In this video, educator Sandra Rice demonstrates the uses of a whiteboard in a forensic science class at Armand Larive Middle School, Hermiston, OR. Though the subject featured isn't social studies or U.S. history, the footage includes useful demonstrations of clicker use and suggestions for incorporating whiteboards into test-taking.
Historical feature films are a popular tool history teachers use to engage their students. But what is it that students actually learn from the films they watch? Peter Seixas, a historian and professor of education at the University of British Columbia, showed that while students often empathize with the past they see on the screen, they also approach film history uncritically. Sometimes they even interpret a film's presentation of history to be as it actually happened. In a landmark article, Seixas described the difficulty students have in analyzing films for historical accuracy.
Contemporary Films vs. Old Films
Seixas showed ten students Dances with Wolves (1990), directed by and starring Kevin Costner, and John Ford's The Searchers (1956), starring John Wayne. Students watched and summarized segments from each film. After showing each film, students answered questions about the film's historical accuracy.
Students found Dances with Wolves to be more accurate than The Searchers for two main reasons—reasons that have more to do with film technique and contemporary beliefs than historical accuracy. Dances with Wolves used modern techniques and promoted a contemporary interpretation of the past. Students noted that the use of blood in violent scenes and the quality of the acting made this film more believable than the older John Wayne film.
Students criticized The Searchers for poor acting, and outdated cinematography (e.g., old folky music). Students also found Dances with Wolves to be more believable because they shared the film's critique of America's treatment of Native Americans. On the other hand, The Searchers' negative representation of women and Native Americans caused many students to question its historical accuracy.
Contemporary Films and Old Films
Seixas argued that students' acceptance of Dances with Wolves as historically accurate reflects a larger problem with showing films in history class. Students are often so engaged by such films that they fail to question the films' historical merits. They blindly accept such films as accurate mirrors of the past. However, Seixas found that The Searchers' blatant misrepresentation of the past prompted students to question the historical accuracy of Dances with Wolves. After viewing both films students still found Dances with Wolves to be more accurate than The Searchers—yet now they at least questioned Dances with Wolves, saying they needed more information to determine its truthfulness.
Historical Films and The Classroom
The visual imagery and powerful audio of film can engage students in ways that lectures and textbooks cannot. However, what makes these films engaging—their use of cutting-edge techniques and their contemporary perspective on the past—often results in students passively accepting these stories as historical truth. So how then can films be used to promote a more critical stance?
Seixas' research suggests that one place to begin is for history students to learn to question how the past is presented in this media. To do this, teachers can have students compare an older film on the same topic with a more contemporary film. This juxtaposition helps students see that no film is a direct mirror to the past.
Initially students accepted Dances with Wolves uncritically as historical truth. One student stated that Dances with Wolves taught her "things I didn't know before . . . things about the culture."
After seeing The Searchers, students questioned the accuracy of Dances with Wolves. Students also recognized the need for more information to determine the truthfulness of Dances with Wolves.
Student: I can't really say, well, if I had to say which one is more accurate I'd probably say Dances with Wolves but I'd probably just say that because it's more modern.
Researcher: When you saw Dances with Wolves originally . . . did the question ever occur to you how accurate it is?
Student: No, because it was just a show that I was watching and I was so wrapped up in feeling and crying that I didn't stop . . . to wonder if this is right. In The Searchers, it's a lot easier.
Mark C. Carnes ed., The Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies, (New York, NY: Holt,1996).
Natalie Davis, Slaves on Screen: Film and Historical Vision, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000).
Peter Seixas, "Confronting the Moral Frames of Popular Film: Young People Respond to Historical Revisionism," American Journal of Education, 102, no. 3 (May, 1994):26185.
Games are everywhere. Digital games have a long history of research and development in education. Yet despite this, there's still much confusion amongst the generation population, and even teachers. Are games good? Safe? A waste of time?
It's not hard to understand why there is still confusion. The field of games is vast—and therefore, confusing. Some games are aimed at skill-and-drill, some at learning specific facts, and others have been designed for deep learning—creating rich environments with dynamics that confront a student's conceptions and require complex decisions and collaboration with peers. Even some commercial games, not specifically designed for learning, fall into this last category. With such a complex landscape, it can be tricky for a teacher to know if and how to leverage games for learning, let alone which ones.
Well-designed digital games for learning provide learners with experiences that are built on principles confirmed by research in the learning sciences. The research in the field of educational games has shown that at the very least, well-designed games have the ability to dramatically increase engagement and motivation in students, as well as more critical skills like strategic thinking, problem-solving, and planning social skills such as communication and collaboration, and even personal skills such as initiative and persistence.
What does this really look like in the classroom? The MIT Education Arcade gives a nice overview of games in education, with examples and strategies for how teachers can begin using them (Editor's note: The author cowrote a white paper for the Arcade.). Their first vignette describes Ross, a middle school teacher who used the games Civilization and Diplomacy (commercial, off-the-shelf games) to explore the political causes of World War I. At a school that is not very big on technology, Ross found numerous benefits in using the game versus more traditional instructional methods, including teaching students skills in negotiation, how to problem-solve collaboratively, and how to be mindful of actions and impacts on others (systems thinking). Ultimately, Ross described the most beneficial aspect being that the game framed the context and content, providing a rich scenario with which the students could engage.
What's even more incredible is how Ross has described the advancement of his students' moral development through these learning experiences, as they forced students to negotiate and understand others' perspectives in order to achieve a mutually agreeable goal.
What this highlights is that games are often more than just a 1:1 exchange between the computer and the student. For many games, it's the dynamic created by the context of the game and the social interactions amongst learners and the teacher that are critical not only to the gaming experience, but more importantly, the learning experience.
While some argue that games can create learning experiences that bypass the teacher—and indeed, some games are designed for that—in general, games are not meant to replace or remove the teacher from the learning experience. In fact, the example of Ross and many others like it underscores the opposite—that games create scenarios in the classroom where the stakes are raised and the learning is deeper, thereby requiring highly skilled and engaged teachers facilitating the process.
This makes games used for learning history and the social sciences anything but fluff.
In reality, these games are some of the most robust learning vehicles, as they afford the opportunity to confront and tease out the complex historical and societal dynamics of our world, unlike many other disciplines, which can be parsed and truncated into short, discrete topics and smaller learning games.
Certainly, in general games can do many things that benefit learners, it's their intersection with history that is particularly unique (1):
These opportunities make games in education worth paying attention to, but it's also worth noting their limitations as learning tools. For one, they are oversimplified, since a digital game can't represent reality absolutely. While simplification isn't inherently bad, as it lets you weed out the noise and focus on critical variables, it's important to help your students understand these limitations.
Secondly, students may grasp symbols and elements in the game but not always be able to transfer those symbols back to their real-world referents. Supplementing gameplay with other resources such as videos, primary documents, and case studies can assist with this.
In short, games matter in history education. Play is not a one-way flow of information—the player's actions matter. That play allows learners to embody the rhetorics, arguments, and actions of the past in code, so that they may be unpacked in the present.
Which game(s) are right for you and your students? A variety of good learning games are available for students of various ages, across the disciplines—many of them researched and developed by leading universities and institutions. Some more advanced commercial games that have been used in education include Civilization III, Rise of Nations, Pirates!, Gettysburg, Patrician, Age of Empires, 1602 AD, and Europa Universalis.
So while navigating the landscape of games to choose those that fit the needs of your students can feel like a game in and of itself, it's certainly not all fluff. If you want to see the effects of games in learning with your students, all you have to do is start playing.
1 For more information on this, see Kurt Squire's work.
In a recent post I argued the importance of both history and technology in primary grades. I also made the case that both are significant challenges for teachers of young children for a variety of reasons. However, I’m a firm believer that we can do anything we think is important.
Moving to first grade from upper elementary grades meant that I had to think carefully about the technology I used. Some technology carried over quite nicely. I have an interactive whiteboard in my classroom. When we explored timelines we used it to look at one year in a variety of ways and to show timelines from a wonderful, but very small, book. While we record most of our thinking on chart paper we can hang up around the room to reread and refer back to, the interactive whiteboard allows children to manipulate items and ideas. We’ve also used ours to sort images into categories or chronological order.
Another use of technology I continue with in first grade is movie making. Sometimes we use still pictures and sometimes we take video. One example with still pictures is a movie about our responsibilities for school. A large part of the social studies curriculum in the early grades is based around helping students understand their community and their role in it. At our school we have a Home-School Compact for Learning. In order to better understand the students’ responsibilities we created a video with still pictures and with video. I have slowly collected a few digital cameras and a few Flip video cameras. I carry one of each around with me at all times so that I can quickly capture anything that catches my attention during the school day. Other cameras are on lanyards for students to wear around their neck when using them.
First graders in Virginia also learn about the difference between past and present. It is great fun to look at pictures of the past (especially schools, transportation, and daily life) and then send small groups of first graders off with a camera to capture images to contrast with the past. We can then put those into Windows Movie Maker or Photo Story to create a video explaining past and present.
As the year is progressing and my students are gaining literacy skills, I’m introducing them to Wallwisher. This free site allows me to create a wall with a question or topic and my students can add Post-It like items with their thoughts. As they are working around the classroom exploring a topic they can head to our interactive whiteboard to add their thinking. I can also place the wall on our class blog for students to come back to or to add more thoughts. The structure is set for brief writing, which is comforting to young children. It is a great way for us to record our learning and return to it later.
These different options for technology use offer opportunities for presenting information, processing learning, and sharing our thinking. In my next post I’ll explore my favorite, free, online tool in detail.
Read part one of Jennifer Orr's look at technology in early elementary classrooms, and then see what she has to say on other tricky topics in primary-level teaching in her entries on teaching Thanksgiving and Columbus Day.
For an introduction to Web 2.0 tools like those Orr mentions, browse our Tech for Teachers section. Learn about whiteboards, document cameras, digital storytelling software, and other tools.
The Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project offers teaching resources and guidance for conducting document-centered inquiry in middle and high school classrooms. This wealth of resources includes vast archives of documents, (for example Montreal is Burning) and several guides for teaching students to think critically about history. Materials are available in both French and English.
The World Digital Library, a collaborative project of the Library of Congress, UNESCO, and other partners, is a collection of primary documents from around the world. Particularly useful for working with ELL students, the site has a drop-down language menu, which allows teachers to translate the site’s accompanying materials into a number of languages including Spanish and Chinese.
I am looking for historical timelines that I can purchase or download for the late elementary or early middle school level—both US history and world history. Any ideas?
There are plenty of timelines available on the web, for free and for sale. But not all timelines are equal. Different timelines emphasize some events or periods over others, and some “timelines” are actually chronologies. So, you’ll want to be a critical consumer as you browse the universe of available resources.
A good place to start is with resources recommended by the National History Education Clearinghouse. The Teachinghistory.org website has reviews of the Presidential Timeline, which explores the lives of 12 presidents from Hoover to Clinton, as well as of a Brief Timeline of American Literature and Events, 1620-1920, which divides eras and decades into year-by-year timelines. The Presidential Timeline is an actual timeline—it has a line, marked with dates, that runs left to right across the screen. The timelines included in the Brief Timelines of American Literature and Events, 1620-1920 are vertically-oriented, moving through blocks of time from the top of the screen to the bottom. Remember as you’re choosing your resources that younger students sometimes struggle to recognize big leaps in time; one of the great strengths of a traditional timeline is that it places events on an evenly-spaced line that accurately represents temporal distance.
There are other good timelines available on the web. One of the best is Digital History’s Interactive Timeline, which includes a sliding scale (horizontal) that students can use to bring up events on a map of the United States. The BBS offers a similarly detailed interactive timeline for British history. Ohio State University’s Ehistory project has a number of vertically-oriented timelines focusing on American and world history, some of which move year-by-year through history. Each resource is divided into categories for tracking changes across politics, science, culture, etc., which may be useful depending on what your aim is.
Chronologies, though they differ somewhat from timelines, can also be quite useful. The Library of Congress’s American Memory website, for instance, offers a number of chronologies that move from the top of the page to the bottom, and often cover events year-by year. They are available on a number of topics, from African-American history to women’s suffrage. Other first-rate web destinations, like PBS, offer chronologies on a range of topics like the history of slavery and the history of the American West. CNN’s Millennium website is something of a timeline/chronology hybrid and covers 1000 years of world history.
Though they may not be useful for younger students, some web resources include primary documents along with their chronologies. The Smithsonian Institution, for instance, offers a list of resources organized by historical period. The University of Oklahoma College of Law has a chronology of U.S. historical documents with links to the documents themselves—a great tool for the appropriate audience.
The web, of course, is not the only place you can find timelines. National Geographic’s Illustrated Time Line or John Teeple’s Timelines of World History are books for purchase, and offer a wide selection. The Social Studies School Service also offers plenty of relevant tools. If you go to the site and preform an advanced search for "timelines" you will find a multitude of materials from different periods in history. Be sure to limit the "Subject" section to "U.S. History".
Finally, you might consider having students make their own timelines. You can begin that work with tools as simple as paper and pen, or with some of the tools outlined in this posting from teachinghistory.org. There are also some great online resources like an online interactive tool from DocsTeach. A project of the National Archives, it offers four activities on topics like women’s suffrage and the Civil War ask students to organize primary documents.
Note: Unpublished; converted to Examples of Historical Thinking entry
Scholars in Action presents case studies that demonstrate how scholars interpret different kinds of historical evidence. These two speeches, one by Sojourner Truth (1852) and one by Frances Watkins Harper (1857) reveal the ways that African American women presented their cause and themselves. For many reform-minded men and women in the 19th century, the movement to abolish slavery was the most important cause in American society.
Radical abolitionists who sought to create a democratic and egalitarian movement allowed women and African Americans to have unprecedented influence and public roles. Some women within the abolitionist movement noted the links between the plight of slaves and the plight of women and thus became active in some of the first women's rights organizations. Sojourner Truth (born Isabella Baumfree) was enslaved for 30 years prior to the abolition of slavery in New York. Once free, she was guided by spiritual revelation to change her name and become a preacher and an active abolitionist. Born to free blacks in Maryland, Frances Watkins Harper was a poet and a teacher who became active in the abolitionist struggle in the 1850s.
Some students in class today may have clear memories of the events of September 11, 2001. Some may have vague memories. Others may have been born years after the attacks. The 10th anniversary of 9/11 presents an opportunity for educators to explore with students what it means to experience history. Were students alive during the attacks? Do they remember them? How do their parents remember the attacks? How did adults they know make sense of the events as they happened? How do people who were alive during the attacks interpret the past when its events are close and painful? How long does it take for historians to find a framework in which to fit events such as 9/11? People watching the World Trade Center towers collapse knew that 9/11 would appear in history books later—what has happened during students' lifetimes that they think was "history in the making?"
One way to teach 9/11 is to compare and contrast it with other past events that witnesses believed were history in the making. Lesson plans often feature the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the assassination of JFK as comparable to 9/11, but what about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The assassination of Abraham Lincoln? The assassination of William McKinley? The Boston Massacre? The Springfield Race Riot of 1908?
How many people witnessed those events? How many of them witnessed them in person? How well were the witnesses prepared for the events? Did they know ahead of time what the effects might be? Did they share their eyewitness knowledge freely with others, or keep it secret? What did people write about these events immediately after they happened? Years after they happened? Does where something happens make a difference in how people react to it? Has technology made a difference?
Regardless of how you choose to teach 9/11 and whether or not you contrast it with other historical events, approach the subject thoughtfully and with clear goals. To honor the anniversary and to help you as you learn about, teach, and remember the day and its effects, we've gathered together our 9/11 resources on one page: "In Remembrance: Teaching 9/11."
Our spotlight doesn't include all of the many resources available online. More examples follow. Some were created in the immediate wake of 9/11 and some were created 10 years later, in the present day. You can use the older materials as they are, or use them as primary sources in their own right. They represent snapshots of writers, publications, and educators trying to make sense of a sudden, horrifying event.
If you are contrasting 9/11 with other traumatic events in U.S. history, you may want to compare these early reactions with early reactions to those events. How did schools, educators, and students react to violence in the past?
From 2001:
From 2011:
Many websites and publications also offer primary sources, yet to be interpreted for educational use or packaged into lesson plans. If you have the time to search for and browse these materials, they can provide a rich base from which to assemble your own comparison of past and present. Here are some examples:
Soaring food prices, a hunger for locally grown produce, high obesity rates, and the desire by people to reconnect with nature and with each other have sparked a national renaissance in community gardening. As part of this movement, school gardens are sprouting up everywhere. Teachers are using these green spaces to teach a variety of subjects, including horticulture, nutrition, history, science, math, writing, and art.
The idea of incorporating gardens in schools began in the late 19th century when Henry Lincoln Clapp, a teacher at the George Putnam Grammar School in Boston, MA, established the first school garden. Inspired after visiting school gardens in Europe, Clapp created a wildflower and vegetable garden at Putnam in 1891 with support from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. The establishment of school gardens soon spread throughout the state and eventually became a nationwide movement, with an estimated 75,000 school gardens by 1906.
For garden advocates, integrating school gardens in the public schools served many purposes. It was a way to get city children outside, engage them in physical activity, and instill in them a sense of pride and teamwork as they cultivated and maintained their gardens. Gardening classes provided students with vocational and agricultural training. Teachers taught a variety of subjects through garden activities. Students practiced writing by keeping planting journals and writing compositions about the garden. Math skills were acquired by counting seeds, measuring garden plots, and determining the appropriate soil depth for planting. Students learned botany and entomology by observing plants and insects and their interrelationships. Geography and history came into play when students studied the origins of fruits and vegetables and planting customs among different cultures. The gardens provided inspiration for drawing, painting, and performing music. In 1914, the federal government established the Bureau of Education’s Office of School and Home Gardening, which promoted school gardens and provided “how-to” pamphlets and course guides.
Children’s involvement in gardening took on a new urgency when the United States entered World War I in 1917. In order to provide food to European allies facing a food crisis and to U.S. troops fighting overseas, citizens were encouraged to grow food for domestic consumption as part of the war garden campaign. Children were enlisted to join the School Garden Army, which adopted the motto, “A garden for every child, every child in a garden.” Students became important contributors to the garden campaign, growing thousands of dollars worth of produce in their school and home gardens.
When the United States entered World War II, children once again played an active role in growing fruits and vegetables to assist in the war effort. During the war, citizens were encouraged to establish victory gardens in their backyards, vacant lots, and schools to provide food for civilians and troops. Gardening was also promoted to boost morale, encourage physical activity and healthy eating and to help Americans deal with the stresses of war. The U.S. Office of Education encouraged victory gardening at schools and promoted school lunch programs that served locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables. The Boy Scouts of America, 4-H clubs, parks and recreation departments, churches, and many civic organizations were involved in victory gardening programs for children. In 1944, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that victory gardens produced 40 percent of the vegetables that were consumed nationally.
The post-war suburban housing boom of the 1950s and 1960s generated more interest in backyard gardening than in community gardening. This changed in the 1970s when rising food prices, an increase in environmental awareness, and a desire by citizens to revitalize neighborhoods plagued by crime and neglect sparked a new community garden movement. Citizens and non-profit groups, such as Boston Urban Gardeners and New York’s Green Guerillas, turned vacant lots into colorful, productive green spaces. The U.S. Department of Agriculture initiated the Urban Garden Program in 1976 to help residents in major cities grow their own food. Educators and activists who were concerned that children were disconnected from nature and unaware of where their food came from reached out to young people and encouraged them to participate in neighborhood, youth, and school gardens. In a 1974 article in the Washington Post, writer Henry Mitchell noted that in Washington, DC, “there are 1,000 small gardens about town in which children grow such plants as the radish, the onion, and (as the weather stops being barbarous) the tomato.”
Since the 1970s, the popularity of school and youth gardens has grown steadily. California took the lead in 1995 by launching the “Garden in Every School” program. As in the school garden movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, teachers are utilizing these outdoor classrooms to teach a wide range of academic subjects through hands-on experiential activities. In addition, educators are using school gardens to encourage a healthier lifestyle, promote environmental stewardship and provide students with the opportunity to develop leadership and team-building skills.
These free resources provide ideas on how to incorporate school gardens into the academic curriculum, including social studies:
Lawson, Laura. City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
Mitchell, Henry. “A Child’s Garden in The City.” The Washington Post, May 19, 1974.
School Gardens with Constance Carter. Library of Congress webcast.
Test your knowledge of (modern) historical gardening with our quiz on victory gardens!