The digital history and pedagogy project: Creating an interpretative/pedagogical historical website

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Abstract

The Digital History and Pedagogy Project (DHPP) is an interpretive/pedagogical collection of Web-based historical resources designed for use in inquiry-based learning in high school and university classrooms. It has been created by faculty and graduate students at a large urban college of education. This paper provides a rationale for the project rooted in current literature; presents a theoretical framework for this and other similar projects; and describes five current digital historical resources (DHRs) within the context of our framework.

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

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