Ever since I first encountered the work of Sam Wineburg, I’ve tried to incorporate “think alouds” into my teaching as a way of getting my students to see how it is that we construct historical understanding. At first, I tried using texts, but I found this too cumbersome, so I switched to images. I almost…
Wiki history–a good object lesson
I’ve been writing a good bit this year about the Wikipedia as a tool for history students and teachers. Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m more sanguine than many about the possibilities of wiki-history and that I don’t dismiss the Wikipedia outright as is fashionable to do these days. This is not…
Welcome to Minsk, Florida
For the past twelve years I’ve been involved in the leadership of the Civic Education Project, an international NGO devoted to changing the way the social sciences are taught in countries emerging from dictatorship. From 1990-2004 our work was exclusively in the former Soviet states and Eastern Europe and my work with this organization has…
Yet another slightly different approach to Western Civ
Those who read this blog regularly know that last semester in my introductory survey course I had my students produce scrapbooks of their learning throughout the semester. As a teaching and learning tool, my approach worked very well. As a group my students produced much better work and, based on my end of semester survey,…