Reflection 5. Week 6.

This week we can choose our favourite technology tool and reflect upon that. I am choosing digital video such as YouTube. Although I have talked about YouTube previously I will present new uses in this blog.
 
History is one of my teaching areas and I am quite passionate about the subject. History is the past, it is the study of the past and who we are and why we are that way. History is knowledge that we acquire by investigating events and circumstances of the past.

Human knowledge must come to fruition through reliable and independent sources. Investigation of the past comes from primary and secondary sources. Primary sources are original materials ( eg.newspapers/diaries/newsreels/first person interviews ) and secondary sources are an account of the original materials by another person.  Scholarly history should come almost exclusively from primary sources. 

As a secondary history teacher,  primary sources such as diaries, first person accounts, newspapers etc are very difficult to source for history students. Previously, a majority of history study in this setting is from secondary sources.

YouTube is an absolutely wonderful PRIMARY contemporary historical resource available right in our classrooms! Lending from the SAMR model of redefinition, watching an actual historical event on digital media is technology that allows for previously inconceivable learning.
Before the internet these recorded events were stored in museums, private collections, government archives etc and this type of material was simply unavailable to a secondary school. 

Certainly as with any historical study we must keep a cynical approach when searching digital media for authenticity and originality.

As teachers we are seen more and more as becoming facilitators of information. In our quest to teach the curriculum we guide our students towards the sources of information to promote complex thinking in the students. We endeavour that the students will investigate, analyse, pull apart the information to meet their task.
YouTube is a great tool to do just that. Instead of answering a history topic through secondary source text books a student can research a historical event on YouTube and actually watch an event take place. They can also find first person interviews of people that were actually at a historical event.

 

 

The video above is from a 1957 interview with some survivors from the sinking of the Titanic.  This clip is amazing historical material that can be used for historical evidence. For example, history books tell us that the Titanic was the first to use the new (at the time) SOS distress call.  In one part of this clip this is stated and the actual radio operator is interviewed.

 

Manual Arts is also my teaching area and digital media can be an

efficient use of time in the classroom.  Almost any building          project, use of tools, use of materials, safety films etc are available   on YouTube.  Instead of having to search for these resources elsewhere, they can easily be available to all in the classroom. 
                                                                                                                                                                 

 

                                     Use of Wood Lathes

                                   
                                   Safety in the workshop