Reflecting upon today's class, I've just finished having a metacognitive conversation with myself in the virtual world of my head, which brings me to where I left off in class: in the 17th century. Reading, writing, and teaching about historical events, stretching from Ancient Egypt to its recent revolution, for example, ought to be interactive, both imaginatively and intellectually.
So, then, how does one bring his or her students into this virtual world we create for our students as we try to teach them a thing or two about history? How, in other words, do we captivate the intellectual curiosities (and imaginations) of our students?
This is what, I think, us "history guys" will attempt to do as we create our lesson plan for next week. Our lesson plan will explore some technological advancements through the centuries. We will begin with some sort of open-ended question about technology. It is our impression, at this early stage of formulating our ideas, that most folks will view "technology" (broadly construed) through their 21st century spectacles.
Technologically speaking, computers, tablets, and other forms of digital devices that are, say, more than a few years old are oftentimes considered out-of-date. So in our lesson, we will stretch the chronological timeline, so to speak, by looking at some historical artifacts (no pun intended) that were once considered state-of-the-art. Included among the many "technological" innovations through the ages are: the printing press; vellum; paper / pencils (mechanical or otherwise); 8-tracks records; CDs and MP3s.
Wanting to make our lesson plan as multidisciplinary as possible, perhaps other members from our MAC cohort can suggest a technological innovation from their field, from abaci to calculators, for example?
Your last comment had me really thinking. As a future teacher of Spanish, I was trying hard to think of things that were inventions from my field. At first the only thing I could think of was the invention of written language and the different ways that this was recorded over the years (which essentially can be used for any language or subject involving). But I also thought about how to connect technological inventions to cultural aspects associated with the language such as the Roman aqueducts found in Spain or the agriculture techniques of the ancient civilizations that have roots in many of the Spanish speaking countries today. So although this also relates back to history, I think it is history with an emphasis on my subject area so it could be used as technological innovation for my field of study.
ReplyDeleteI think in English, an invention that revolutionized the field was the dictionary! Before the dictionary English spelling used to not be standardized, which made texts difficult to read, as you can imagine.
ReplyDeleteYour group's lesson sounds really interesting - I'm excited to see how you have the students choose which technologies to focus on, when you expand the definition of "technology" as you described.
Cory, I really enjoyed your post, especially your reference to the abacus. If you search on Youtube for addition and multiplication using abaci, you can find some amazing videos of Asian students performing calculations involving enormous numbers accurately just using one of these devices. They perform these calculations faster than a normal person can using a calculator. Another interesting thing is that with practice, they can make these computations using an imaginary abacus in their head while making the same hand movements they would if they were using an actual abacus. This is just an example of how sometimes technological innovations doesn't always outperform the traditional devices of the past. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
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