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Students did not agree on the merits of the wiki. Some were deeply offended when other students eliminated or modified their contributions. Others found the chance to pick apart other’s words and conclusions exhilarating. Regardless, most students seemed to grasp the important lesson I hoped to share: that history is the conversation we have about the past. History is about the authorial choices scholars make. History is about the evidence included and the evidence excluded. By asking students to participate in a joint-writing exercise, they were compelled to pay attention to the language others used, the phrasings and structure employed, the anecdotes emphasized, the facts obscured. I told them the story of an undergraduate English professor I had who spent an entire class session discussing why Shakespeare began Macbeth with the word “when”. Words matter. Words shape arguments. They determine meaning, and they form our view of the world around us, including our view of the history of the world around us. Students also came to appreciate that history was not a bag of facts we historians force them to memorize. Instead, as Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob suggest, history is the product of that collective effort of truth seeking.

I still caution students about using Wikipedia. But I think the wiki can help our students see themselves as part of that democratic conversation so important to our profession. Throwing their ideas into the ring for others to challenge forces students to defend their ideas, modify their conclusions, and reconsider their assumptions. The wiki, while not perfect, may help us change the way our students think about history. It may help them be more attentive to language and argument. Importantly, it may help them value civil discourse as a civic virtue. These are good lessons for history students and for their professors. —Kevin B. Sheets is associate professor of history at the State University of New York, College at Cortland and project director of the “American Dream Project,” a Teaching American History grant-based project in upstate New York. He regularly teaches courses in historical methods and American intellectual and cultural history.

Jeff Weaver, the dynamic superintendent of the Upper Arlington City School District in Ohio, was planning to unveil the district’s vision for 21st century learners … at the first district leadership meeting of the year. So he had the vision statement printed on adhesive-backed vinyl, purchased a hundred inexpensive dinner plates, and affixed a copy of the vision to each of the plates. At that first district meeting, Weaver asked for the plates to be passed out to the district’s leaders, then stood at the lectern and said something like this: “The last few years, whenever I talk to you about 21st century skills — about the importance of creativity, collaboration, critical thought, and all the other proficiencies that phrase implies — you remind me how much we’re already trying to accomplish. You tell me, ‘I would grapple with this,  and make it work — but there is so little time, and there is already so much on our plate.’ You ask me, ‘How can we make room for this on our plate?’ . . . And so, I am letting you know you today that, moving forward, this is the plate. . .“

hese teachers are not just championing the technology, they are celebrating a new way of teaching and learning.

Something about these devices has helped many teachers to see the classroom very differently. That should be encouraged, supported and most thoroughly welcomed.

the number one reason