Connecting the dots: History teaching in the 21st century classroom – juggling reason, technology and multi-media in the world of the young technophile.
Abstract
This article will focus on harnessing the latest in multi-media and technological
gadgetry in the modern history classroom. Teenagers find themselves at the cutting
edge of the world of “bits and bytes”, social media and a global network of
knowledge. It is at that point that the history teacher needs to meet them and help
them to engage with the past. A new horizon has opened up for the modern history
teacher who, as a student of change can pass on the skills of change management.
Looking into the past, the dots can be connected and scenario planning for
the future can begin. In the history classroom, which is by its very nature interdisciplinary
(because history is all about the story of what people do), various fields
of study and kinds of reasoning meet.
The modern history classroom should be relevant to teenagers navigating their
way through a rapidly changing world which has been shrunk by technology and
in which there has been an explosion of knowledge. It is the history teacher who
can put that knowledge to work, if he/she meets the teenager at the intersection
of technology and of the past. Knowledge alone is of little use if not tempered by
wisdom, and it is the historian who can apply “reason” to snippets of information.
In the 21st Century the history teacher must perform a delicate balancing act:
reason, technology and the multi-media world of the young technophile must be
juggled with consummate skill.