Apologies everyone for the recent spamming in the group. The member has been banned. If you notice any posts not related to history teaching please let me know and I'll remove the person from the group. Hope the group items have been proving useful for you in your teaching. Cheers, David.

Hi all. Hope you and your students are benefiting from the group. I've changed the group settings so all of us can now invite new members. If you have colleagues or even postgrad students who might like to join you're free to invite them now. Thanks to everyone who has contributed.
Best wishes for 2012!
David Hilton
Head of Social Sciences
Mt St Michael's College
Ashgrove, Brisbane

Hi everyone, hope you had a good holiday if you're up there in the northern hemisphere.
Does anyone use Twitter with their high school, college or university students? My students and I use the hashtag #historystudent and the program Tweetdeck to run Twitter and keep in touch out of class time. I've found it useful for enhancing student engagement and communication. If you'd like to bring your students onto the feed please do, we'd love to meet you. If you use other tools or Twitter differently I'm sure everyone would like to hear about your experiences.
Thanks to everyone who shares those excellent links with the rest of us. Best wishes,
David Hilton
PS - Anyone know of any Head of Humanities or history teacher jobs going? I know someone who's interested...

We're making the transition at the moment from SOSE in QLD to History & Geography. I'm making decisions about resources about the moment. What resources are others looking at? We like the Pearson stuff, although Nelson & Cambridge are also putting texts together. What choices are your schools making?
Any other thoughts people have about National Curriculum implementation would be helpful too.
Best wishes,
David.

That looks like an excellent resource to teach colonial American history.

Happy New Year everyone; I hope 2011 is fruitful for you and your students. You may have noticed that recently we've had some people using the group for promotional purposes. Those members have been banned and I apologise for that.
This group has grown into a excellent collection of history and social sciences resources and a community that contains some of the most innovative teachers in those fields today. If you notice someone using this community for private or purely business purposes please let either me or one of the group moderators know and we can remove them.
I sincerely hope that you and your students will continue to benefit from the sharing that takes place here. I believe this type of group is just the beginning of what we will see in the future when it comes to online collaboration and if we can maintain the integrity of the group we will all continue to benefit.
Best wishes again for the New Year. It's been a please collaborating with you for the past year and a half!
David Hilton
Head of Humanities
Sheldon College
misterhistory@twitter.com

As always thanks to everyone who has added sites recently to the group; I'm sure others find them useful. At the moment we are re-writing our 8-10 History and Geography Work Programs (that's what we call the course description of what our students will study, assessment, etc). I've posted my 11-12 History ones here: http://www.scribd.com/DavidHilton1. If anyone else would like to contribute their school's Work Programs or courses I'm sure that would be very valuable and could help spread best practice between jurisdictions. I'd certainly find it very helpful in gaining ideas.
I recommend Scribd if you wish to post and share documents, although Google Docs has a similar function.
Best wishes wherever you are,
David.

At the moment our faculty is looking for Modern History textbooks, especially for 11 & 12. We're wanting to look abroad for the best ones, probably for either the IB Modern History or AP World History programmes. We would like to get a single, comprehensive textbook rather than many small, thematic ones.
Can anyone recommend a good textbook?

Thanks Jeremy for that. Very helpful. I really appreciate it :)

Perhaps http://911digitalarchive.org/index.php might be useful...
Good luck.

We're getting a new server at the school soon (to be honest, I don't really know what that means...) which will enable us to link up with others. When it's up and running I'll be in touch and see what we can do. It would be very beneficial to share resources for student research and lessons, I think. To be continued... (^)_(^)

I've noticed since I began teaching History in schools that there is a distinct difference between the history I learned at university and read of in books and the subject History as it is taught in schools in Australia, and I suspect across much of the world. This difference has always baffled and troubled me and I thought I might ask about the experiences of all of you given your expertise as History educators and see if there is a problem and if so, how it might be fixed.

When I studied history at uni the emphasis of most of the lecturers was on attention to detail, thorough background knowledge of the period and the evaulation of sources in their historical context. The methodology was empirical and the main purpose of investigation was historical causation. 'What happened and why?' was the main question which hung in the air in my lectures and tutorials. This also has characterised the history books I've read since. The purpose of the study of history was to find out and understand what happened in the past, perhaps better to understand what is happening in the present and what might happen in the future. I remember most of my classically-trained lecturers got uncomfortable at that point; I think too much so.

When I arrived to teach History in high schools, however, the entire approach seemed radically different. What I automatically taught as 'History' was viewed rather unfavourably. It was seen as old-fashioned and perhaps 'conservative'. When I saw the work programs the schools had, the focus of study seemed to me to be historical injustice and identity. The existence and importance of socio-cultural groups was strongly emphasised, and the entire purpose of the subject seemed to be different. Instead of a disinterested investigation of the truth of past events, the purpose seemed to be to inculcate in students an awareness of and sensitivity to injustice and persecution by some groups of other groups. The purpose is not to discover the past but rather to mould the mind of the student to find and condemn evidence of this injustice.

I've struggled over the years to reconcile the two positions yet as time goes on I find more and more that this dominant approach (and it seems to me to be very dominant) just leads to bad history. It trains students to think simplistically and convinces them that they already know the past: it was systematic and constant persecution of the powerless by the powerful. It also breeds what I observe to be a strong cynicism in the students. 'What's the point of studying history if you already know the answers?' is a common mindset I've encountered.

I guess what I was wondering is if any of you have had any similar experiences? Do you agree with my observations or do you think I'm off-base? It's a widespread belief in Australian society that something has gone wrong with education, and I guess I'm quite passionate about trying to figure out how we can fix it. I'd be truly grateful for any input any of you would have about whether you think there is a problem or not or if perhaps you think my perspective is a little incorrect.

Thanks too to all of you who have posted to the group this year. I hear feedback from new members that they love the group and find it useful in their teaching and I know many of them have used the great sites you've found. I'm sure they're grateful. Merry Christmas all of you and best wishes for 2010.

David.

Some of the teachers in the group have been tossing around the idea of creating an online place where students from classes around the world can collaborate in relation to their history studies. I've created a Google Doc for people to share ideas on what they would like to include, how it might best suit them, etc so we can make it as effective as possible. The platform we're looking at to create it on at the moment is Ning.
If you would like to contribute to the development stage of this project please go to http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AddMOjM0aY7cZGoybWg0cl8waHNyenFxZzI&hl=en and share your thinking with us. If we do this right it could be a great benefit to all of us (oh, and our students. Of course).
It's been great to see so many people adding those excellent bookmarks to the group. If you could use the group tag dictionary when adding them it will make the resources you add much more findable later.

Thanks for sharing some of your work with us Katherine. I've saved those excellent sites to the History Teachers and educators groups so hopefully other people will benefit from your ideas. Great to see too you've got the Bradshaws there. They're amazing. You're obviously very passionate. It's great to have you along.
That's an excellent idea Daniel about posting topics for discussion every couple of weeks. I hope that teachers engage with their students and other students around the world as well - the possibilities are enormous. Just as digital journalism is overturning many established social and political orders, digital education and online networking (I think) can powerfully re-work how our schools operate and have a multiplier effect for students and teachers alike.
It might be very beneficial for my modern history students to be able to ask your or your students about C20th German history and benefit from your knowledge. And if anyone is ever studying indigenous peoples or the history of imprisonment we've got some knowledge there to share.

They're probably a bit young Ginger to interact with the high school history students on the network. It might be a worry if there were misunderstanding or other problems given the age gap.
Eventually it would be great to get a Middle School version up and running. Until then I'm sorry I can't think of a solution...
Thanks for your enthusiasm though!

For those of you who are interested in sampling some Flow of History resources go to http://www.scribd.com/DavidHilton1 and you can download a sample unit on postwar culture in the USA. You'll find the rest of the units, covering just about every topic in US and World History, at www.flowofhistory.com.

Hello everyone
I have a dilemma with some of my classes at the moment and was wondering if anyone has any ideas about how to approach the problem. In the Queensland syllabus, where I teach, source evaluation is an extremely important part of student assessment. Yet I'm finding that no matter what approach I take, most of my students remain unable to evaluate sources effectively. They still give me bland, generalised statements that could be applied to any source. We are required to evaluate the source for reliability, motives of the author & context, accuracy, relevance, corroboration, representativeness, etc.
I've tried going through it with them in class, providing them with examples, developing students' knowledge before they start the assignments and making them research their authors, amongst other things. I'm at the end of my tether. Does anyone have any insight they could share with us all about how to train high school students to evaluate sources accurately and precisely and using historical thinking? I'd be extremely appreciative and I'm sure others would too.

Those are brilliant ideas Bette Lou and Kristine, thanks. I'll try those source evaluation sheets and analysis worksheets.

Anything that helps train my students to not just 'deconstruct' the sources is helpful - they seem to simply look for evidence of social injustice rather than historical information. I guess I'm expecting them to be able to do detailed evaluations right off - best to start a bit more basic and build from there.

Thanks very much for your help.

Just came across a good quality guide for students on how to read and evaluate primary sources at http://www.uncp.edu/home/rwb/hst300q3.htm. Worth a look.

Hi everyone. Hope you're enjoying your holidays.
Thanks to those people who've put in some excellent resources; I've already saved quite a few of them to my class groups. I'm in the process of transferring a lot of bookmarks that I had saved previously so more should keep appearing over the next few weeks. My wife thinks I've become a crank. I tell her I'm collecting history websites.
On that note, I just wanted to start a thread on ways that the group or even online tools other than Diigo can be used practically in our teaching. I'm into real things that can be applied directly in the classroom, so the more truly useful we can make tools like Diigo the more everyone will benefit. Perhaps even the students.
I try to save the tags in such a way that if you search for a time and place along with what type of source you want (e.g. "primary sources" or "maps") you'll get the best refined search. Many sites however are so comprehensive that it's impossible to add enough tags to cover the material (unfortunately there's a maximum of 20 tags allowed (>).(<)>ve purposefully restricted membership to the group for history teachers. That way we should be able to maintain quality-control and relevance of bookmarks.
If you have any other ideas about how people can use the group in their teaching or even their own research please post. I know many of you are dynamic in the ways you use different online tools so the more input we have here the more we can spread our ideas. Cheers.

Thanks to those of you who are posting those excellent resources to the group. I'm sure other people are finding them useful in their teaching and in student research.
I just wanted to let you all know that I've created a group tags dictionary (I finally figured out how to do it) that you can use when adding sites to the group. When you click to add a bookmark you'll see a dropdown list which contains the groups you belong to. By selecting History Teachers there you'll bring up a list of tags most used by the group. It makes it easier for you (you just click them and they get added as tags) and it also helps other people find your cool bookmarks later. It helps make the whole group a lot more effective.

Hello everyone.
Do any of you use diigo with your classes? I was just speaking with someone and we both had the similar experience of struggling to develop student involvement with diigo. Does anyone else have this problem? If so, has anyone found a solution?
I've resorted to force with my students and made it part of their marks to do it, but they still refuse to see social bookmarking as anything that can improve their work. They just see it as something weird Mr Hilton makes them do. If anyone has any tips on how to make it part of the class culture it would be much appreciated.
Alternately, if anyone has any other online resources that work well with history teaching that would be cool too. Cheers.

Hello everyone. Thanks for putting in some great bookmarks to the group; I don't know about you but already there have been some websites put in that I'll be able to use when teaching my classes. My focus when I began the group was for history teachers to share links that could be used as classroom resources and sites for student research and I think that seems to be working.
I was wondering though - do any of you have any suggestions on how to make this work better for you? Everyone has a slightly different focus in the way they teach and the things they want to implement. So is there anything we can do to help you get the most out of this group? Whether it's collaboration with other classes, annotations (great idea Matt!) or anything else that I can't think of? If the 'web 2.0' prophets are right then things like diigo should be revolutionising education. If any of you have any ideas on how we can work together to make that happen then please share what you think.
I'll be adding heaps of bookmarks for history teaching in the coming weeks that I've built up over the years. Please feel free to do the same. Have a nice summer those of you in the northern hemisphere while we're down here trying not to get that pig flu! Take care,
David.