social media

Sifting Through the Social Media Hype (Part 3)

I want to close out this 3-part series with a few words about social media in the classroom. This can be both a positive experience for some as well as a walk on the slippery rocks for others. For me it has been a little of both. When I first dove in I felt intimidated by the possibilities and pressured to try everything. Even worse were feelings of guilt that I wasn’t doing enough with it. It helps to remember the following:

Very few so-called social media experts are history teachers.
Social media is about the sharing of information and not about building community.
You can’t do everything. Become comfortable with a few tools and explore their full range and potential. Less is more.
Allow yourself to fail.

Social Media Experts?

Let’s face it, social media is the hip thing to be doing in our classrooms. There is a great deal of pressure from within our school administrations and the broader teaching community. Even a quick perusal of this universe reveals a multitude of social media folks with the latest tool that will somehow change the way we teach. My advice is to always remember to stick with your fundamental goals. What skills that are specific to the study of history are you trying to impart to your students? Remember that the majority of these people are not history teachers and may not know very little about the kinds of skills that are specific to our discipline. You are the authority. One way to sift through talk is to find fellow history teachers who are engaged in the same projects. I’ve found Twitter to be an incredible resource. It’s easy to find people with similar interests and it’s a great way of sharing information and ideas.

Information v. Community

Quite often you will hear talk about the importance of connecting your students to a larger community beyond the confines of your classroom and school. While I am open to differences of opinion here, it is my view that the only community worth worrying about is the one that you interact with on a daily basis. While social media can play an important role in the strengthening of ties among students in your classroom, its pedagogical benefit is in the sharing of information. Sharing information does not, in and of itself, bring about community. Many of these tools offer students a way to make connections beyond the confines of the classroom, which can be incredibly fruitful. A Skype interview with an expert or radio interview offer new avenues for the gathering and sharing of information.

Less Is More

Take the time to explore the limits of specific web tools. Make sure you and especially your students understand why they are using a specific social media program. I can’t tell you how many horrifically awful YouTube videos I’ve seen. Most of them are done by students who have been given very little guidance by their teachers. Let’s face it, it is easy to say go make a video. Video production, however, is a wonderful way of getting students to think about the presentation of history to the general public. It is worth discussing how various filmic elements such as narrative, sound, and images come together to form a coherent interpretation. Try analyzing a segment of Ken Burns’s The Civil War as a part of their preparation. If you want your students to blog make sure they understand the format. Talk about what goes into an effective blog post and if the site is open to comments than discuss what kind of personal profile it is appropriate to present to the general public. Discuss the importance of collaboration when creating a wiki page or the inevitability and challenges that come with revisions to a Wikipedia page. And if it is something as simple as collecting images on Flickr make sure that students understand how cataloging works through tags.

Once you become comfortable with a few specific programs you can think about using them collectively for a more detailed project. One that I have been working on involves the development of a website that serves as a guide for tourists and those interested in the many Civil War related sites here in Charlottesville, Virginia. Another idea is the creation of an elective that would allow students to formulate their own conspiracy theory of a historical event that would involve the dissemination of online information. All of these uses involve different ways to present history to the general public and different tools force students to think critically about the organization and presentation of information. Most importantly, it gives students a sense of ownership of what they are studying in a way that goes far beyond a standardized test.

The Importance of Failure

I recently gave a talk to our graduating class and one of the things I wished for them was a certain amount of failure. Give yourself plenty of room to experiment and fail. It didn’t take me long to realize that there really is no set plan on how to use these tools in our classrooms. The sky is the limit. I’ve had my share of success and probably more failures and even experiences that I am still having difficulty assessing. For example, a few years ago I had students in a class I taught on Abraham Lincoln set up Facebook pages for the various people within his private and public circle. All of the profile information had to comply with the historical record. Once the individual pages were set up students could interact with one another by posting messages and links. The most hilarious aspect of the exercise were the decisions made as to who to “friend” and under what conditions someone might get un-friended. You can also use Twitter to role play historical figures. Monticello has their own Jefferson profile up on Twitter as does Mount Vernon. I don’t know whether I will ever do this again, but I am glad I gave it a shot.

In closing I think it is important to point out once again that we are not teaching social media. These tools can be explored in just about any type of academic setting. The question that we need to keep in mind is how it helps us to teach this subject called history.

Are History Textbooks On Their Way Out?

Over the past two years I’ve made the sharpest transitions in the way I approach the teaching of history. In my survey courses I’ve dispensed with the traditional textbook in place of individual secondary sources. I’ve also begun experimenting with Social Media applications as a way to broaden both the way my students communicate with one another as well as the audience for their projects. The place of the textbook in the survey course raises a host of questions about the purpose of the course and the skills that we, as teachers, hope to impart to our students. In a recent post, David Bill argues as to why textbooks ought to be permanently shelved in light of the advantages the Internet offers. On the face of it I agree with Bill. Not only are they much too expensive, they are also environmentally and economically unfriendly. The crux of his argument is as follows:

No matter how you slice it, a textbook cannot provide the same richness, depth, and perspective as the Internet. A textbook limits a student, it prevents inquiry and further investigation. As educators, if we are attempting to develop critical thinkers and challenge our students to ask thoughtful questions, they need to have access to multiple points of view and should be able to investigate on their own. A textbook cannot provide that, the Internet does.

To help make his point, Bill also includes a funny little satirical video made by a couple of high school students and their teacher which shares the limits of their history textbook. I love the fact that they use my AP textbook to make their point.

Yes, there is something cute about the video, but what in the end is the point? On the face of it there seems to be nothing mutually exclusive between the textbook and the Internet. My guess is that Joe has a laptop within arms reach and if he wants to access more information about Frederick Douglass or check out a map to be saved for future reference he can do so. Joe’s frustration is easy to identify and his point is well taken. If we are to keep the discussion on the level of the ease with which information can be accessed than this is a non-issue: Internet 1, textbook, 0. It seems to me, however, that the transition to a digital classroom is much more complex and involves questions that go beyond the ease with which students can navigate through dense amounts of information.

The tipping point in the Internet v. Textbook debate has much more to do with the way in which we conceive of the idea of the history survey as opposed to simply a question of information access. As I mentioned in a recent post, the history textbook fits neatly into a traditional course whose overarching goal is to communicate a foundational narrative that can be absorbed and regurgitated in one form or another. Within this framework instructors can introduce historical concepts such as perspective, causation, narrative, etc., but the textbook functions as the bedrock. It serves as a reminder (even if not intentional) that there is a standard narrative that can be known and consumed for purposes such as the cultivation of good citizenship and polite conversation. I should also mention that there is something very comforting about textbooks. They may be overpriced and boring as hell, but they do provide a bit of comfort to students who need something tangible at an arm’s reach. Even with my move away from textbooks to individual secondary sources I’ve had students inform me that they miss the textbook for these very reasons. Of course, I freely admit that this probably has more to do with how they’ve been conditioned to think of as the study of history from an early age as opposed to anything innate. Our student friend, Joe, may in fact be more of an exception than the rule. Some of our students, like Joe, who’ve embraced the Web2.0 Revolution have no doubt moved beyond this entirely and have embraced the potential of the digital classroom. For these students, the value of information is measured in relationship to the number and quality of hyperlinks extending to other sites as well as their ability to utilize it for their own purposes. In short, textbooks are static while the Internet is dynamic.

It’s become almost a truism that our students are much more technically savvy than the rest of us, but I’ve come to a different conclusion. Yes, they spend a great deal of time on the Internet, but this does not necessarily translate into an ability to navigate and manage its content and tools successfully and in a way that deepens their understanding of the past. The comfort level may be one thing, however, there are skills that still need to be taught. The move away from textbooks will only happen once teachers are trained to think of the Internet as a tool to help students think historically and as historians in their own right. It’s not just about being able to double-click for more information about Douglass or saving a map for future use. My point is that the usefulness of textbooks hinges not simply on the ease with which students can access information, but on how instructors conceive of their classrooms. In abandoning the textbook for the richness of the Internet, including Social Media tools as well as the vast array of primary sources, we are engaging our students to think about the process and presentation of history through the sifting of vast amounts of information. I suspect that this is the main reason why textbooks will not be abandoned in the near future; their role remains deeply embedded within the history curriculum and they function as an anchor in a vast sea of information. What we need is something more like a gestalt shift in our fundamental goals as history teachers. The rethinking of the history classroom must happen on the K-12 levels, but especially in our undergraduate and graduate schools of education. A few questions come to mind:

1. Is the study of history a set of facts to be memorized or a process to be experimented with and shaped into various forms?

2. Should we be emphasizing the complexity of fewer historic events over a cursory understanding of a more inclusive narrative?

3. To what extent are we comfortable as teachers with allowing students to draw their own conclusions about the past?

4. Are our classes designed to encourage students to think about history beyond the confines of our classrooms?

5. To what extent are we using our classes to encourage students to think about and weigh information?

Thanks for reading!