Making History on the Web

Making History on the Web
By Mary Delgado and Char Harteau

This article tells the tale two teachers, one working in the classroom, one working a online, to teach a middle school history class. The web base curriculum introduces the students to the material related to the historical subject. The pilot program taught student two units of United States history. The students would receive online instruction on their assignments for the week. Mary set up and worked the online section of the class. Char work with the students in class. The web pages the students were assigned to work with were fill with information. Mary picked colorful graphics and exciting link to engage the children in history. After the first couple units, student were ask to create a unit of their on a subject of US history that interested them. The students were able not only to apply their historical knowledge but their tech knowledge. They used web as a tool for their research on their unit. I think this joint in class and web base education can be really effective but the cost and ability of student to access the technology has to be factored in when attempting this type of project. Wisconsin Conservatory of Lifelong Learning middle school were this program took place is a special setting and would have many advantages when developing this tech base class. The cost of using the web base class would be prohibitive to many schools. I think that where available web base can be a great add-on but the classroom base technology should be the first priority of educators.

Q1. How would I use Internet in the history classroom?
A1. I would use the Internet as a primarily as a research tool in the class or library where the students could be monitored and instructed on the proper verification of web sources. The eduction in information verification would be helpful to students for life in general.

Q2. Should the development of these type of web base classes be continued?
A2. I think that the future of eduction will involve a great deal of distance learn at all levels of the education process and all types of experimental programs need to be tried. I think that the technology change so fast that there is danger in spending to much on untested ideas without enough data on their effectiveness.