Teacher Workshops
From Socrates to Fox News: Developing Historical Thinking Skills
Spin and bias in historical presentation is as old as the Greeks. This workshop will discuss the importance of critical thinking in the historical process as well as the benefits historical thinking skills bring to all aspects of the learning process. Creative strategies used to assist their students in honing the essential historical thinking skills such as historical argumentation, appropriate use of evidence, historical causation, continuity and change of time, periodization, contextualization, comparison, interpretation, and synthesis will be demonstrated.
Sex, Drugs, and Rock n’ Roll: History as Story
Often students complain that history is boring and struggle to recall the most basic of facts. Amazingly, however, they can recite the cast, analyze the plot, and wax poetic about the Twilight “universe.” This workshop will present and develop skills and activities to approach history as story – breaking down major historical events as if they were a literature assignment, piquing the students’ interest while simultaneously developing the students’ historical thinking skills. (Can be presented as a companion to the This Land Is My Land: Music as Politics student workshop.)
Digital: The Last (Historical) Frontier
Teenagers today are more familiar with Google than a card catalog. They check apps for maps rather than atlases. They are a step ahead of us - digitization is the future of historical research and presentation. These two workshops – which can be presented stand alone or together – approach the topic of digital history as a research and a teaching tool. (Can be presented as companions to the This Land Is My Land: Music as Politics student workshop.)
Where You Get IT
This workshop will explore and assess the value of digital primary sources. Academic archival websites, news sites, and popular sources such as Wikipedia and YouTube will be evaluated. The pros and cons of the digital approach will be examined including contextualization and access issues. The integrity and mediation of source material, including the validity and usefulness of “on-the fly” sources such as Twitter and Facebook, will be discussed.
What You Do With IT
Modern history education demands the integration of multimedia and digital sources into presentation. This workshop will introduce tools for developing a sound historical narrative in an evolving media landscape. Course management tools such as eCourseware and Blackboard will be evaluated, as well as web-based presentation methods which allow incorporation of multimedia sources.