Mike Tribe

John, I checked their website and can't find any reference to academic review. As far as I can work out, it's been checked by volunteers fro SOS Children who have deleted anything "adult", which isn't quite the same thing!

Didn't get any response the last time I posted this, so I thought I'd try again... http://www.gilderlehrman.org/teachers/seminars1.html I've been on two of these and they were both excellent. They give you access to some of the best experts on the topics and they focus heavily on the use of original document analysis. Look at some of the name on the list: Badger on Civil Rights, Leffler and Westad on the Cold War, Kennedy on the Great Depression, Carwardine on Lincoln, Brinkley on the New Deal, Berlin on slavery... These are really top people! The seminars are completely free (including accommodation), they send you the books you're supposed to read before you arrive, and they even PAY you to go!

These are really good. Look at some of the people who are in charge of the seminars... I've been to two, and they were both quite outstanding... http://www.gilderlehrman.org/teachers/seminars1.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/norther...and/7687626.stm

At least part of the reason is that access to a VLE (like Moodle, for example) is so easy. You don't need any "prior knowledge" to be up and going. I was asked to "pilot" the school's Moodle site along with a couple of other teachers so we could see what the best features were and spot any obvious glitches in the system. Within a day or two, I had Moodle pages up and running for each of the classes I taught. I was able to use it to put up a course outline, class expectations, and a month's worth of homework assignments. As I got more used to the system, I could also publish worksheets, ExamView quizzes, and have students submit assignments to me directly through Moodle. I have found that the most powerful tool is the forum which I use to allow students to discuss essay assignments as a pre-writing activity. They also us it extensively for exam revision. There is also a "QuickMail" function which enables me to email students (either all of them, a group, or an individual) with just a couple of clicks. These functions, along with the peer-editing function on the turnitin.com plagiarism website have helped me really get to grips with writing skills in my classes. I know none of this is impressive to people who can knock up a website with all sorts of bells and whistles at the drop of a hat, but for hard-pressed teachers with time or skills, it does give all sorts of possibilities. Having spoken to all sorts of IT-gurus, I think I'm convinced that I need to move on from Moodle and am thinking of trying to teach myself DreamWeaver if I can persuade the school to buy it, but I certainly don't regret my experiences with Moodle which have, I think, made me a more effective teacher.

A delightful debating style...

If you stop making silly errors of historical fact -- like claiming that the American Revolution was caused by British free trade policies -- and totally unsupported claims (Schwartzenegger is a nazi, Bertrand Russell was a murdering warmonger) then maybe I could take you more seriously. As far as American imperialism is concerned, a neutral observer would find it difficult to see it as any less rapacious than the British version... I fail to understand your point about the founding fathers deciding on a republic. What are you trying to say?

There you go again! The Pugwash Conference -- which was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 for its efforts on nuclear disarmament -- was responsible for MAD!!!! And Bertrand Russell, a life-long pacifist who went to jail during World War I as a conscientious objector and was a founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, was a leading advocate of nuclear build-up, not to mention the person behind a secret British plot to assassinate Kennedy. Oh, dear....

But I'm not claiming arcane knowledge. You are. I'm not suggesting the Governor of California is a nazi. You are. I'm not claiming that the assassination of Pres Kennedy was the result of a "British plot" to undermine the United States of America. You are. And you are unable to present any credible evidence for any of these rather strange claims. All you do is indulge in esoteric arguments about who was a paedophile, where and when... or how many African Americans worked for who, when and where, or whether Martin Luther King was a Marxist...

I really it's you who has the obsession with LaRouche, whoever he is. It seems you're incapable of writing about anything without turning it into a paean of praise for him. Your sole source of "evidence" for your wild claims come from him or from other LaRouche disciples. This thread is a good example. "Hitler begs Hjalmar Schact [sic] for a $7 billion loan" purports to draw a parallel between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hitler's Minister of Economics. You provided no evidence for your claim that the Governor of California was "a nazi" except to suggest that he must be because he had been supported by a Kennedy and so had Hitler! Since then, all you've done is drone on and on about LaRouche and insult anyone with whom you differ or who suggests that you and your mentor might not be correct. The reason I called you a banana was to suggest that this claim was supported by exactly the same amount of evidence as your claim that Gov. Schwarzenegger was a nazi -- none whatsoever. I do feel that your continual carping on about LaRouche does this forum a disservice and wish you would stop, or that some moderator or other would draw a line under the "discussion".

Oh, look! Flying farmyard animals!

No, but one of the best ways of being "unbalanced" is to have students analyze some nice lengthy quotes from leading Nazis! I think that was one of the reasons why Nazis: A Warning from History was such a powerful series. The makers of the program allowed ex-Nazis to condemn themselves out of their own mouths. Remember the woman who admitted that she had denounced a neighbor to the Gestapo and then went on to observe that she thought it was going to rain? Or the fat, smiling businessman who, when asked why he hadn't opposed the Nuremburg laws said that you had to understand that the Jews were really asking for it?

Despite constant insults, I have endeavoured not to sink to this level. Your views are bizarre and I have no wish to trade insults with someone who appears to attach no importance to historical fact, logic, or, indeed, anything except the equally bizarre views of a very marginal and apparently extremist fringe politician. So, once again, I'll just stop visiting the forum for a year or so and save some valuable time...

Oh, am I being insulted here? I wonder why. Is it because I'm British and therefore responsible for the international slave trade, the international narcotics trade, the assassination of all sorts of people, etc, etc?

I think, perhaps, there's some misunderstanding here about the meaning of "objectivity". Clearly, any teacher who walks into a classroom brings his own pre-conceptions (or even prejudices) with him. However, I do think that a teacher has an obligation to present as many different interpretations as possible, even if these run completely counter to their own views. I was shocked when I read a contribution on another forum a few months ago in which a teacher said that he had refused to even consider presenting any "positive" aspects of imperialism in his history classes. I think this is just plain wrong. By ignoring the fact that there ARE different views of imperialism (I'm thinking of Ferguson, for example), I think this teacher was doing his students a disservice. I think it's only through presenting different views to students and then helping them to examine these critically that we can help prepare them to be critical citizens... We also teach them valuable historical skills. For example, one of the biggest problems I have with my students is their tendency to place far too much faith in "authorities". "Mr Tribe said...." gives any statement the same authority as Holy Writ! More seriously, there's an almost fanatical belief in anything that appears in print or even on the internet... Presenting contrasting views of the same historical events/issues and helping students to examine these carefully is one way to counter this...

This is just the sort of thing I'd like to learn through E-HELP. I understand how powerful this approach could be. I've seen it work. My problem is that I really lack the confidence to get started. I know that's cowardly, but so often, I start off full of enthusiasm on some new ICT project and then just run into the sand when I get to some technical hitch I just can't get around. We have a GREAT tech dept here, but, unfortunately, they're all techies... As soon as they start to "explain" things to me, I feel my eyes beginning to glaze over, at which point, one of them takes over, does a couple of amazingly rapid keystrokes and everything's fixed.... Until the next time the same thing happens, I STILL can't fix it, and am now way too embarrassed to call up the tech dept again... Another caveat I have with some of the "eye-witness history" projects mentioned above is that I think teachers who try to do this don't always give students enough guidance about the common pitfalls of oral history evidence. One of my students last year wrote her IB extended essay on aspects of fascist rule in a small town in Tuscany. Through her grandparents and other family in the town, she managed to line up a whole series of oral history interviews which she planned to carry out over the summer holidays. When she came back in September, she was unhappy with the results. There were all sorts of problems: * obviously, the people she was interviewing were all very old and had been very young when the events they described took place. * she encountered huge discrepancies between accounts of the same events between witnesses, even witnesses with the same sort of political views -- even her grandfather and grandmother seemed to remember events they had witnessed TOGETHER quite differently. * she ran into some very "rose-tinted glasses"; even members of the Communist partisans seemed to compare Mussolini's regime quite favorably with contemporary Italy! She was lucky enough to run into a doctoral candidate who was writing her PhD thesis on the local Partisans and local support for them. She got access to the communal archives and the students showed her how to use them. She said that she found this material much easier to work with and organize... However, she was adamant that even given the difficulties, this had been a very valuable exercise from which she had learned a great deal. I just wish I'd prepared her more thoroughly for the challenges she met...

I have been using the forum function available with Moodle to "brainstorm" essays as a pre-writing exercise. Here is an example of an early discussion: https://asmoodle.asmadrid.org/moodle/mod/fo...scuss.php?d=321. As you can see, there's a need to set parameters for the kids. Some of them were using the forum just to chat generally rather than focusing on the essay. Still, there are quite a lot of advantages to this approach: * the participants came from three different class sets, so there was a possibility for students to interact with kids from other groups * many of the participants have English as a second or third language and find it difficult to contribute or ask questions in class; the forum format is easier for them because they have the opportunity to plan out exactly what they want to say and then edit their work afterwards. * I have the opportunity to respond if I see anyone going way off topic. Along with using the peer-editing facility within the turnitin.com site, I really do think this approach has improved the students' writing quite noticeably over the year...

I've always been highly sceptical of the various conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassinations. It just seemed to me that the "cock-up" theory of history whereby even the best organized conspiracies would go wrong and be revealed was so much more convincing. A discussion over lunch in Bratislava with John Simkin really made me think that maybe there was something behind the idea. Unfortunately, the obviously silly and uninformed rants by people like Ms Mauro, can do nothing but reinforce the sceptical point of view. She has claimed, over the past couple of days that: * the fact that Gov Schwartzenegger's campaigns had been supported by members of the Kennedy family proved that he was a nazi * the fact that he was originally Austrian proved that he was a nazi * the pre-WWII head of the German Central Bank was born in the United States when he was demonstrably born in Germany * the American Revolution was caused by a British commitment to free trade when any historian could confirm that the opposite was the case * the Beatles were part of a plot to bring the United States to its knees morally and physically Taken in the context of these totally ridiculous and unsubstantiated claims, then her belief in a British plot to assassinate Kennedy would seem to place this whole theory in the realms of the bizarre, if not in that of abnormal psychology. It certainly does little to persuade sceptics that the JFK "research community" has much validity...

"I had no interest in debating the meaning of the word Mercantilism. My interest lies in examining the polar opposite systems of the British Empire versus the United States." Unfortunately, since you apparently understand NEITHER the basis of the British Empire system -- mercantilism -- NOR the basis of the United States system -- tariff protection -- your views would seem to have no validity whatsoever. You remain a banana, although I'be beginning to wonder whether I'm doing an injustice to bananas...

http://www.gilderlehrman.org/wp/?p=43 This may be of interest to any educators visiting the forum... The Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History is an excellent resource for anyone teaching this area. Check out the Modules on Major Topics in American History (http://www.gilderlehrman.org/teachers/modules.html). I particularly like the attempt they make to integrate document analysis into the activities, something which is, in my experience, rare among US history teachers... I have also attended two of the Gilder-Lehrman Summer Seminars and both were excellent...

It doesn't surprise me that you had never heard of the term mercantilist. Your historical knowledge would seem to be very limited indeed. There are some reputable historians connected to this forum. Perhaps some of them could elucidate these dark holes in your knowledge. But, then again, perhaps not...

So, because I don't agree with you, I have deficient skills as an academic and an educator and am a "whiner"... You, on the other hand, are of the opinion that someone supported by the Kennedy family must be a Nazi... Brilliant... Sen Obama is supported by Edward Kennedy, so he's a Nazi... I don't pretend to keep up with all the details of Californian politics, but I'm sure I would have noticed if political parties had been banned, labor unions closed down, books burned, Jews obliged to wear yellow stars, political dissidents rounded up and put in concentration camps, etc, etc... Every one of your posts reveals your amazing lack of historical knowledge. For example, you claim that the American colonies rebelled against Britain because of "free trade"... Britain didn't even begin to adopt free trade policies until the 1820s. At the time of the American Revolution, the economic policy was firmly mercantilist... You are a banana.

Terry Mauro is a banana. If I said this often enough, would that make it true? It's about as intellectually valid as your repetition that Arnold is a nazi...

This is the sort of post which could give the forum a really bad name. It's so full of ridiculous and unsubstantiated claims. "Arnold Schwarzenegger is a nazi"... No, he isn't. It's easy to condemn everyone you disagree with as a fascist or a nazi. It saves addressing issues and policies. I may not like everything the Governor of California stands for, but that is far from making him a nazi. "Hitler was just a "hitman" for the austerity policy of Brooklyn born banker Hjalmar Schact [at least you could spell his name correctly!] and his Wall Street and London banker friends." You've been corrected on the error of historical fact but have chosen to ignore this. The following is from the entry on Schacht on John Simkin's Spartacus site: "Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, the son of a salesman, was born in Tinglev, Germany, on 22nd January, 1877."

On the other hand, Ms Mauro also plays rather fast and loose with the historical record when she claims that Hitler and Mussolini followed essentially laissez-faire policies. Both favored the interests of the industrialists and big businesses, but both were also highly interventionist.