Over the past two weeks I’ve been conducting workshops as part of various Teaching American History grants we’re helping to direct. The participants in these workshops are K-12 teachers (largely from grades 4-11) who are interested in improving both their teaching and their content knowledge. One of the readings I’ve assigned is several chapters from…
Ending Geographic Illiteracy in our Lifetime
One of the most common complaints I hear from history educators about our students is that they are so geographically illiterate. What, exactly, is meant by “illiterate” is certainly in the eyes of the beholder, but the point is well taken that our students often display a lower level of geographic literacy than we would…
Blogging Digital History
Want to know what the rest of the world is saying about digital history? Okay, maybe not the rest of the world, but at least the coterie talking about things digital and historical in their blogs…then take a gander at this excellent summary of what’s out there by Bill Turkel of Digital History Hacks. Bill…
And another reason PowerPoint should be banned
Regular readers of this blog know how I feel about PowerPoint. Here’s another reason why slideware should be shown the door. The NASA Engineering Safety Commission’s 2004 report on the Challenger disaster chided NASA for “PowerPoint engineering” — that is, over reliance on bullet point presentations that engineers actually learned little from. And I thought…