Ed Podesta

I should have added - could you please post here to say if you tried to collaborate and whether it was easy, worthwile etc? ta Ed.

I think the phrase is RTFM. Anyway, I think this software has enormous potential for use in the classroom and for CPD, because maps can be shared online and edited by different users or communities of users. As an experiment I've created a folder on a public Cmap server and made an attempt to map good history teaching. If you're interested and want to contribute to the mind map, please download the software and under "shared Cmaps in places" visit the IHMC Public Cmaps (2) server. You will find (in alphabetical order) a folder called "History Teaching and Learning". In this folder there's a map called "History Teaching Activities". Please feel free to add anything you want to this map. I'd welcome contributions from non-history teachers, as everything overlaps to a great extent in education. many thanks Ed. p.s. if anyone can help me to stop my head being so squashed in my educationforum avatar I would be really grateful!

In the E-Help Seminars forum http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3305 there's a reference to CMap concept mapping software, which is free to use. http://cmap.ihmc.us/ I think this software has enormous potential for use in the classroom and for CPD, because maps can be shared online and edited by different users or communities of users. As an experiment I've created a folder on a public Cmap server and made an attempt to map good history teaching. If you're interested and want to contribute to the mind map, please download the software and under "shared Cmaps in places" visit the IHMC Public Cmaps (2) server. You will find (in alphabetical order) a folder called "History Teaching and Learning". In this folder there's a map called "History Teaching Activities". Please feel free to add anything you want to this map. many thanks Ed.

I'm really interersted in the potential of using Cmap, especially in "collaborative" mode. Has anyone used it in this way, and coudl they tell me how I'd go about doing so - for instance, would I have to set up a cmap server, or are there public ones? thanks Ed.

I agree with you Chris, In Defense of History is a great read, and if you get the latest edition you also get the epilogue in which Evans answers his critics in a very amusing (and often downright rude) manner - v entertaining. John Tosh, in Pursuit of History is also a good introduction to the epistemology of history. You could, if you're a glutton for punishment, also try "Developments in Modern Historiography" ed. Henry Kozicki. Which reflects a wide range of concerns and the time in which it was written. There's a couple of really interesting articles in this book on PM, I especially recommend Gerald N Izenbergs "Text, Context and Psychology in Intellectual History" and a superb vintage blast of Arthur Marwick's trumpet in ""A fetishism of Documents"?: The Salience of Source Based history." Actually - now I think about it - if you can get hold of them (some uni libraries carry them) the materials for the Open University course Postgraduate foundation module in history (AA820) http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?C01AA820_1_0 give a really useful introduction to this topic. Ed.

I am a history teacher in my second qualified year of teaching. I teach history to 11-18 year olds in a comprehensive school in Reading, Berkshire. Before training as a history teacher I was a practising information technology and intellectual property lawyer. In my spare time I studied history and completed a certificate in post graduate history with the OU. As time when on I realised that it was history and not law that was important to me, and that I waned to communicate my interest in discovering history, so I applied for various PGCE courses. In October 2002 I started my PGCE at Oxford University; more by luck than judgement I stumbled across two fantastic history educators in Dr Anna Pendry and Dr Katharine Burn. I want my students to do history, not to learn it. I refer to my pupils in lessons as historians and because of my lack of content knowledge (I’ll catch up!) I find that often I am learning alongside my pupils through the activities that we do together. I suppose that my specialism in terms of teaching is the use of Digital Video. I am currently engaged in some research with Anna Pendry into the use of DV and interactive whiteboards in the classroom. This research will be based in my classroom. The first stage is the use of the documentary form for pupils to improve their essay writing skills. I have largely finished the practical side of this. The second will be the use of footage from sources such as Pathe in classroom activities. The third will involve the creation of video footage by teachers for their use in their classrooms. It is the first and third aspects that really excite me. In the first aspect I’ve taken an idea from some research by the BFI into the use of DV to improve narrative literacy. I have been using a guidance frame to encourage students (a year 9 class on my PGCE and a year 7 class in my current school) to plan and make documentaries, using a traditional “source sheet” as their starting point. In the third aspect I want to encourage teachers to make their own, focused footage. If they don’t want to set out specifically to make a film on a distinct topic then I hope to inspire other teachers to take a video camera with them on holidays, days out, going to town, and if they see something interesting and potentially useful, to stick it on tape, and to use this footage in their lessons. You can see an low quality example of a video that I’m currently working on at: http://www.podesta.org.uk/ This example took me a couple of hours to shoot and a couple of hours to edit using windows movie maker.

I am a history teacher in my third qualified year of teaching. I teach history to 11-18 year olds in a comprehensive school in Reading, Berkshire. Before training as a history teacher I was a practising information technology and intellectual property lawyer. In my spare time I studied history and completed a certificate in post graduate history with the OU. As time when on I realised that it was history and not law that was important to me, and that I wanted to communicate my interest in discovering history, so I applied for various PGCE courses. In October 2002 I started my PGCE at Oxford University; more by luck than judgement I stumbled across two fantastic history educators in Dr Anna Pendry and Dr Katharine Burn. Since then I've started (with mixed results) a diploma in teaching and learning history, with the aim of getting my masters and even more (I'm hoping that the more people who I tell this, the more likely I am to get on with the bleeding thing!). I want my students to do history, not to learn it. I refer to my pupils in lessons as historians and because of my lack of content knowledge (I’ll catch up!) I find that often I am learning alongside my pupils through the activities that we do together. I don't think I really have a specialism in terms of teaching, but I have experimented with the use of Digital Video and with Bogs and Wikis. In my second year of teaching I got heavily into using DV technology, using the documentary form for pupils to improve their essay writing skills and the creation of video footage by teachers for their use in their classrooms. In the first aspect I’ve taken an idea from some research by the BFI into the use of DV to improve narrative literacy. I used a guidance frame to encourage students (a year 9 class on my PGCE and a year 7 class in my current school) to plan and make documentaries, using a traditional “source sheet” as their starting point. I'd want to encourage teachers to make their own, focused footage. If they don’t want to set out specifically to make a film on a distinct topic then I hope to inspire other teachers to take a video camera with them on holidays, days out, going to town, and if they see something interesting and potentially useful, to stick it on tape, and to use this footage in their lessons. You can see an low quality example of a video that I’m currently working on at: http://www.podesta.org.uk/ This example took me a couple of hours to shoot and a couple of hours to edit using windows movie maker. This year I've been looking at blogs and wikis. I've been running a blog for my cold war year 13 students here and one for my year 8 students here. The second also includes links to the (fairly new at the date of this edit - april 2006) blogs run by some of my students themselves. In terms of wikis, then it's all a little more theoretical. You can see an example of a completely under-utilised wiki here, which I devised as a pilot for this years cold war students, (they took to it like, well like people who aren't a bit interested thank you all the same!). I've just started a wiki for history teachers, you can see it develop here, if you wish, and please feel free to PM me if you want to get involved. Currently I'm writing for the HITT website about using research to inform the design of ITT in history.