Wineburg – Online Portfolio

Essay: “Advantages of Teaching in a Digital World”

Teaching students in the 21^st century comes with several challenges, and the challenges allow educators to tweak their lesson plans to adjust to the ever-changing environment. In general, people are inundated by the digital world; there is so much information overload that most people can get overwhelmed. Consumers of the digital world are less than 2 or 3 clicks (with reliable internet service) away from discovering and learning about the past instantaneously. For more than a decade, people have been programmed to search online for convenience without thinking about the complexities of what is happening to the way they search online and how information is displayed and received by the consumers. There is no fine print to read when it comes to encountering the search engine. If there is such a thing, then most of the consumers of the digital world have missed it. The most popular search engine is Google, and my students and I are consumers of it. Unfortunately, people are not taught how to search properly and be skeptical of search results and websites. The massive amounts of information in the form of text, images, and videos are on the web; but people must be aware of how, what, why, and who they search online. Since students rely on the web for recreational and academic purposes, they can learn from teachers to be smart consumers of the digital world. Educators can use the web for providing credible information and show their students how to examine, evaluate, and analyze information on the web. The malleability of the past in the digital world has made it easier to teach about and help our audience to engage with the past.

Even though the web has made it easier to teach about the past, there are some unsettling challenges that complicate the work of teachers. The mass reliance on Google to conduct research is one of them. “Since search engines are becoming a preferred method for discovering, retrieving, and organizing scholarly information, it is critical that we understand the emerging trends” (Rieger). College undergraduate students tend to search for topics in Google rather than the suggested library databases because it is very popular, convenient, user-friendly, visually appealing, and most used search engine. Most of the time, Google displays the results on several pages, but most students usually view the first page of results. In the first page, they select the first 3 links to view. Sometimes, students will view the remaining links and quite possibly the 2^ndor 3^rd page of the results. Most people have been programmed to just click and view without carefully considering what they selected. That is when the educator comes in to help the students. In addition to all the lesson plans they are required to teach students about a subject, teachers might have to consider teaching students how to use search engines, evaluate the web sources, and analyze them for academic purposes. Unfortunately, most of the search is completed away from the campus when students leave. So, the educator just has to hope his or her students will be cautious and aware of how and what they search on the web.

On the flip side, the digital world has provided several great ways for teaching students about the past. One great way to teach about the past without being inundated with links of historical information from a simple search is teach the students how to evaluate the search results. Educators can teach the students about key terms for search results such as SEO and explain how search engine results are displayed on the screen. An educator might consider asking the students to conduct a Google search of a historical term from an electronic device in different settings, or they can conduct a Google search with the same laptop, tablet, or smartphone from two different settings (e.g. coffee shop, campus, home, etc). They can compare their results and discuss the differences and similarities with the entire class. Then, the educator can teach students how to examine and evaluate links. For instance, “the goal is to encourage searchers [students] to integrate information effectively and efficiently by evaluating credibility of a source, and using and citing information ethically and legally” (Rieger). Students will learn to question search engine results and begin to evaluate which websites are credible or not. This lesson will teach them to be smart consumers of the web.

The digital world provides excellent resources on the web that students are unable to see in person. Historic sites with valuable and interesting information are crucial to foster historical thinking. Educators who would like to teach students about history with primary sources can have access to them on the web. Educators can introduce credible, historical websites and provide a short lesson for students to examine a primary source without leaving the classroom. In “Why Historical Thinking is Not About History,” Sam Wineburg makes a good point by stating, “Reliable information is to civic intelligence what clean  air and clean water are to public health” (16). Educators can propose two questions to help their students learn to evaluate sources for reliable information: “Who owns a site? Who links to it?” (Wineburg 16). By answering these two questions, students can begin to evaluate the website. Also, a digitized primary source with text can be compared with a transcription of it. The educator may ask 1 or 2 questions to help students to examine both sources. Sometimes, when the physical site is too far away for students and educators to visit in person, the website of the physical site provides digital resources for helping the educator to provide an engaging history lesson for his or her students.

Another teaching method that teachers can do is to incorporate a lesson that helps students learn how information is posted on the web. Educators can use Wikipedia as part of a lesson to teach students how information is posted in a digital space. They can uncover complexities in history by conducting research on certain Wikipedia entries with historical information. For example, Brown and Olsen assigned their students to revise a Wikipedia entry on Tianamen Square after learning about it for a several weeks. They conclude that “one of the principal tasks of historians is to not let the complexities of history go unnoticed. Wikipedia’s ubiquity has made it a useful forum to communicate such complexities to the public, as well as an effective tool for future historians to improve their academic abilities” (Brown & Olsen). Also, students can learn to compare the information between Wikipedia and a historical website. They will learn to ask questions and begin to think historically about the information on the web. Also, they will inquire more about the past. Providing a lesson for students to engage with history by examining, evaluating, researching, analyzing, and editing information on the web, teachers can use the web as means of teaching how information is posted on the web.

Finally, there are free digital tools on the web that educators can introduce to students to work with historical evidence. For data mining, educators can introduce easy and user-friendly digital tools such as Voyant and Wordle to examine the text of a historical document and how the words appear in context. Educators should “make sure your [students’] visualizations expose something new, hidden, non-obvious” (Cohen). The visualizations of the data mining will help students to uncover something different or new. Also, they can use mapping tools as visual reference of key historical places and uncover some complexities of geo-history. Working with digital tools to understand and analyze historical evidence allows students the opportunity to think about history in a different way. It also helps them to uncover interesting things and discover new information to fuel their inquiring minds. There are so many great digital tools that educators can introduce to students to help them work with historical evidence and to help them to foster historical thinking.

Despite the challenges and downfalls of a malleable past in a digital world, it makes it easier for educators to teach about and to help students engage with the past in multiple ways. The digital world has helped educators teach students about search engines and evaluating search links. It also introduced the concept of learning about the past in a digital space, especially when the physical space is out of reach. They learn to examine and evaluate digitized primary sources on the web. Students learn to use digital tools to analyze historical evidence on the web and uncover complexities in history. According to Kelly, “the best way to use digital media to teach them to see history as we see it is to create learning opportunities that make it possible for our students to do history—to practice it as we practice it—to help them make history, using their own creative impulses, rather than simply giving us what they hope is the correct answer to a question we have posed” (“Teaching History”). The malleability of the past in the digital world can have its challenges, but it can help educators find ways to teach students to be smart consumers of the web while learning about the past.

Bibliography

Brown, J. & Olsen, B. M. (2012). Teaching Tiananmen: using Wikipedia in the undergraduate classroom to learn how to write recent History. American Historical Association. Retrieved from https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/april-2012/teaching-tiananmen

Cohen, Dan. (2016). It’s about Russia. Digital Humanities: Theory & Practice. Retrieved from http://edchnm.gmu.edu/dhcert/sites/default/files/pdf/Its_About_Russia.pdf.

Kelly, T.M. (2013). Teaching History in the Digital Age. Digital Humanities. Retrieved from http://edchnm.gmu.edu/dhcert/sites/default/files/pdf/TeachingHistoryintheDigitalAge.pdf.

Rieger, O.Y. (2009). Search engine use behavior of Students and Faculty. First Monday, 14(12). Retrieved from http://www.firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/%20view/2716/2385

Wineburg, S. (2016). “Why History thinking is not about History. History News, 71(2),14-16. Retrieved from http://resource.aaslh.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2016/10/Wineburg-Spring16-a.pdf

Response to Wineburg’s “Why Historical Thinking is Not About History”

From an academic perspective, educators have the potential to teach students, who are also consumers of information, to be cautious of the information that is posted on the web and to examine the sources in order to avoid being programmed to just click and accept information on the web. As long as educators are able to practice what they preach, students can learn to be wise consumers of the web. Being skeptical is not necessarily a bad thing because it allows the student and consumers to ask questions and see things differently. According to Wineburg, “What once fell on the shoulders of editors, fact-checkers, and subject matter experts now falls on the shoulders of each and every one of us” (16). The question is “Who will teach them?” Educators should help their students understand the various points of learning to examine and evaluate their sources as a beginning stage of the historical thinking process. Wineburg provides a great suggestion and that is the digital toolbox. He proposes 2 questions for students to think about when examining and evaluating an online source: “Who owns a site? Who links to it?” because “we teach students how to evaluate sources by asking questions about the author and the context, and by asking questions about their supporting evidence” ( Wineburg 16). Instead of just clicking away at the links that appear at the top of a Google search (or other search engines), students should learn to examine the links by asking questions.

Teachers may consider providing a lesson with at least 2 or 3 activities on how to examine search engine results. To begin the lesson, students can learn key terms such as SEO, Search Engine Optimization, and read articles by Nicholas Carr and Sam Wineburg. The teacher might even consider having the students read about Eszter Hargittai’s Northwestern University study on college searches in Google, which is mentioned in Wineburg’s article. The other lesson will include activities on how to examine, evaluate, analyze, and edit Wikipedia entries. Since “the internet has obliterated authority” (Wineburg 14), “search engines should play a role in building ‘digital literacy’ in order to help searchers more effectively find, analyze, and use information. The goal is to encourage searchers to integrate information effectively and efficiently by evaluating the credibility of a source, and using and citing information ethically and legally” (Rieger). Teachers can provide credible and reliable websites with historical evidence to help students begin examining primary sources. It will help students have an idea of what a reliable, historical website with primary sources would look like. The next lesson is to teach students to work with primary sources by asking questions, analyzing them, and learning to appreciate them as part of history. Eventually, the students will learn to create their own history projects for a historical topic that is hidden or partially-hidden on the web. The students will learn to be wise consumers as long as teachers provide the educational platform that allows them to ask questions, investigate questions, and analyze historical evidence.

Response to Readings

How have history teachers responded to technological change in the 20^th and 21^st centuries?

The technological changes in the 20^th and 21^st centuries have encouraged history teachers to think differently about teaching history. To remedy the traditional method of teaching students to memorize content or factual information such as dates, people, places, and events, history teachers have responded with different ideas and approaches to teaching history in engaging and interesting ways. Most of the history teachers agree that the textbook should not be the only resource for teaching history. In early 21^st century, Wineburg responded by informing history teachers to be aware of the “large-scale testing that was introduced to American classrooms in the 1930s” that “ran counter to teachers’ notions of what constituted average, below average, and exemplary performance” (“Crazy for History” 4). The students were generating answers that were taught to them from a textbook that probably eliminated “metadiscourse” and citations of primary sources (Wineburg 493). In late 20^th century, Wineburg argued that people need to stretch their understanding of the past because they have a tendency to “contort the past to fit the predetermined meaning we have already assigned to it” (“Historical Thinking and Other Natural Acts” 490). By encouraging students to look beyond their own experience or what they already know is challenging, but it will lead them to discovering something different about the historical evidence. Levesque responded by proposing an approach to finding a bridge between content/substantive and procedural knowledge. In Thinking Historically, Levesque argues that “the narrative should not be considered the only possible or affordable tool to present their interpretations” (137). His approach is quite structured and logical, but it makes sense as a teaching method.

Calder and Kelly responded to teaching history by incorporating procedural knowledge. They embrace the concept that teachers are able to foster historical thinking by engaging the students. Calder’s teaching method of uncovering history encourages his students to engage with both types of sources and to come up with historical questions in a collaborative, learning environment. Calder encourages his students to view a documentary film, examine primary documents, ask questions, write about their questions as an essay assignment, and collaborate with fellow classmates to share and inquire about their findings. Calder’s approach is based on routines because “routines are essential for learning,” and they “provide students with necessary scaffolding of instructional and social support as they struggle to learn the unnatural act of historical thinking” (1369). Kelly and McClymer argue the importance of digital media and technology for teaching history. McClymer’s contends that the scarcity to abundance of sources allows “students to engage with new sources” and “enables students to become more active learners” while learning history. In “The History Curriculum in 2023,” Kelly makes an excellent argument for his response to approaching history in the 21^st century: “If we want to be true to ourselves as educators and true to our students’ needs and expectations, we need to admit that the skills we have been teaching them since the late 1890s are no longer sufficient preparation for the world those students will live in once they graduate” (Kelly). Kelly provides 4 different skills (making, mining, marking, and mashing) to engage students and foster historical thinking. In each skill, Kelly mentions the importance of collaboration with other disciplines interiisuch as art, computer science, library science, graphics design, etc. Also, Kelly takes it to another level by emphasizing the possible results for students to compete in a globally competitive world if they learn to work with technology and/or hone their skills with learning how to code and to utilize different digital tools.

Then, there are historians who argue that a certain organization might be able to lead the way for history teachers and revise the curriculum of teaching history. Historians Orrill and Shapiro argue that the AHA should organize a committee or center, so “the AHA can again lead the profession in a quest for a unified educational vision” (751). With or without a unified educational vision led by AHA, history teachers have taken control by devising new approaches and methods to teaching history in the digital age.

First Piece of the Puzzle

For my final project, my initial ideas include several questions that focus on teaching about the incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans during WWII and how the historical evidence provides an insight into what happened before the war ended. One of the novels that they are assigned to read is John Okada’s No-No Boy. Okada’s novel focuses on more about what happens to Japanese Americans after WWII, but he does begin the novel referencing what had happened to many Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The following questions might help my students to begin thinking about the historical issues surrounding an unforgotten and partially hidden period in American history:

What have American history courses revealed about the treatment of Japanese Americans during WWII? Why study this part of American history? Are you able to make the connections between the primary and secondary sources? What inquires or historical questions can be derived from viewing, examining, and analyzing the historical evidence? What arguments can be constructed by viewing the primary and secondary sources? Based on your research and reading, what do you think is missing or hidden?

The above questions are challenging for students to make sense of because they were taught from an omniscient narrative that did not include any humanistic approach to learning about the selected historical content. It is a topic that most students have had little exposure to because it is another ugly part of American history. Also, students may have had no exposure to this part of American history, which makes me very sad because I was one of those students. During my freshmen year in high school, my Honors History teacher scanned over a small paragraph in a textbook about the internment camps during WWII and told us that it was not important and it was not on the exam. Fast forward many years later, I have been delving into the unimportant historical content to learn more about it; and I began to “uncover” more interesting sources to investigate and analyze. The historical issues pertaining to the treatment of Japanese Americans during WWII make my students feel at unease about what happened, and some of them hesitate at first to learn more about it because it places them in an uncomfortable position. At this point, some of the students begin to ask more developed questions and have a sympathetic or empathic understanding. As a result, they either have to choose “to learn about the rhinoceroses or to learn about unicorns” (Wineburg 498).

(Postscript for Responding to “The History Curriculum in 2013”)

The ideas expressed in Dr. Kelly’s “The History Curriculum in 2013” present a different approach to teaching history. Instead of focusing only on historical content knowledge, he provides 4 different concepts/skills (making, mining, marking, and mashing) with the use of technology to help educators teach history in a new and interesting way. He provides examples for each concept and how each concept can be incorporated into the history curriculum. Kelly knows the importance of digital resources and how they can be used to teach history in a different way. Echoing the move to teach history with a different approach such as Wineburg, Levesque, Calder, and McClymer, Kelly’s ideas are another approach to teaching history and fostering historical thinking. However, Kelly goes a step further with his approach to teaching history by emphasizing that undergraduate students will be better equipped for graduate programs, employment, and research opportunities because they have gained additional skills while studying history.