A re-creation of PT Barnum's American Museum as a lens into mid-19th century New York City and antebellum America. The Lost Museum website offers visitors a visualization and spacial interpretation of this extraordinary institution as well as an innovative way to learn and teach about the many issues and events of the period.
"Paul Salopek's 21,000-mile odyssey is a decade-long experiment in slow journalism. Moving at the beat of his footsteps, Paul is walking the pathways of the first humans who migrated out of Africa in the Stone Age and made the Earth ours. Along the way he is covering the major stories of our time-from climate change to technological innovation, from mass migration to cultural survival-by giving voice to the people who inhabit them every day."
His key episodes are based not around a grand organising narrative but a series of vignettes that make compelling stories.
If history is popular on TV, it can be made popular at school.
Teachers developed new methods, shifting away from chronology and narrative to topics and themes, where the emphasis was placed on "skills" of analysis over the regurgitation of facts.
without providing any connecting narrative thread that explains their relationship with each other. The solution is a return to narrative history, to a big story that will organise and make sense of historical experience.
Nonetheless, it remains an announcement that tells us more about the contradictions of government thinking and its reductive view of the humanities and social sciences than it does about the state of history teaching in our schools.
I agree with Schama that the real public value of history-teaching in schools (as in universities) lies in its capacity to re-animate our civil society and produce an engaged and capable citizenry. I disagree that good story-telling will get you there
History provides us with a set of analytical skills that are indispensable for citizens who want to understand our present conditions
We want students who aren't just entertained, but who can think critically and effectively about the world they live in.
For the creative and innovative teacher it may have been something of a constraint, but most now agree it led to a ‘golden age’ of history teaching in primary schools in the 1990s and ensured every child covered a coherent history syllabus from 11-14 without repeating topics. It also spawned a generation of excellent and accessible teaching materials and encouraged heritage organisations to provide for a standard history curriculum
Regardless this return to grand narrative and national myth goes against the very progress we as academic historians have made. History is more to do with how we think and evaluate things, the tools we use to come to conclusions than about dates and conveniently accessible stories self legitimatising the status quo.
This collection of TeachersFirst resources pulls from our offerings on primary sources as well as resources related to the 2010 National History Day theme of "Innovation in History." Explore and share these offerings as you plan a "history day" type event for your school or to assist students participating in National History Day
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a map is worth ten thousand. This is not like any atlas you remember.
Maps of America are what you'll find and make on nationalatlas.gov™. Maps of innovation and vision that illustrate our changing Nation. Maps that capture and depict the patterns, conditions, and trends of American life. Maps that supplement interesting articles. Maps that tell their own stories. Maps that cover all of the United States or just your area of interest. Maps that are accurate and reliable from more than 20 Federal organizations. Maps about America's people, heritage, and resources. Maps that will help you, your children, your colleagues, and your friends understand the United States and its place in the world."
"The Open Society Archives (OSA) at the Central European University in Budapest is an archival laboratory. While actively collecting, preserving, and making openly accessible documents related to recent history and human rights, they continue to experiment with new ways to contextualize primary sources, developing innovative tools to explore, represent, or bridge traditional archival collections in a digital environment."
"Need I say more? We are that innovation! The human species was and is the 'ecological invention', the new 'natural technology', by which the biosphere saved itself! Those accumulations of photosynthetically useless carbon - initially the woody bodies of trees, and the corpses of other plants and animals, terrestrial and aquatic, as well as, later, coal, oil, and gas - entropy, waste, for photosynthesis - represent free energy for human praxis, that is, for that new form of 'synthetic' econo-ecological activity, biomass yielding and biomass sustaining, which is human industry and industrialized agriculture."
And so presumably once we've fulfilled our ecological function of redistributing this carbon back to the atmosphere we'll be superfluous and therefore annihilated, i.e. climate change will kill us off?
I think these deniers should go back to the drawing board...
Has articles and some source material links related to World History. The site (run out of University of Illinois, by the looks) has a strong focus on 'big history.' I hadn't encountered this term before; it seems to mean looking at history not through civilisations but rather periods or regions. If that description is wrong and someone could provide more accuracy on 'big history' that would be cool.
World History Connected:
The EJournal of Learning and Teaching
[www.worldhistoryconnected.org]
World history poses extraordinary demands upon those who teach it, challenging the talent of experienced instructors as well as to those new to the field.
World History Connected is designed for everyone who wants to deepen the engagement and understanding of world history: students, college instructors, high school teachers, leaders of teacher education programs, social studies coordinators, research historians, and librarians.
For all these readers, WHC presents innovative classroom-ready scholarship, keeps readers up to date on the latest research and debates, presents the best in learning and teaching methods and practices, offers readers rich teaching resources, and reports on exemplary teaching.
WHC is free worldwide. It is published by the University of Illinois Press, and its institutional home is Washington State University. Editors: Heather Streets, Washington State University and Tom Laichas, Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences. Associate Editor: Tim Weston, University of Colorado.
Funding for World History Connected, Inc. has been provided by The College Board and private donations. Should you wish to contribute, please contact Heidi Roupp, Executive Director [Heidiroupp@aol.com]
The journal focuses on the New World History (looking at the world at a global scale across time) as opposed to the one civilization at a time approach. See the World History AP course description for an example of what this means:
http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/ap/students/worldhistory/ap-cd-worldhist-0708.pdf
David, as an Australian you are at Ground Zero of Big History since its leader is an Australian = David Christian.
Christian's _Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History_ is the one book to read on the subject.
This article well covers it: http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/whc/3.1/christian.html
Google David Christian, Big History for more
A school leader who wishes to “create and sustain a culture that supports digital age learning must become comfortable collaborating as co-learners with colleagues and students around the world” (aka “I don’t do technology” is no longer acceptable.) Also, this framework seeks to help school leaders propel their organizations forward as members of “dynamic learning communities.” Vision is vital.
ensure instructional innovation; model and promote effective use of technology for learning; provide learner-centered environments to meet the individual needs of students; ensure effective practice in the study of technology and infusion across curriculum; promote and participate in learning communities that allow for global, digital-age collaboration
allocate time, resource and access to ensure ongoing professional growth in technology fluency and integration; facilitate and participate in learning communities to nurture administrators, teachers, and staff; promote and model effective communication and collaboration using digital tools; stay current on the latest educational research and emerging trends in educational technology to improve student learning
model and establish policies for safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information/technology; promote and model responsible social media interactions; model and facilitate a shared cultural understanding and involvement in global issues through the use of communication and collaboration tools
A med student at UVA commented to our leadership team- teachers and admins together- this past week that the “real learning begins when we get to the team-based work.”