Labeling people, events and eras marks a difference between the history as it operates as discipline and history as it appears in the classroom. The vocabulary we use to talk about the past has a historiography all its own. Exposing students to the power-plays that advanced one label over another is admittedly harder and more abstract than memorizing a list of terms, but it is far more rewarding.
The NY Times ran dozens of stories on the five lives lost to adventure tourism and only a few on the hundreds of lives lost in an overcrowded boat of migrants. How should history teachers decide what stories make it into their classroom?
There’s an avalanche of AI advice and alarm, but there’s a lot that can be learned by just fooling around with it. Instead of using AI to write a paper, I asked Google Bard specific questions about the text of an article to help measure bias and the way language is used to shape a reader’s understanding of the past.
We shouldn’t be talking about “reliable sources”, we should be talking about “reliable information”
Back in the old “chalk and talk” days of textbook homework and worksheets, anyone suggesting document analysis would be seen as an outsider. Today, it’s just the opposite, DBQs are commonplace. But are they any better?
What would happen if we taught students that writing is mind control?
Hooking student attention with a story of a prank using new technology is too easy to pass up because it can lead them into a lesson on historical evidence and historiography
What lessons can be found in a routine announcement from a college athletics department?
Even a children’s book can show you how edited quotes out of context can change your understanding of the past. It’s easy to check
Did you ever think about the difference between the history you know and the history you teach? But what about the history you don’t know?