Livebinders

Livebinders.com is an education site that allows users to organize online information much as they would with a real 3-ring binder. When a social studies teacher or student is doing research a project oftentimes they use many different online sources, which can be a hassle to remember and organize. When I'm in this situation and need to remember links I usually just save them to my favorites bar. Livebinders is a much more efficient way of doing this. I think this particular Livebinder does a good job of showing off this feature. The author has taken information about Civil War biographies from many different online sources and combined them all together in a very organized way. I think this would be especially useful for teachers who are doing online research and find a statistic or a brief quote they'd like to remember for a lecture. With Livebinders you could save the page you like, sort it with others of the same category, and have it easily on hand forever. There's actually a nifty program associated with the site that allows you to save a bookmarked page directly to your binder without you having to visit the site.

On the other hand, it seems to me that any Livebinders site requires a large investment of time. It takes quite a while just to learn the basics of creating a site;  Livebinders does provide a detailed tutorial, but the fact that a detailed tutorial is required shows that building a new site isn't simple.

Livebinders is marketed as a presentation tool, but I don't think it does very well in this regard. There's no way to get the buttons at the top of presentation to vanish, which distracts from the images and text on the slide. As far as I can tell there aren't many advantages to using Livebinders for presentations rather than good old fashioned PowerPoint. One positive thing that can be said is that it's much easier to link to screen shots of web pages, although I haven't seen many presentations that use screenshots of webpages....

Livebinders also works pretty well as a way to assign online worksheets. Here's an example. I think Livebinders actually outdoes Moodle here in that images can easily be posted on the page and the user generally has more freedom in designing questions.

So, to recap the advantages of Livebinders:
1. A handy way to store online sources
2. Good for online worksheets

and disadvantages:
1. Not the best tool for presentations
2. Can be difficult getting started

Classroom Uses

I've always liked doing online worksheets (it's impossible for me to lose them) and I think Livebinders is as good as any other site at creating them. I also think the site would be helpful if your class was working on a large research paper that required students to cite many different sources. You could have students do the essay on Livebinders and integrate video and pictures into the text, or just have them store their sources there. It's also a really great way to post reading material to your classroom. One of the things I've always wanted to do in an upper level history class is have students write a persuasive essay on say, the merits of dropping the two atomic bombs on Japan, after giving them a huge number of primary and secondary sources to shift through. In my head I'd always imagined posting the sources on Moodle, although it would make much sense to post them on Livebinders, as it would take much less time to load up each new page.In my theology class my professor posts scanned pdfs on moodle all the time and it takes a little while to boot them up; everything would be much fast on Livebinders.

Issues

As far as I can tell, there are no possible issues here regarding inapproriate content or privacy. All the information within the binders is user generated and Livebinders give its users the option to make their sites accessible only to friends if they desire. Teaching middle school students to easily use the site may be difficult; if things go wrong  it could take an entire class period just to teach students how to get started. Just having the students follow the site's instructions probably would not be sufficient and teachers should be ready to quickly and simply explain how to register and start creating tabs.

The Texas post

I'm of the opinion that most fights over history textbooks aren't really dramatic battles over the Truth, as often portrayed in newspapers, but rather more mundane squabbles over what exactly gets squeezed into the book. In other words, it's a fight over emphasis, not facts. For example, many people were outraged that the new Texas textbooks mentioned that there actually were some Soviet spies in various branches of the government in the 1950's, which to critics seemed a defense of McCarthyism. But again, the facts here aren't in serious dispute: Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs really were spies, but Joe McCarthy was also an opportunistic liar and drunk. Liberals and conservatives pick and choose which facts to include in the story in order for it to have the "right" moral.

An Intro to The Texas Textbook Fight

In March 2010 the Texas Board of Education voted 10-5 along party lines to institute a number of revisions to the state's history textbooks. A small list of the changes from the NYT:

-"......a plank to ensure that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”

- "a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
-".......textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported. “Republicans need a little credit for that,” ( A Republican board member) said. “I think it’s going to surprise some students.”

-"students should study “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation."

-"an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism"

-"Other changes seem aimed at tamping down criticism of the right. Conservatives passed one amendment, for instance, requiring that the history of McCarthyism include “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.” The Venona papers were transcripts of some 3,000 communications between the Soviet Union and its agents in the United States."

These changes have not gone over well to say the least. For a typical outraged response check out this HuffingtonPost slide show:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/13/texas-textbook-massacre-u_n_498003.html#s73765&title=Thomas_Jefferson_Whos

I'll write some gigantic essay giving my opinion next week, but in the meantime, what do you, the viewer, think about these changes?

The purpose of history class

In the debate over what subjects to cover in history classes you often hear one side loudly accusing the other of trying to deviously insert their politics into history, which is supposed to be reserved for cold, hard facts. The assumption here is that the real purpose of teaching kids history is to make them wiser people, to give them an understanding of human nature and how they came to be where they are.

Those are indeed very good reasons to study history, but this line of thinking seems disconnected from the reality of how history traditionally has been taught. History as traditionally taught is always supposed to have a lesson; you don't learn about the immigration debate of the early 20th century for its own sake, you're supposed to draw some kind of conclusion about present day events from it. This is the way things have always been and the only change is in what kinds of conclusions are to be drawn.  Historically the lessons have been the same in every country everywhere: history proves our country is uniquely great, our soldiers struggled valiantly and gave their lives so that our country could be free, etc. Wars and battles are heavily emphasized and national sins like slavery are downplayed (everybody was doing it at the time......). This is the version of history that conservatives love; it reaffirms good old fashioned values like patriotism and loyalty and encourages young people to fight for their country when called. It also gets justly criticized by liberals for engaging in national myth-making and completely ignoring the viewpoints of non-white Americans.

In an attempt to atone for these biases in the traditional history class we've seen a complete reversal in the last 30 years or so. The new purpose of teaching history is to combat racism and promote tolerance of ethnic and religious minorities. Military history has been nearly eliminated and a much heavier emphasis has been placed on previously neglected topics like slavery, immigration, and segregation. This effort has been extremely successful: in 2008 researchers asked high school students to name the 10 most famous people in American history who were not President. The four most popular choices were:
1. Martin Luther King Jr.: 67%
2. Rosa Parks: 60%
3. Harriet Tubman: 44%
4. Susan B. Anthony: 34%
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-02-03-most-famous-americans_N.htm?csp=34

But, why can't we have the best of both worlds? Why can't we teach kids about the Battle of Midway and the interment of Japanese-Americans? It'd be great, we could promote patriotism and yet also instill tolerance in children! Unfortunately, I think this idea is misguided for at least two reasons. First of all, history is a big subject and in a year long class most teachers can only go into detail about a handful of events. It may be possible for some history buffs to rush through 400 years of American history in 9 months, but the average history teacher is only somewhat knowledgeable about the subject and is usually dependent on a textbook for instruction. When history textbooks put an emphasis on the internment of Japanese-Americans, the Battle of Midway is usually left out of class altogether. Secondly, and this is much more controversial, I think that is difficult to simultaneously promote patriotism and tolerance, that the two ideas are fundamentally in conflict with each other. Patriotism is at heart a belief in the greatness (superiority) of your group, and this idea doesn't mesh well with the idea that all cultures and ethnic groups are equal. But that's really a subject for another blog post.

E.D. Hirsch

E.D. Hirsch is a professor of English literature at the University of Virginia that's gotten a lot of attention over the past 25 years or so for his work on what he calls "cultural literacy" in education. Hirsch's basic claim is that  authors of fiction or non-fiction almost always assume their readers have a large amount of basic background knowledge of history and literature; basic facts which are rarely explicitly taught to them in school. An author of an advanced text will often assume his reader is familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan, Achilles' Heel, or the Midas Touch. Even a reader with advanced knowledge of grammar and vocabulary can find such texts difficult to understand. I remember laughing when I took the ACT reading exam for the first time and discovered  that I would be tested on a passage about Navajo code talkers during World War 2. The test was supposed to measure my reading comprehension but the large amount of embedded knowledge I had about the subject let me breeze through it in no time.

Since the 90's Hirsch has worked full time on education reform and has produced an extremely detailed set of guidelines proscribing what subjects need to be taught in which grades:
http://www.coreknowledge.org/mimik/mimik_uploads/documents/480/CKFSequence_Rev.pdf
Needless to say, this is all very controversial. Education professors generally hate it, saying that it treats students as mere receptacles for facts and that it fails to build critical thinking skills. Other critics claim Hirsch's program is Euro centric and that it forces minority students to conform to the culture of the majority.

As you've probably guessed, I'm pretty strongly in Hirsch's camp. I think the two most common criticisms against his proposals are flawed: I could go on endlessly about why teaching critical thinking skills is a massive red herring  but in a nutshell: 60 percent of 18 to 24 year old Americans cannot locate Iraq on a map, 57 percent of 17 year olds did not know the Civil War occurred between 1850 and 1900. I felt like crying in 11th grade when a girl, a very good student, asked me if World War II started when we dropped the atomic bombs on Japan. I cannot believe that students with such an extreme ignorance of essential facts can be taught to think critically about a subject. Critical thinking is great, but it's something to be taught after students obtain basic knowledge about history and culture.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/roper2006/pdf/FINALReport2006GeogLitsurvey.pdf
http://www.suite101.com/content/us-students-get-a-d-in-history-a46071

Secondly, although it's definitely true that Hirsch's curriculum has a European focus, that isn't necessarily a problem for minority groups. Hirsch is simply building his curriculum around the cultural knowledge demanded by American writers of all races.  I haven't done the study, but I'd bet that if you surveyed the writing of famous African-American authors you'd find far, far more references to Biblical stories and Greco-Roman history than to African folktales or the history of the Songhai empire.

The Exciting World of Texas History Textbook Standards

The most interesting social studies related story of the last....decade or so was probably last year's hubbub over the Texas Board of Education's latest revision to their history textbooks. The mostly Republican board claimed they correcting imbalances in the textbooks by putting an emphasis on the religion of the Founding Fathers and promoting free-market ideology. Their opponents claim that the changes are meant to indoctrinate students in conservative ideology. The debate has far reaching implications as Texas often sets the nation wide standards in textbook choice. If anybody wants to get the whole story they can check out this NY Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html

From here on out  I'd like the focus the blog on the political debate over what information history textbooks include and how they present it, which is ultimately a debate about what the purpose of history teaching is.

Extremely Belated Vocabulary Post

I found an article called Teaching Middle and High School Students to Read and Write Well written by four ladies from the National Research Center on English & Learning Achievement (Judith A. Lange, Elizabeth Close, Janet Angelis, and Paula Preller). I've never heard of this particular institution before now, but they do have a respectable sounding name, an .edu address, and the production values on their PDF file are top notch. The article isn't specifically about teaching vocab but does have a lot of information relevant to the subject.

The authors of this document argue that for English instruction to be relevant has to be integrated with other activities and skills. For example, a teacher could have their students read an somewhat advanced novel and each week's vocabulary instruction around a chapter or section of the book. Another exampled offered is "living dictionaries"; having students collect unknown words they've encountered in newspapers or books and sharing them with the class. Teachers need to be able to connect sometimes mundane class material with the real world and should continue to reference information learned earlier in the year.