Thank you to Karen Murphy and Mara Gregory at Facing History and Sean Pettis at Corrymeela for organising and hosting today's online learning webinar. We had some great demonstrations of online teaching techniques and resources, the key points of which are outlined below.
Karen Murphy, Facing History and Ourselves (https://www.facinghistory.org/)
Karen recommended Facing History resources and approaches that are suitable for distance learning.
Resource Collections:
Teaching Strategies:
Denver Charles, Magherafelt High
Denver reflected on the changes he has made to his teaching practice in order to accommodate distance learning and he shared some of his most successful approaches to lock-down learning:
Successful approaches
Engagement breeds Enthusiasm!
Stay in touch with the students - maintains the sense of ‘our school community.’
Stay in touch with colleagues - helps maintain ‘our collective sanity.’
Successful teaching strategies:
Flipping the Classroom: "You are the Expert! You are going to have to teach the Rosa Parks story when you return to school! Prepare your presentation with this in mind. "
Open ended tasks with no answers! How are the U.S. and French Revolutions linked? Which is the most important Revolution in History?
Journaling, interviewing parents re: the Troubles, writing and reflecting their thoughts on the NI Troubles.
Time capsules, writing up experiences of lock-down, documenting an important period of history
Setting up a collaborative space for Source Work - silent conversations for sharing ideas about sources.
Being creative - create storyboards or animations to tell the story of important events i.e. Little Rock Nine
Being an Upstander. Who are the Upstanders in today’s situation?
Live lessons: Zoom, Google Classrooms, MS teams- good for giving feedback
Successful resources:
BBC Rewind NI Troubles. Canvas Stories on the Troubles –
Eyes on the Prize – all available on YouTube
Choices in Little Rock (Facing History)
Teaching Strategies on Facing History
Dr King’s Legacy and Choosing to Participate (Facing History)
Teaching Divided Histories Nerve Centre Resources for Online Teaching of the 1968-1998 period
Ellen Bell, HTANI
HTANI is developing the website's Resources section during schools closure, mapping the best of online resources from broadcasters, museums, libraries, universities and archives to the CCEA curriculum.
Key resources highlighted:
HTANI KS3 Resources, US Civil Rights Resources, Troubles Resources, Partition Resources. They provide links to topic based resources from the following websites:
BBC Teach contains a vast range of programme clips mapped to the UK curriculum see KS3 History & GCSE History, clips are also available on YouTube.
Decade of Anniversaries Schools Resource Developed by the University of Ulster, this project contains a set of interactive worksheets that explore and challenge the traditional narratives of Decade of Anniversaries events.
DocsTeach from the National Archives (US) contains a library of activities featuring primary sources from the archive that explore key aspects of US History. Activity tools allow teachers to create their own activities with primary sources.
Edsitement Comprehensive source-rich lessons (lesson plans, teachers notes, student activities) from National Endowment for Humanities exploring key aspects of American history.
BBC Rewind NI Troubles. The story of the Northern Ireland Troubles told in ten chapters through archive footage.
Teaching Divided Histories from the Nerve Centre provides teachers with resources that explore key aspects of Northern Ireland's history.
1916 Collection from the Irish Independent and UCD provides articles on the personalities, causes, events and impact of the 1916 Rising by eminent historians in an accessible magazine format.
War of Independence Collection from the Imperial War Museum hosts an Irish War of independence image collection which features reportage images of the British army in Ireland and the aftermath of attacks.
John Wishart, Lagan College
John Wishart uses a range of technology tools to build up his Lagan History Zone website. He demonstrated some of his favourite software for creating interactive learning resources:
Websites: https://education.weebly.com/ Create free websites for your class quickly and easily with the simple drag and drop interface:
Mind Maps: https://www.inspiration-at.com/ Great tool for visually summarising key aspects of a topic i.e. http://www.laganhistory.com/northern-ireland-mindmaps.html
Animations: https://www.videoscribe.co/en Create animations to tell the story of key aspects or events in history i.e. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIglyDEo62k
YouTube Channel: Create playlists of existing videos for your class
Interactive Quizzes: https://kahoot.com/schools/ Create competitive interactive quizzes for pupils and test their knowledge at home or in school. (Very popular with pupils)
Find more of John's top technology tips at http://www.teachertec.net/
Some Questions:
What are the best pupil and teacher strategies for adapting to lock-down learning?
What is the extent of technology poverty and how is this affecting pupils ability to learn online? What can we do to tackle this issue, do we need more mobile based learning activities?
How is the lock-down affecting pupils emotionally and their ability to engage? How do we encourage pupils in NI (who are reticent by nature) to engage in discussions about their emotional reaction.