Embedded Files
My Digital Classroom
Integrating Digital History into Teaching:
My Dynamic, Student-Centered, and Democratic Pedagogy
I have been teaching in digital or smart classrooms for over twenty-five years. The possibilities have grown in leaps and bounds.
Digital teaching cannot be separated from the best practices in pedagogy and andragogy in order to use it correctly, to appeal to multiple intelligence and multiple ways of learning and knowing, and for it to enhance teaching and learning, not detract from it or be merely a 3-D substitute for current delivery systems.
It is not simply a tool for presenting material to students; it transforms the content, the delivery, the ways in which students learn and imagine, and the connections that are made.
It changes the pace, structure, and even the goals of any given class session.
The pandemic has highlighted the need for teachers to be able to move fluidly from on-site to hybrid to fully on-line teaching. Technological fluency and pedagogical flexibility are no longer a niche for people like me, but a permanent part of teaching and, thus, teacher education.
Smart Delivery
Pedagogical implications
Smart board technology can transform the in-class experience and potential for historians to teach and learn history with only our imaginations as the limit.
The seamless move from lecture, written text, analysis, and digital sources (ie. ancient coin collections, medieval tapestries, a 1950s radio broadcast) to student work, the course website, hypertext syllabus, and course management system (ie. Moodle, Blackboard, Google Classroom) all within the touch of a finger or wave of a hand.
This i3TOUCH wireless capacitive touchscreen computer allowed students to send work from their desks instantly to the computer and for me to write over their work on screen or over a website and save and send the marked-up screen via email instantaneously.
We have seen the future, and it looks great.
My Course Websites
I have integrated Course Websites into all of my teaching since 1996. They have served multiple purposes.
Instructor Designed Teaching Websites: websites I use to teach from, not accessible to students.
Instructor Designed Course Websites: websites I create for students to use.
Student Designed Course Websites: students build the content of the website for the course and future classes.
Student Portfolio/Websites: students present all of their work in digital format.
Course Websites, in all their formats, allow teachers to move seamlessly from on-site learning, to offsite, or a hybrid combination that is becoming increasingly relevant during the pandemic.
Instructor Designed
My Websites are designed for myself and my students to organize the material and present digital sources thematically and visually in easily accessible ways.
A course website is often the only file I usually need to open during class, creating a seamless experience the equivalent of having my computer desktop, course folders, and briefcase available at the touch of a hand.
My Instructor Designed Websites fall into two categories:
Teaching Websites - not accessible to students, contain everything I need for lectures, discussions, assignments, access to the school's course management system (ie. Moodle), my google folders, handouts, videos, powerpoint/prezis, etc. all embedded into the website(s).
Course Website - course-specific sites prepared for the students to access, allows for thematic narratives to be created, with a lot of supplemental material available for students to look at independently, and appeal to visual and non-linear learners in ways that the linear, timeline format of most course management systems do not.
IE. My PowerPoints are there, links to other webites I might use, videos, podcasts, are all available on multi-page sites custom-made for my courses or themes.
Samples of My Websites
Samples of Academic Writing and Business Communications Courses Designed for Non-native Speakers
My Course Websites
Since 1996, I have developed course websites for most of my classes. They variously include:
hypertext syllabi
course notes
powerpoints
learning modules
embedded video and audio
timelines
digital sources
handouts, texts in pdf
sample work
sample exam questions
student-created work
links to my other sites, 3rd-party sites
podcasts
assessment rubrics
Websites versus Course Management Systems:
websites are non-linear
websites allow flexibility
websites cater to individual learning styles
websites allow the Course Management System to remain uncluttered, highlighting assignments and announcements
Screenshots from a Website
I developed to teach
Academic Writing:
Click the link below to access this website teaching academic writing to international students. Created in collaboration with Professor Suzy Fukuda, who teaches Japanese students in Tokyo:
Click the links to bring you to some of my other course websites:
*My Websites designed for History Courses are either no longer available or not available to users outside their private or institutional domain.*
My Student-Designed and Student-Built Course Websites
I use Student-Designed Course Websites in some classes whereby the students create the content, including writing born-digital text and analysis as well as including digital sources.
The websites become sources for future students and/or for the public.
They encourage collaborative work and employ democratic pedagogy.
They often aim at building a larger project which requires longterm effort.
They become a repository of information, including annotated bibliography, to aid students in their research projects.
Sample Page from a Course Website Built by My Students
Democratic Learning, Independent Learning, and Remote Learning
In some of my courses, students have built the course website themselves:
sharing secondary source information with annotated bibliography
creating a primary source repository
analyzing documents, songs, other websites
sharing papers and offering critique
creating a site for the next class to utilize and build upon
this builds a sense of community, especially for remote learners
This method can easily be transformed into a collaborative end project for public history or a thematic teaching module unit for use in teaching Gymnasium.
My Use of Digital Sources
I use multiple types of digital sources for in-class teaching and exercises, and for outside assignments. I embed the web sources into my own course website. (Click the icons to go to these websites).
Texts
Video
Audio
Most history fields have relevant usable digital archival material for researchers, teachers and students to use and benefit from, as well as thematic websites created by third parties.
However, they are not all created equal. Students need to be taught things like the limits of a digital archival collection and/or how to access the quality and accuracy of third-party history websites and information.
Instruction in discerning, analyzing, and utilizing Digital Collections and Digital History is an important component for training future historians.
Teaching and Using Digital Representation
The Visual Turn
I teach students to think, analyze, and represent their work, in part, visually.
Visual thinking, analysis, and representation are another component whereby digital history changes how we talk about and share information.
Visual thinking
Mind Mapping
Visual Learners
Audio Learners
Metacognitive Approaches
Micro/Macro Lenses
Uses of Audio and Visual Learning and Representation
Enhanced Digital Timelines
Digital 3-D timelines can communicate more information, as can mapping and layering.
Ideas in Graphic Form
Visual representation of ideas helps to communicate complicated arguments and can transform the idea itself.
Audio Essays Discussions
Audio learning suits mobile lifestyles. It can also be a class exercise in lieu of small group discussion or an end-product form for assessment.
Accessibility
The visual turn should not exclude people with disabilities.
Technology is catching up with providing accessibility of visual sources to people with visual impairments and interpreting audio for people with hearing impairments.
Design matters and should be thoughtful and inclusive.
Alternative text is now an embedded feature in many websites.
Separate programs for "reading" images are currently in development.
I have taught and consulted with students who have little to no sight and students with color blindness regarding my pedagogy.
I have taught classes that were interpreted using American Sign Language for Deaf students.
I have fifteen years experience volunteering for the Lowell Association for the Blind.
Assessments in Digital Format
Digital Assignments, Projects and Outcomes
Thinking digitally leads to new types of assessments and new ways to assess the B.A. student's work.
Click each arrow below to learn my ideas and approaches to Digital Assessments.
Digital History Confronts the Academic Essay
Digital history begs the question of the centrality of the traditional end goal and final assessment of student essay exams and/or academic papers.
We already view them digitally rather than as analogue papers.
Hypertext can allow traditional essays to have another dimension.
Some digital history projects will require more time on the research end, legitimizing a shorter end paper.
Some courses can focus on a project instead of an essay.
Essays can be written about the project, the sources, the methodology, the problematic constructs.
Alternative Projects that Teach Historical Skills
Not all students are being trained to become professors. In fact, most will end up elsewhere. We can teach them how to consider primary sources, contextualization, interpretation, and critical thinking through projects that will be more applicable and prepare them for the workforce.
Creating Websites
Student Portfolios
Podcast, essays and debates
Short Documentary
Short Video Lessons
Teaching Lesson Units
Creating Apps, games, etc.
Oral History interviews
Social Media Campaigns
Assessments that maintain Outcomes
Long academic essay writing is not the only end skill for training budding historians. We can replace historiographical, thematic, or research papers and/or essay exams with other means of assessment for grading competencies.
Research, critical thinking, and the ability to convey results intelligibly to an audience remains as the pedagogical outcomes of Digital Thinking for Historians.
Assessment Rubrics for alternative formats have already been developed by educators in other fields and are readily adaptable to Digital History projects.
My Student-Designed and Student-Built Course Websites
One example of Digital Assessment I have used is Student-Designed and Student-Built Course Websites (see above).
An Example of My Use of Student ePortfolios
On the B.A. level, I use Student Portfolios or Websites as the medium for assessments, whereby students present all of their work in digital format.
From hypertext essays, shorter assignments, primary source documents, student-created presentations, podcasts, and/or films - all of their work is collected, reflected upon, and presented as a digital notebook or portfolio of their work
The aim is to gather all of their work together in ways that allow them to attain metacognitive understanding of not just the topic of their research or essay question, but for them to become aware of and reflect upon how they learned, what parameters enhanced or limited their understanding, methods, and analysis, and what they learned along the way.
Click the link to bring you to a Sample Template I have created for Student's to Create an ePortfolio
It takes only about 30 minutes to walk students through the creation of their ePortfolio, including uploading images, documents, videos, and text.
Depending on the course, I use a Portfolio Template to guide them. Click the link to see a sample template I recently created and used for business school students.
Snapshots of Student Portfolios
All of the student work for this Business School course was stored and presented through a digital format or ePortfolio.
(click through the photos for a glimpse at their portfolio work)
Students wrote a traditional business history research paper which they put in their ePortfolio.
They inserted pdf files of all of their sources.
They reflected on the research process, the writing process, what they learned, and how they learned it.
Other materials included their slide presentations, short films, essays, self-assessments, and midterm exams.
Teaching Digital History as a Discipline
My Teaching Philosophy
Teaching History Students to Do Digital History
at the University Level
Digital History is now a subdiscipline with its own historiography, theoretical issues and debates, and a wide-range of uses and methodologies.
All historians will likely engage with digital sources in the future and academic researchers need to become cognizant of the methodological issues, flaws, and possibilities.
History students who become teachers at Gymnasium or Secondary Schools will increasingly encounter digital sources and debates and need to embrace instructional technology which is best learned when modeled by their professors.
Many students will use history in jobs outside academia that will use and/or create digital history projects or products, some of which other academics will rely upon, and need theoretical and conceptual training alongside their history training.
Students are increasingly coming to the university technologically savvy and willing and eager to learn more digital methods for analyzing data and analyzing the past. We need to work with them to utilize cutting-edge methodolgies, even as they initially may exceed, our own technological skills or imagination.
As a person with a wide range of experience and training, and who has made false steps or seen digital projects become obsolete, I bring a a breadth of knowledge to a course that must inherently be both theoretical and practical in its methods and aims.
Teaching Future Teachers to Do Digital History:
All Teachers of the Future will have to be Digitally Literate
I have specialized in teaching future teachers about History, using digital history and encouraging them to do so through modelling it as well as creating digital history assessments and outcomes.
I have been learning digital history and instructional technology parallel with learning pedagogical theories and best practices.
I have also helped colleagues to become comfortable and imaginative with teaching digital history.
Aiding Professors
with Web Learning
Teachers at every level will need to be web-ready in short notice.
Digital Teaching challenges traditional pedagogies, especially the Lecture format and Discussion technique, as not as easily translated into viable online learning methods.
There are big differences between integrating digital technology and sources in the live classroom, in a hybrid format, and in full on-line courses (the latter has different formats as well). We need to learn how to do ALL of it.
Institutional resources and easy-to-use web platforms are making it easier for non-specialists to utilize the newest technologies.
Instructional Design
as a Discipline
Learning theories and tested strategies need to be integrated into the design of Web-based Learning.
Not all traditional teaching methods will work for students in a Web format.
Some students will thrive and excel with visual stimulation and learning, non-linear approaches, and the independence and flexibility it allows.
Design has rules - not just what is possible but what is accessible, pleasing to the eye, easy to use, and taps proven ways of learning.
Access brings up issues of designs that work for people with hearing, visual, or physical impairments. There are guidelines for best practice in accessibility.
Graduate-Level Digital History Methods
New and exciting digital tools are creating new methods for organizing, categorizing, and understanding sources.
Quantitative
Qualitative
Spatial
Layered
Visual Mapping
My Graduate Project: Quantitative Methods, Statistics, and Computer Analysis
In lieu of a second language requirement in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at New York University, I took a two-semester long course designed for historians to learn, understand, and critique quantitative history culminating in designing, conducting, and writing our own computerized quantitative history project. (It is described on my Research page or click the link in this title).
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