Dr. Terry Haydn, Senior Lecturer in Education, University of East Anglia.
Dr. Haydn stressed that one of the roles of ICT in the history classroom is to develop pupils’ information literacy — to make them more discerning about what they read and what they watch. This includes challenging the popular pupil perception that the internet is the fount of all truth and wisdom.
 |
Film Clip 1
1 min 30 secs |
He gave out the following extract from his book, History, ICT and Learning, London; Routledge Falmer (2003) co-edited with Christine Counsell:
Developing Pupils’ Information Literacy
The Crick Report on Education for citizenship and the teaching of democracy in schools (QCA, 1998: 44) stated that amongst the skills and aptitudes which young people should possess by the end of compulsory schooling were:
- The ability to use modern media and technology critically to gather information.
A critical approach to evidence put before one, and ability to look for fresh evidence.
The ability to recognise forms of manipulation and persuasion.
The government’s ‘Literacy across the curriculum’ strategy also stresses the importance of young people being able to read with critical awareness as an important strand of literacy (DfEE, 2001). School history clearly has a major role to play in both citizenship and literacy. Part of a historical education in the twenty first century should be to develop pupils’ understanding of the status and reliability of information from a range of media sources. A small scale enquiry into pupils’ ranking of the reliability of information from various sources revealed that in year 7, pupils thought that CD-roms, the internet, and school textbooks were the three most trustworthy sources of information (see Figure 1).
(Figure 1): Rank the following according to how much you trust in what they say (8 = most; 1 = least)
| Year 7 | Year 8 | Year 9 | Year 10 | Year 11 | Overall |
|---|
| Textbooks | 6 | 8 | 8 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
|---|
| General non-fiction books | 5 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 3 |
|---|
| Television | 3 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
|---|
| Radio | 2 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 2 |
|---|
| Newspapers | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
|---|
| CD-roms | 8 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 7 |
|---|
| What The Teacher Says | 4 | 6 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 4 |
|---|
| The Internet | 7 | 7 | 6 | 8 | 6 | 6 |
|---|
The survey found that year 11 pupils in the same school also regarded these three sources of information as more trustworthy than television, radio, newspapers, non-fiction books, and ‘what the teacher says’ (Howe, 1997). The survey suggests that in spite of recent emphasis on ‘the reliability of sources’, the experience of school history is not seriously disturbing young people’s ideas about the reliability of the information they receive from the media. This was a small-scale enquiry, conducted within one school, but it nonetheless raises interesting questions for history teachers. Given that one of the aims of school history is to help young people to handle information intelligently, there is perhaps a need to address the issue of ‘media literacy’ more explicitly, and make connections between the reliability of sources ‘from the past’, and the sources from which they derive information in their day to day lives.
Harold Macmillan once remarked that the main advantage of being educated was that you knew when someone was speaking nonsense (quoted in Williams and Mahlouji, 2001). No subject is better placed than history to teach pupils that the internet is not the ultimate repository of truth and wisdom. In the era of ‘spin’, media manipulation, and sophisticated techniques for the distortion of information, an important facet of citizenship education is to teach pupils ‘to sort out the differences between the essential and non-essential information, raw fact, prejudice, half-truth and untruth, so that they know when they are being manipulated, by whom and for what purpose.’ (Longworth, 1981: 19). Helping pupils to become ‘mature’ internet users (see Chapter 2), is an important part of this aspect of citizenship education. In conjunction with the scanner, the internet can also be a valuable resource for developing pupils’ visual literacy, given the wealth of images, portraits and cartoons which can be accessed from the internet, especially now that many major search engines now incorporate an Image Search facility as part of their services (see for example. www.google.com and click on ‘images’).
The realisation that many young people do not have a sophisticated understanding of the status of information on the internet has led to the development of a number of sites which can be used to develop pupils’ ‘internet literacy’. One example of this is a ‘spoof’ site, about Oliver Cromwell which, at first glance, appears to be a bona fide educational site on Cromwell:
http://www.inwards-holland.fsnet.co.uk
The site was designed to make a point about the integrity of information on the internet, and about the practice of uncritical downloading of information. The author deluged with email requests from students asking him to write their assignments for them. Several sites have moved beyond simply teaching learners how to search for information on the internet, and into educating them in evaluating the reliability of information on the internet; see, for example:
http://www.2learn.ca/mapset/mapset.asp
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue16/digital
There is also a site which explores the ethics of using resources on the internet (‘Some advice and a lecture for those of you doing research, homework or whatever.’:
www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/1344/advice.html
A more extensive list of resources which might be helpful to history teachers in addressing ‘media literacy’ can be found at:
www.uea.ac.uk/~m242/historypgce/ict/medialit.htm
In addition to asking questions about the reliability of information from electronic sources, questions can also be posed about the comparative efficiency of various educational media. The abundance of materials on a wide range of historical topics means that it has become comparatively easy to set tasks where groups of pupils can be instructed to learn about the comparative advantages and disadvantages of using different approaches. This can help to make the point to pupils that the computer screen is not necessarily the most time-effective way of acquiring basic content knowledge about historical topics.
Making Connections Between the Past and the Present
Another powerful asset of the internet in particular is the facility with which the past can be connected to the present. There is an abundance of materials which provide links between current day problems and issues, and the historical perspectives on them which are the substance of history teaching. There are still pupils who think that history is boring, useless, and of no relevance to their lives (see, for instance, Aldrich, 1994; Adey, 2000). One of the key challenges to history teachers is ‘how to demonstrate the relevance of history to the present in a sufficiently convincing manner to gain the interest of the pupils.’ (Burston and Green, 1962:9). Using the resources of the internet to link the past to the present can be a way of persuading pupils that history is vital and relevant to their lives, and escaping from which Ball (1993) terms ‘the curriculum of the dead.’ If we tell them that ‘How democratic was Victorian Britain?’ is a ‘key’ question, shouldn’t this link into some consideration of how democratic Britain is today? If pupils are going to be taught to analyse Tudor portraits, shouldn’t we also give them some contemporary images to think about? The scanner can be an invaluable tool for presenting images of individuals from the present as well as the past. As well as helping us to persuade pupils that history is important, as well as interesting, making links with the present can also be a way of developing pupils’ conceptual understanding of many of the ideas which they encounter in history:
‘Learning about the concept of kingship (or whatever) frequently involves two sets of simultaneous learning: learning about power and its distribution in modern society. The former cannot be given real meaning until pupils have some more contemporary knowledge against which to calibrate their historical understandings.’ (Husbands, 1996: 34)
Helping trainee history teachers to make effective use of television programmes, the internet, and the scanner can be an important part of developing their pedagogical subject knowledge (How can I teach this topic in a way that makes sense to these pupils?) Most history teachers regularly use video extracts as ‘components’ of their lessons (Sharp, 1995); the internet, the scanner and newspapers also offer a wide range of opportunities for adding to the impact, challenge and interest of lessons. The recent online arching of broadsheet newspapers has provided access to a range of articles which trace the antecedents of current problems, issues and crises, polemics which interpret them in different ways, and reviews of the most recently published history books. Such resources can play a big part in persuading pupils that history is vital, relevant and important to their lives. Sites such as The Paperboy, the gateway site to newspapers worldwide, or the ‘Archive’ section of newspapers such as The Guardian provide the opportunity to access a wide range of articles which link the present to the past, on topics such as race, slavery, opposition, British identity, the census, the changing role of the monarchy, immigration, religion and economic change.
http://thepaperboy.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive
For a list of examples, see:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/~m242/historypgce/ict/paperboy.htm
|
Dr. Haydn asserted that much material found on the internet consists of interpretations of history, consciously reflecting on the past in particular ways. Equipping pupils with the tools to question and challenge interpretations, as well as original sources, is an important component of school history. Dr. Haydn used the following quotations to support his case:
“History helps pupils to use their reason as well as their memories, and to develop skills of analysis and criticism in a situation where there cannot be a provably right answer.”
Sir Keith Joseph writing in
The Historian, Spring 1984
“The reason for teaching history is not that it changes society but that it changes pupils: it changes what they see in the world and how they see it.”
Peter Lee,
The Aims of School History, The National Curriculum & Beyond
Tufnell Press 1992
“Educating our children to sort out the differences between essential and non-essential information; raw fact, prejudice, half-truth and untruth, so that they know when they are being manipulated by whom and for what purpose.”
Norman Longworth,
We’re moving into the information society — what shall we teach the children?
Computer Education, 1981
“History ‘helps pupils to understand that there is a range of questions — on which there is no single right answer — where opinions have to be tolerated but need to be subjected to the test of evidence and argument.”
Sir Keith Joseph, as above
Another important function of ICT in the history classroom was to act as a powerful medium for the teaching of history itself. Dr. Haydn mentioned that in recent research only 4% of pupils saw the point in studying the subject at all and that, at times, pupils actually remembered less about the content at the end of a sequence of learning than they did at the beginning. Teachers of history need to select material to use through the medium of ICT that leaves a lasting impact; material that forms what Ben Walsh describes as ‘a powerful learning package’. The teachers’ skill in selecting and blending series of powerful clips and images together is more important than advanced knowledge of the technology itself.
 |
Film Clip 2
1 min 25 secs |
Children who aren’t scholarly, and are not driven by a desire for knowledge are, nevertheless, bidable to learning. Every lesson should have at least one thing, or ‘Golden Nugget’ which engages their attention. New technology can give us weapons to fight boredom:
 |
Film Clip 3
41 secs |
The teacher acts as the mediator of raw material. For example, Dr. Haydn’s own research had shown that pupils generally find school programmes dull. It is better to build up a collection of short, powerful video clips and images that can be displayed at the teacher’s discretion. He suggested collecting newspaper front pages from appropriate websites and putting pictures into powerpoint. Dr. Haydn displayed a series of images of Queen Elizabeth II dating from her coronation to the present day. He then gave out copies of the images as a card sort to be arranged into chronological order. This was the kind of activity that pupils were more likely to remember. Dr. Haydn also gave out the following extract from the commentary of a documentary film about Elgar:
Elgar’s Feeling About One of His Best Tunes
In 1914, the tensions were released and the song which Elgar had written in his popular, exuberant moods in 1901, at the time of the Boer War, became a rallying call to the nation. Elgar was delighted. “I look on the composer’s job, he once said, as the old troubadours did. In those days it was no disgrace for a man to be turned on to step in front of an army and inspire them with a song. For me part, I know that there are a lot of people who like to celebrate events with music. To those people, I have given tunes. “A tune like this only comes once in a lifetime,” he once said. He was proud of his marches. The words however were not his, and he disapproved of them; they were too jingoistic and there was to come a time when he could no longer bear what had virtually become a second national anthem. There was a terrible irony in having written a march in the dashing, glinting days of 1900, used as a battle hymn against a nation he loved so much, used almost as an accompaniment to the growing horror of World War 1. As the gates of Armageddon opened in France, Elgar, too old to serve, left London for Sussex, and turned to chamber music, to sonatas and quintets. Nothing however could sever the public’s association with Elgar with his Boer War marching song. The irony, to a man who had sensed the disaster to come, and felt its impact, was abominable. |
He played a video clip which accompanied the commentary. The clip moving set Elgar’s pomp and circumstances music, Land of Hope and Glory, to a sequence of black-and-white film clips showing trench warfare during World War 1. This had been skilfully edited so that as the music reached a patriotic crescendo, shells exploded in the earth, scattering soil across the landscape. Dr. Haydn posed the rhetorical question: ‘Was the commentary more memorable with or without the visuals?’
Dr. Terry Haydn likened the wealth of ICT based materials, that teachers could use to a collection of cookery books. How many recipes do we really use? The skill of the teacher lies in selecting the best material for use. He demonstrated how an historic painting , Claude-Joseph Vernet’s The Shipwreck, could be incorporated into powerpoint and divided up into boxes using a zoom effect. Parts of the image could be blown up so that details of the painting can be analysed in more detail.
 |
Film Clip 4
45 secs |
Dr. Haydn also made the following suggestions:
- The teacher can select datafiles for pupils to organise in different ways, for example — the dates and cause of death of Roman emperors or English kings, census data.
The teacher can set up web trails, providing pupils with lists of website links to differing interpretations of the same event.
Pupils can be given the task of creating a powerpoint presentation summarizing the history of Britain in just seven slides. This focuses pupil reflection on what to put it, what to leave out, and the reasons for such decisions.
He stressed the importance of ICT in the history classroom as a powerful motivational tool for the analysis of historical interpretations; a way of bringing the past up to date with the present, and as a means of extending pupil’s political literacy.
|