaborative Computing
(1998)- et al.
Knowledge construction and knowledge representation in high school students' design of hypermedia documents
Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia
(2003) - et al.
Hypermedia research: Present and future
International Journal of Instructional Media
(2003) - et al.
Bringing campus and community together: Doing public history at Longwood College
The History Teacher
(2002) - Crocco, M. S. (2001). Leveraging constructivist learning in the social studies classroom. Contemporary Issues in...
High access and low use of technologies in high school classrooms
American Educational Research Journal
The need to leverage theory in the development of guidelines for using technology in social studies teacher preparation: A reply to Crocco and Mason et al.
Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education
Constructivism as a theoretical foundation for the use of technology in social studies
Theory and Research in Social Education
Toward a pragmatic social constructivism
It's just the facts, or is it? An exploration of the relationship between teachers' practices and students' understandings of history
Theory and Research in Social Education
Epistemology and the design of learning environments
Open learning environments: Foundations, methods, and models
Social studies teachers' use of classroom-based and web-based historical primary sources
Theory and Research in Social Education
Thinking historically: Narrative, imagination, and understanding
Hypertext learning environments, cognitive flexibility, and the transfer of complex knowledge: An empirical investigation
Journal of Educational Computing Research
Historical research online: A new ball game
Mindtools: Affording multiple knowledge representations for learning
From constructivism to constructionism: Learning with hypermedia/multimedia rather than from it
Translating constructivism into instructional design: Potential and limitations
Journal of Educational Technology and Society
Cognitive requirements for learning in open-ended learning environments
Educational Technology Research and Development
Authors of knowledge: Patterns of hypermedia design
Cited by (7)
A program based on digital history to develop creative teaching skills among student-teachers at the Faculty of Education
2020, Journal of Faculty of Education, BenhaToward democracy Social studies and TPCK
2014, Handbook of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK) for educatorsDigital ethnography: Anthropology, narrative, and new media
2013, Digital Ethnography: Anthropology, Narrative, and New MediaExploring Peruvian Culture through Multimedia Ethnography
2013, Visual AnthropologyA computer-assisted learning model based on the digital game exponential reward system
2011, Turkish Online Journal of Educational TechnologyConnecting authentic activities with multimedia to enhance teaching and learning, an exemplar from Scottish history
2009, Australian Educational Computing