iHistory

please don't stay here

2006-08-21T21:01:00.000+10:00

I'm moving to WordPress - more functions, so go to http://ihistory.wordpress.com

The feed remains the same for posts and podcasts (http://feeds.feedburner.com)

Business end

2006-08-17T22:01:00.000+10:00

I've spent the day today typing. My eyes are sore, as are my hands. If anyone thinks teaching with technology is glamourous, they need to type for 5 hours straight.

This is the business end of the project. The local history trail excursion will hopefully be a relaxing time. But right now I need to write podcast scripts, record them and write fieldwork task sheets for each site that the students visit.

I'm struggling to keep the amount of tasks down. After the slaughteryard experience, I realised that my students will take a lot longer than I expected to complete tasks. However, I don't want to limit my questions to the obvious.

Future use of iHistory

2006-08-17T21:57:00.000+10:00

An idea for the future use of the iHistory project...

We could have a Bendigo-wide school competition, using the iHistory idea. Other history teachers could record podcasts about other places and buildings that I haven't thought of, and haven't had time to do, then collate them online.

Student groups from all 5 colleges could compete for prizes that the schools put up. Or perhaps local businesses could contribute prizes in exchange for coverage during the event.

Slaughteryard post-mortem

2006-08-15T18:43:00.000+10:00

Edward Bright's Slaughteryard

Today I road-tested the iHistory concept. In a couple of weeks we will take students out to visit 5 different sites over one day. Today was intended to show up what worked and what didn't.

It was a lovely day for a fieldtrip, although one of my students reckons that "fieldtrip" is an ugly Americanism. Four groups went out, armed with iRivers, a podcast on the slaughteryard building that lies in our school yard and a list of tasks that were required, plus a working pen and pencil. I went armed with a camera to record this momentous occasion.

David & Clay listening intently!

Overall, a great success! The students were engaged, said it was 'fun' (imagine that...Australian History fun!) and were really keen to know when the fieldwork day was on. There were a couple of issues:

1. Time was an issue. It took them a lot longer than I expected. I thought it would be all over in 30 minutes. But it actually went for about an hour....could have been the pleasure of being outside in the sun that induced them to drag it out! However, given that we have 5 sites to travel around in a fortnight, I need to be careful about the amount of tasks that I require them to do.

2. Teamwork was an issue. It wasn't so much that some people did all the work while others listened to radio on their mp3s and lazed in the sun (alright...it may have happened!) but more that groups did not split up tasks. They preferred to do everything together. I think this was because they were not confident with the nature of the task.

3. Understanding the tasks was sometimes an issue. In one task, they were required to record their observations using the voice function on the iRiver. However, they all simply wrote their observations very briefly. I wanted a more extended description. Perhaps I need to model that to them.

This experiment also highlighted the simplicity of using on-site and local sites for historical fieldwork.

The circular trunk foundations of the slaughteryard annex

Personal highlight - discovering the old foundations of an annex to the slaughteryard building. They are tree trunks about 20cm in diameter that have been cut to ground level, and are almost covered with grass.

An excellent trial!

Edward Bright's Slaughteryard

2006-08-15T08:54:00.000+10:00

Today I will be doing some historical fieldwork with the year 9s.

There is an old slaughteryard building on our property. The blood ran down the hill of Bright St to Job's Gully Creek, and boys used bladders of killed cows to play footy!

Listen the podcast here.

GTAV III - Fieldwork Fetish

2006-08-14T18:25:00.000+10:00

Fieldwork! The whole iHistory project is working towards a historical fieldwork day. But what about geography?

I've been to a couple of fieldwork sessions at the GTAV conference, and have been reminded of the historical and geographical skills that can be developed through fieldwork. We did an exercise: think of all the features and places within a 30 minute walk of your school. I thought of: mining sites, creeks and gullies, shops, land use, housing developments, cemeteries, streets, the school itself, weather. Also, for an older area like ours there aerial photos and maps over a long period of time.

We could focus on doing simple skills like mapping, surveying, measuring...just short activities. It verges on criminal that we are not using these free and local places.

GTAV II - iHistory in geography

2006-08-14T18:23:00.000+10:00

This post, unlike the last, does actually relate to iHistory. I went to a workshop at the conference yesterday on using movies, music, podcasts etc in geography. Eleanor Richards from The Kilmore International School uses all these in her (very) successful attempts to engage students in geography using media and technology with which they are thoroughly conversant.

Interesting, as it is more difficult to use this technology in geography classes because it is not a literary discipline.

History is directly concerned with primary sources such as diaries, journals, newspapers, books etc. These are all concerned with words and the significance of those words. History uses non-literary sources but as word suggests, it about telling a hiSTORY. Movies, music and podcasts are all 'wordy' sources.

Geography is about places and people, as well as the interaction between them. The primary source is the land. Words can be written about this source, but they are after the fact.

So, it requires an extra leap of creativity to use popular movies, music and podcasts to teach geography.

GTAV I (Geography Teacher's Association of Victoria)

2006-08-14T18:15:00.000+10:00

A groyne...sorry - groin

I'm at the GTAV Conference at the moment. OK, not history, but we'll forgive them.

Seriously though, I've been realising how much of a piece history and geography are. Place shapes events over time, and in turn, historical events affects physical and human geograph.

Laugh of the day 1...at my presentation on "Teaching Timor-Leste", a geographer enthused about finding a map of Timor Leste. I didn't think this was such a big deal, but the fact that the map had a scale of 1:25000 drew gasps of rapture from the other G teachers. Bizarre people. But, as I found out, having such detailed maps is essential for successful agricultural and infrastructure planning, without which Timor Leste will struggle to survive.

Laugh of the day 2...keynote presentation on Day 2 by Peter Wheeler, a PhD student, speaking about 'groynes', which are human-constructed walls to guide water (see above). Lovely sentences like "In 1964, the three groynes have been emplaced..." "The in-tides and out-tides creates turbulence around the groynes...". I know - juvenile, but I am imagining talking about groynes to Year 8s...a picture of 13 year olds unable to stop laughing, and me insisting "Groynes, not groins!"

Mmmm, free stuff. I haven't been to many subject association events, but if they give you as much free stuff as I got, I'm becoming a groupie. I've nabbed 2 new atlases (none of which we'll buy because they're prohibitively expensive), myriad posters and a box full of just-out-of-date VCE Geography textbooks.

Chinese podcast post-mortem

2006-08-11T00:12:00.000+10:00

I reckon this podcast was too long! My podcasts have been getting longer and longer. This one was 10 minutes...I reckon I might be getting to like the sound of my own voice too much. The students were getting restless after about 4 minutes, and then probably weren't listening after 8 minutes.

So is the problem:

student concentration span?
the length of the podcast?
the way the podcast is structured?

Regarding the concentration problem, it's no use ranting and raving about it - it's beyond my reach. The length is a problem: most songs (what students are mostly listening to) only last for 3-4 minutes. There may be correlation between their habitual use of mp3 players and their tolerance for the time of the podcast. If I created a TV show, their time tolerance would probably be higher.

I think the main problem is the structure of time. On other podcasts of longer length, I've noticed in the introductory spiel, they usually outline the main topics. The topics are often not related! So their could be segment on a historical topic, a segment on some new techno toy they've bought, and one on why their baseball team rocks...Is this viable for a podcast meant for educational purposes?

The Chinese on the Goldfields

2006-08-10T11:48:00.000+10:00

Wah Lim, Bendigo

Chinese people first came to Australia when convict transportation stopped. Because convicts had been used for labour, there was now a shortage. Chinese people were used as “indentured labourers”. “Indentured” means that they worked for a certain length of time for their employer.

By the way, if you thought that the word “indentured” had something to do with a “dentist” then you’re right. The word indenture comes from when the English drew up a contract for the worker. It would be written out twice on the one bit of paper, then torn in half – the jagged ‘teeth’ from the tear could then be fitted together later to show they were from the same contract.

Anyway, Chinese people did all the hack work of the colonies – clearing bushland, cooking, shepherding sheep, digging wells. You might think racism towards Asian people is a recent thing, but really it started way back in the gold rush days.

Listen to the podcast.

Dave's formula for history teaching success

2006-08-07T20:53:00.000+10:00

Howard's historical credibility is a little waterlogged

1. The Big Story
Give students a broad outline of the history of Australia. Key events need to be covered so that students have a "big story" to fit the "little stories" into - pre-European Aboriginal history; colonisation; settlement; gold; immigration; major wars.

2. The Little Stories I - by the teacher
We need to teach them some little stories, peppered with interesting and fascinating details about the people and times. I reckon it's crucial that students see history as "another world", but one that is connected to ours. It has to be somewhat escapist. I don't particularly care which 'little stories' are chosen, as long as they're interesting, and they connect to the big story.

3. The Little Stories II - by the students
Students need to investigate little stories in depth, finding out for themselves what life was like, what drove people and events, and how they affect our common life today. This usually starts with the history of themselves, or their families, and then broadens out to include their community, city and nation.

4. Historical Skills
Students have to be able to use historical skills in order to find out about the little stories. But I reckon the method of finding out history is necessarily last on my list for a good reason - I never bother about how to find something out until I want to find it out. And for teachers educating students who have been bored silly by Australian History, motivating students to know more about Australia's story is the main educational issue.

[Listen to the mp3 here]

Howards's History War

2006-08-07T20:50:00.000+10:00

St. Howard surveying his political dragons - the ultimate revisionist.

Over the past few years, Australian History has been hot property in Australia. Up until now, the ballyhoo has been about our telling of our indigenous history: different historians have battled publicly over the veracity of massacre stories. I'm currently reading Keith Windschuttle's "The Fabrication of Aboriginal History", a rebuttal of many of the claims made about violence towards Aborigines in 18th century Van Dieman's Land - a good read. I'm yet to make up my mind about his view, but he's certainly done his homework.

Now, however, our PM has weighed with his view on history teaching, particularly our telling of the story of Australian History. And that is his point - that we (as history teachers) are not telling a story, but instead allowing students to wallow in a mish-mash of themes and issues, without any sense of the narrative that drove, and drives, Australia's history.

Fair enough, I say. History has to be told in an engaging way, that fires the imagination and excites our minds, and motivates us to find out more about the themes and issues (oops!) that have shaped our nation.

Surely Howard can't mean that we just tell a story without any discussion of what the story means? But that's what we end up with if "themes and issues" are excised from the borders of Australian History. A story to be regurgitated at exam time, a fairy tale (of whatever political flavour) that is beyond critical examination. Ironically, Keith Windschuttle would agree - though on Howard's side in the "history wars", Windschuttle is demonstrating the value of criticising previous historical work. But under Howard's view of history, a story is simply told with no investigation of its meaning.

Surely Howard's not that obtuse. So I think he's up to something else. What? Well, ideally, he wants a particular version of Australian History taught to students, and he wants it nailed down in the curriculum. He wants, not just facts and dates, but a flavour of Australian History that plays up Australia's achievements, and plays down its failures.

I don't think that such an approach to teaching Australian History is achievable. Not because I'm a secret post-modernist who thinks that all parts of the story are equally valid, or that many different angles on the story are equally true - I don't. I don't think Howard's dream is achievable because all cohorts of students are different. They all connect with different parts of the story.

A student (in an English class) today told me that she would have studied Australian History if she could study Ned Kelly the whole time! Students need a broad-brush picture of the story so far in Australia, but they don't need to know all the details right now. What they need to do is be encouraged to investigate details of Australian History that they are excited by.

If Mr. Howard insists on making history curriculum a set body of knowledge, he will be shooting himself in the foot: students will run a mile from such a pre-determined view of what they need to know. Surely the outcome that we want is young people who think Australian History is interesting!

So what's my formula for success?

[Listen to the mp3 here]

Overseas Links

2006-08-06T20:31:00.000+10:00

In my last post, I mentioned that I had found a couple of others doing history podcasts. I've emailed these guys - one of these emailed back to suggest a podcast exchange with my students, focussing on the local history of our respective areas.

Fantastic way for my students to connect internationally and learn about an aspect of their locality as well!

His website is Speaking of History.

Other history blogs and podcasts

2006-08-04T18:39:00.000+10:00

Found a couple of other comrades in the podcasting game:
Speaking of History
Making History

Extensions

2006-08-01T12:32:00.000+10:00

I didn't expect my Australian History class to be as industrious as they are. They aren't particularly fond of discussion, as they don't know each other well. But they are very keen on investigating and finding out answers.

They need a challenging work than what I'm giving them. I am thinking that, for their assignment on gold, I should include a segment where they have to research the history of a gold-mining site near where they live: photos, interviews, dimensions, companies who owned it etc.

Gold podcast - how did it go? + Process issues

2006-07-30T20:59:00.000+10:00

As I said in the last post, I need to check how students are picking up information from the podcasts. For the introduction to the gold rush podcast, I wrote about 5 questions up on the board, so that they had something to listen for. Good news! most of them were able to easily pick up the information.

I also asked them about:
- having the same intro music and spiel; thought it was good for recognisability
- having me do all the voice; didn't want to record with their voices!
- listening to podcast and doing other stuff; no problem for most.

Introduction to the Gold Rush

2006-07-27T11:17:00.000+10:00

This week, my students will begin to study the Australian gold rush, particularly as it relates to Bendigo. Bendigo wouldn't exist without gold, as the land's not great and there's no river to speak of. The old buildings that dominate the city are the legacy of that time, as is the collapsible ground; Bendigo's underground is like a honeycomb.

This time, I'm going to see if they remember much of the podcast, and ask them about ways to help them retain more information.

Local history interviews

2006-07-17T18:19:00.000+10:00

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Bendigo

Podcasts on history need interesting details, and so in search of that I went out with my iRiver and interviewed Bendigo's local custodians of the various places students will visit on their iHistory tour. Pat Dyball at the Joss House, John Duffin at Sacred Heart Cathedral, Shirley at the Tramways museum, Ross Simmons at the Old Bendigo Gaol, Jim Evans of the Bendigo Historical Society and Bev from the Eaglehawk Heritage Society.

It's amazing the extra stuff you can know after 30 minutes of talking with an expert...the iRiver was fantastic as they pick up voice very well, and I'm able to go back over the interviews and glean stuff to use in the podcasts. I'm thinking of using excerpts from the interviews in the podcasts themselves...permission is needed I'm sure.

Did you know that most gothic cathedrals (such as Sacred Heart) have a Devil's Pillar on the outside...?

Elluminate Session

2006-07-13T11:45:00.000+10:00

Knowledge Bank, one of the iHistory project's funders, had an "elluminate" session yesterday. It combines instant messaging, voice and a whiteboard on which you can type, draw and upload photos.

It is a fantastic tool for sharing ideas and getting feedback. Trying to have a conversation via email is clunky and cumbersome, and phone conferences don't allow visuals, so this combined the two, with the added bonus of voice. Also, the moderator can take participants on a tour of a website if they wish.

The downside was distorted voice, particularly if someone hadn't set up the voice settings properly or if they were using the laptop microphone. A headset was really essential for this. Mine's a USB one, which means it cancels out some extraneous (love that word!) noise.

Introduction to Indigenous History

2006-07-11T08:37:00.000+10:00

This is a podcast introducing my students to indigenous history.

It involves some brief comments on historical sources, Aboriginal culture and history. Students will then go on to complete some written work.

I'm hoping to complete a podcast a week...basically it means that I'm staying up late on Monday night, and scaring the neighbours as I speak loudly and (hopefully) clearly into the microphone! I also keep having to take the battery out of the clock in my study - it has an amazingly loud tick.

Again, to subscribe to iHistory, put http://feeds.feedburner.com/ihistory into your podcast aggregator.

Australian History introductory podcast

2006-07-05T14:17:00.000+10:00

Yesterday, I got students to listen to a short podcast about what we're going to study in class this semester (see previous post). The students enjoyed the podcast, laughing along to my crap jokes and slightly out of date music...total quiet in the classroom, which I'm sure would not have been the case had I attempted to say the same stuff from the front.

A couple of problems:
1. It takes time to get the podcasts onto the mp3 players. I had to ask students to drop their mp3s off at the start of recess in order to set it up. This took up the whole recess, mainly because there is a variety of synchronising methods (WMP, iTunes, folder transfer). Having students download the podcast themselves doesn't really work: not all of them have internet connections at home, and if done at school, all the school computers would need WMP and iTunes...which they don't. In addition, students would need internet credit at the school...many of them don't.

2. Some basic mp3 players simply plonk the track onto the top of hundreds of other songs. Unlike iRivers and iPods, they don't sort songs into artists, albums, genres etc. So students had to scroll through tracks until they found the right track...frustrating!

Overall though, I'm really happy with how it went.

Introductory Podcast to Australian History

2006-07-02T13:10:00.000+10:00

I'm planning to use this podcast in the first class I have this semester. The problem is how to get it onto students' mp3 players considering that they have different programs that synchronise with the mp3 player.

First student podcasts - ACDC

2006-07-01T20:46:00.000+10:00

Last semester, as a sort of prep for me, I got my Australian History students to create a podcast on any topic. This both filled up the dead time after exams and allowed to me to see what difficulties they had.

This one is about ACDC!

Podcast scripts

2006-07-01T20:39:00.000+10:00

I've been writing some podcast scripts - one to introduce my new students to Australian History and another about an old slaughteryard on the school property. Though I am an English teacher, the process of perfecting a script is arduous. As always, it is difficult to write something that will sound good. I did have a go at speaking extempore, but there needs to be some sort of progression of ideas and facts, and I'm not good at doing this off the top of my head...at least not in the measured, clean and clear way that podcasts require if they are to be understood.

Students Creating Podcasts

2006-06-13T14:02:00.000+10:00

I'm using my current Australian History students as guinea-pigs. I want to find out about the difficulties students might have creating podcasts. These students won't actually be doing the iHistory project next semester, a fact that they're most upset about! They reckon using mobile phones and mp3s at school is pretty attractive, so there goes my worry of students being resentful about authority figures co-opting their expressions of independence.

This is the basic process students have gone through to create their podcast:
1. Think of an idea: I've let them choose anything...because it's the end of term!
2. Write a script: they found this difficult, because they didn't understand the concept of a podcast. I found that describing it as a "radio show" was pretty helpful. Radio shows include music, monologues and interviews, and so that's what students are including in their scripts. The genre of script-writing is new to some, and an aspect I need to work on.
3. Choose music: I rip their music onto my computer so we can use it in Audacity.
4. Record script: 3 groups have recorded so far and the results are pretty good!

Students have a tendency to talk too fast and sometimes overlap each other, and that's reflective of the "radio show" genre, which often has commentators "butting in" on each other. But that's really the main problem. One group came to a point in the recording where they wanted to insert a song, but they didn't have the song, so they abandoned the whole process! They didn't realise that we could split up their commentary and insert music at the appropriate moments. Obviously I didn't explain that enough...

iRivers have landed; Technology up-take

2006-06-05T14:57:00.000+10:00

The iRivers have arrived! I'm like a kid at Christmas...except now it means I really have to do something. I've given one each to myself and my two team-mates, Sue Knight and Rebecca John, with instructions to "play with them"! I'm having no trouble doing that at all.

One of the main barriers to "technology up-take" among teachers is fear. Last year I ran an inservice on using data projectors. That's a euphemism - I just showed people how to turn it on and off, how to get something on the screen etc. What struck me most was how scared people were of breaking the thing! Fair enough, when it costs a few beers to replace the lamp. But it did seem over-the-top, as if the data projector was going to launch itself across the room and smash itself to pieces if we touched the wrong button.

I'm not very comfortable yet with the iRiver. I have never operated an mp3 player before, but it seems to be pretty easy - it has a good hierarchy of functions, so that I don't get lost.

I did have a problem getting 'playlists' onto the iRiver. In Windows Media Player (WMP) you can construct playlists, which are lists of songs from different albums, put in the one place. So I have a "Favourite Classical Music" playlist. But when I transferred this playlist onto the iRiver, it split the songs up again. Go here for the solution.

Epsom PS

2006-06-01T08:24:00.000+10:00

Spoke to Jenny Ashby at Epsom PS. She's using Macs to create enhanced podcasts (with stills photography and movie footage), but I can't find a way to do the same with Windows. She is also involved in a podcast for Apple users in the Bendigo area - BEAUT.

Her plan for Epsom PS students is to have them interview people in the community for the 150th anniversary of the school.

Very inspirational, but disappointing that I don't have a Mac.

ahhhh

2006-05-31T12:31:00.000+10:00

hi, sue knight here SOSE coordinator from eaglehawk secondary college. My collegue Dave Fagg is dragging me out of the Dark Ages towards iPod enlightenment. Boy has he bitten off more than he can chew.

Sound problems with Audacity

2006-05-29T16:41:00.000+10:00

I noted previously that Audacity's output volume is pretty low. This was confirmed when Dave Jobbings at the Podcast Directory for Educators told me that my submitted podcasts were pretty low.

There's a good site for this here.

One simple way to get the output volume higher is to select the part of the recording that you want to make louder, then go to "Effects", then "Amplify". Bump up the dBs and tick the "allow clipping" box.

Buying stuff!

2006-05-29T16:36:00.000+10:00

I've just ordered 5 H10 iRivers. The H10 is a 20GB mp3 player. Here's a pic. I chose iRiver because, unlike ipods, you don't need other accessories to record, as they have an inbuilt mic. They are also a bit chunkier, which is good for being handled by a lot of people at school, and they can't get lost as easily.

For the techheads out there, here's a full list of specifications.

What is iHistory?

2006-05-26T09:07:00.000+10:00

iHistory grew out of my observation that most of my students are constantly using their mp3 players and mobile phones. They are extremely comfortable with this technology, and I wanted to find a way to integrate it into learning experiences - in this case, Australian History. Students will be placed in teams, and will navigate their way around the town, listening to podcasts about various historical sites and events. They will also have a list of "evidence" that they will need to collect - voice memos, mobile phone photos etc.

I've got some funding to do this through the Victorian Education Department, and so Eaglehawk Secondary College (for whom I work) will be buying some mp3 players for the project. That's essential, because our school does not have the kind of money needed.

iHistory podcast!!

2006-05-22T23:51:00.000+10:00

I've finally found a site that allows us to podcast for free!

Instead of clicking on links, you can now subscribe to ihistory. Here's how.

1. You'll need an aggregator, or podcast subscriber, such as iTunes - this is free to download and works for PCs and Macs.

2. Then go to the bottom right hand corner of this blog, and you will see an image that looks like

3. Right-click this and select "Copy Link Location"

4. The next step will depend on your podcast subscriber program. In iTunes, go to "Advanced", then "Subscribe to podcast..."

5. Press Ctrl+V...this will paste the necessary info (RSS feed for techies) into your aggregator.

Voila!

Now, each time iTunes (or your podcast software) updates, it will look for new podcasts from iHistory.

The iHistory Concept - Part 2

2006-05-22T20:33:00.000+10:00

This is a short explanation of the iHistory concept - Part 2

The iHistory Concept - Part 1

2006-05-22T20:31:00.000+10:00

This is an short mp3 explaining the iHistory concept - Part 1

Audio recording

2006-05-22T11:23:00.000+10:00

Currently, I'm experimenting with Audacity. It allows voice tracks, you can import midi and mp3 files and it seems to have pretty good recording pick-up, even with just an in-built laptop microphone.

I haven't worked out all the functions yet, but it seems as though voice recording comes out much softer than an imported mp3 file, but it's pretty easy to adjust the output level of each track that you lay down.

Each time you press the record button, a new track is created. So if you stop recording, and then start again, it's best to press pause, otherwise you could end up with dozens of audio tracks for a short amount of recorded time.

Audacity is pretty intuitive, meaning it's easy to use for basic voice recording with a music track underneath. The only tricks are setting up the microphone and exporting as an mp3. Go here for a really good step-by-step guide to using Audacity

Possible Barriers

2006-05-21T23:09:00.000+10:00

One of the possible barriers to this project’s success is the very real likelihood that students will resent the co-option of their technology into learning experiences. Students may perceive the covert use of mp3 players and mobile phones as a way to subvert the classroom rules, and communicate with classmates (particularly with mobiles).

On the other hand, they may embrace the use of “their” technology as evidence that teachers are finally using methods that students feel comfortable with.

First go at podcasting

2006-05-21T22:17:00.001+10:00

Well, this is my first go at podcasting - the link is here

Have a go and see if it works