“one thing we have learned over the years is that asking students to take the evidence they have gathered and put it into a form that makes that evidence intelligible to others spurs new ideas and reinforces memories other than those that take place during the investigatory stage of historical work.”
This quote encapsulates so much of what is important regarding how students write history. We can not develop new ideas by just copying stuff down, we have to write out thoughts and opinions in order to see them outside of our own heads, and in that we create a new branch of ideas that can move historical thinking for us in just the beginning stage of historical writing.
“The process of writing an essay, handing it in, having a grade assigned, and receiving it back from the professor is most often a project that involves only two people and is almost entirely private. No one benefits from the process but the student writing the essay.”
Making the essay process for students less of a cycle of work on a private basis is super interesting. I have found that typically all of my essays have been between me and my professor or teacher and I have lost pieces of work that I had made that I wish I would have saved somewhere or posted because I was proud of that essay that I wrote but did not full appreciate it until I got rid of it. I think that if teachers can make it too where students historical writings can be public and other people can appreciate the work there could be a change in perspective from how people view writing history.
“In addition to helping students begin to grapple with some of the thorny issues that encyclopedias raise, asking them to write for Wikipedia helps them to understand what it means to create history that is malleable, that can be changed by anyone at any time.”
Having students write for Wikipedia can be so beneficial for so many reasons. It can provide them with an online space to post their historical writings and it can be changed at any time. It also allows them to work with others on their historical writing, which allows them to critique and analyze someone else’s work while also having their work looked at as well. This will help them develop into stronger historical writers and make them more comfortable posting their work online.
Kelly, T. Mills. “Presenting: Capturing, Creating, and Writing the Past.” In Teaching History in the Digital Age, Online., Chapter 4. Digital Humanities: Digital Culture Books. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013.
