[Dan Moorhouse]

In the thinkinghistory.co.uk thread Andy asked about the development of online lessons as a result of the collaboration between Ian and myself on the site:

andy_walker, on Nov 16 2004, 09:23 AM, said:

You will recall however  that sites like yours and mine have been criticised for what could perhaps be described as 'interactivitiy from the right elbow down rather than from the neck up' - reliance on comprehension based quiz stuff etc.

I was (and remain) hopeful that an alliance of one of the more talented webmasters (that's you jug ears! ), and a talented subject leader like Ian Dawson could start to develop some very interesting online material - hence my original post.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Andy is entirely rght about the criticisms of sites such as mine and his, and they are well founded criticisms most of the time.

The discussions I've had with ian will almost certainly result in a new batch of online activities, its only natural that ideas will transfer across.

Simple enough questions here then.

1) What lo-tech ict resources would people like to see added to the site?

2) Are there any suggestions or requests from people for interactive tasks relating to the shp syllabus at ks4? (development study is what i'm most interested in at the moment)

[Dan Moorhouse]

Looks like I've got a little more time on my hands than I thought so I'll outline what has been loked at so far:

Ian and myself have had a chat about the way in which ICT could be used to develop pupils understanding of chronology. This was related to key stage 3 in the first instance but our conversation moved into KS4 and the study of medicine through time. I'm looking at a few things that could be used, some lower level tasks that are basically testing knowledge of chronology but also tasks that reenforce it via studies of continuity and change over a period of time. At the moment this hasn't really been padded out into anything concrete in terms of planning activities for online consumption. Initial drafts include:

A virtual trip through the ancient world in which the pupil has to act as a medical researcher for the Roman emperor. In the activity pupils would travel throughout the entirey of the Roman empire in (I think) AD 167 and experience a range of beliefs in the different parts of the empire. This will be related back to the people / civilisation that originaly came up with the specific beliefs and practices - so in Egypt they will get archivists in Alexandria referring to famous extracts from the various papyrus scrolls, in Briton they'll get to talk to a Druid etc... this activity is planned on paper but will take months to finish.

Draft follow up exercise for the change and continuity exercise on thinkinghistory.co.uk has been finished using Quandary. This is online in totally unedited format at - http://www.schoolshi...dcontinuity.htm My initial view is that this activity needs padding out and needs an analysis exercise built into the end of the checking tasks. As a plenary session for the active learning it worked well, even in draft format.

The other ideas I've had have been based on conversations with Ian's publishers so I'll not spill the beans here.

[Dan Moorhouse]

Not sure I'd agree Andy. Certainly room for development there. Any ideas? Working on it in the next few days.

[Andrew Field]

andy_walker, on Nov 19 2004, 08:25 PM, said:

I believe that the demand from colleagues in the future as more and more teachers get reliable fast connections and kit in their teaching rooms will be for integrated whole online lessons  - you have an excellent main body of a lesson here.

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I like this activity - perhaps with a bit of life added to it with a matching exercise or something, a bit more hands on interactivity - it would come alive more. Some sort of chronology task where you have to order or sort events. Happy to help with the technicalities of any of this if required.

Slightly off topic, but related to the quote above, I think there is a growing demand for online materials, but I see it more from a perspective of teachers wishing to have learning objects to slot into their exisiting materials. So they run their starter or plenary around your main activity. I would say it is more towards adaptable 'objects' so teachers can construct their own whole online lessons.

[Andrew Field]

andy_walker, on Nov 19 2004, 09:23 PM, said:

Andrew Field, on Nov 19 2004, 09:01 PM, said:

Slightly off topic, but related to the quote above, I think there is a growing demand for online materials, but I see it more from a perspective of teachers wishing to have learning objects to slot into their exisiting materials.  So they run their starter or plenary around your main activity.  I would say it is more towards adaptable 'objects' so teachers can construct their own whole online lessons.

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I am less optimistic about my colleagues. If you look at how textbooks have changed over the last 25 years - from text and sources to double spread lessons with LOs and differentiated tasks built in - then I think we will witness the same trend in online learning. These things tend to be demand driven and the majority of teachers seem to want something "off the peg"

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Fair enough - so the challenge is to show the way how "off the peg" must be thown away and directed more towards personalised, differentiated learning by allowing both teachers and indeed students to focus on tasks that can be put together for them. This is how adaptable objects such as Dan's task here can then be segmented with additional learning materials specific to a student's learning needs.

[Andrew Field]

I certainly have no objection there

Lets get back to Dan's exercise. I do like the way you can extend Quandry further - and this would be worthwhile - with a few interactivities that allow students to go off at a tangent, even recording their thoughts and views about something to return later and conclude.