Welcome to HIS 3630 – Teaching History with New Media!
This is a course that uses the word “Teaching” in a very broad sense. Teaching happens when a park ranger leads a tour of a battlefield, when a museum employee leads a tour guide, when an archivist details a collection, and, of course, when a teacher delivers a lesson. Previous students have been varied – usually half the class is comprised of majors in other non-History Education (BA History, Public History, Multidisciplinary History) and outside the History major.
Because the word teaching is very broad, you can select any area of history to research for this course. Why? The focus is on how you use digital tools to research and share the conclusions of your work. The course is project-based, and it takes place in the Active Learning Classroom in Anne Belk 240.
The other aspect of the course is its focus on “New Media” or digital tools. Again, usually half of the students are novices when it comes to technology. And even those who are digitally-savvy are usually unaware of the various tools and programs we address. In other words, regardless of where you are in the digital spectrum, every student in this course starts at the same playing level.
This course shows you the various ways historians are using technology to research, learn, but above all teach audiences about the past by using new media sources.
My students are usually shocked when I tell them that today’s Tweets will be future historians’ primary sources.
— William S. Cossen (@WilliamCossen) June 8, 2017
