That was the first quote that really stuck out to me when reading the article. I think that it is a really interesting concept I have never really considering being a thing. I think it is true though. History that has been written down through time is able to be studied much more in depth as opposed to orally told histories. Writing about history throughout well history has made it more accessible than it ever would have ever been if it wasn’t written down. In a classroom standpoint and from a educational point of view, writing about history and or having your students write about it Writing about history is the best way to learn and know it. When you write history its more than just writing. Its research, planning, understanding, and then writing it. Over all I think its true. We cannot know history well unless we write about it, and that’s ok. Writing it is one of if not the best way to know it.
“To complete their work, the students in my class had to select one of the family cemeteries in our local area, go to it, and learn everything they could learn at the site itself”
While not necessarily a good quote, I picked this excerpt to talk about because I think it is a really cool idea. In high school, I was into genealogy and found it really interesting, so the idea behind the project and the project itself really stood out to me. I think it is a great way to practice historical writing and researching skills, and its even better for learning local history. Local history is something I think is often neglected. Knowing the history of your locale can really change how you see where you are, and can often be really interesting. I just thought it was a cool project, and could be something easily modified for use in a high school classroom.
“If it seems to American college students that PowerPoint has existed their entire lives, that is because it has.”
The final quote/excerpt I chose from the article is one that has an important connotation. For many people the words history and PowerPoint are often synonymous. History for me in high school was almost always taught through PowerPoints. Two of my classes were taught entirely through PowerPoint, and that is something that I still deal with in college. However, in my two other classes in high school, PowerPoints were on the backburner and was something used to supplement the lesson not lead it. An interesting note with that is both of those classes were taught by new teachers. I think the era of depending on PowerPoint is slowly dying out as more new age history teachers are going into the field. Teachers who were forced through PowerPoints in school and want to be change that. PowerPoint can be a wonderful tool when used in tandem or to supplement a lesson as opposed to using it to lead the entire curriculum.
