Prompt: Write a blog post in response to our class on digital history.
With today’s globalized communication, it is not surprising that many of the old educational teaching methods are become a thing of the past. No longer are students needing to memorize details such facts, dates, concepts, or theories. Instead students have access to all of this information at their finger tips. Electronic devices, whether you like it or not, are attached to most student’s hip. With instant access to the information, why are we so afraid of moving forward and embracing the future of information gathering?
There are several different tools available on the internet that students can use to not only gather information, but compare or share that information in ways that was not possible in the past. Tools like GapMinder, NY Times Chronicle, Twitter, and many other websites allow for this. By using these tools students have a way to compare information in a way and make critical comprehension of relationship between data set that would otherwise never been compared of before. As Historians, it is our duty to question and re-evaluate the past. We must take both old and new data, and examine it in a way to see if concept “X” effect concept “Y”. As teachers in today’s environment it is more important to teach students to question what they have seen and read about; take the concepts and have a debate with fellow scholars around the world. This kind of debate can be done with Twitter. Students would get more out of lesson if they where forced to defend their reasoning behind a theory that they came up with, than they would by writing a paper about something that happen in the past. That being said it is still important to not forget to teach students how to hold onto facts and use them in a way not only teaches them, but helps them think critically about the historical evidence.
Benedick, Keven. Image. The Digital Transformation Imperative. Web Access November 1, 2015. Web Retrieved Link