Blog

Author: Richard Kennett

  • VR in the History Classroom

    VR in the History Classroom

    Previous experiences of VR compared to VR today I remember my first experience of virtual reality. It was in the early nineties and I’d have been about twelve. I went to a computer games arcade and they had a virtual reality machine. You had to put a ridiculously heavy helmet on and these weird smelly…

  • Skitch: having a quick sketch to improve history learning

    Skitch: having a quick sketch to improve history learning

    Quite often in my class I want to draw on top of a source, or onto a bit of writing I have on my whiteboard. I cannot quite work out how the complicated interactive whiteboard pens work. That was where Skitch came to the rescue. Skitch is a free iPad or Android app that allows…

  • Hot Air Balloon Disaster

    Hot Air Balloon Disaster

    Helping students to make judgements about relative importance All of the important figures in history are in a hot air balloon whose engine is broken. Who do you throw out first to ensure the rest survive?! History is full of people and a key skill is to get our students to think about the relative importance…

  • Using Arts and Culture to Overcome Barriers to Field Trips

    Getting students out of school to visit historic sites is difficult. I teach in the UK and here we have to fill in loads of paperwork – risk assessments, parent permission slips. It’s all a bit of a nightmare. But field trips to historic sites are a fundamental part of the magic of our subject.…

  • History Pin

    History Pin

    In the last blog my colleague Pascal described how the Historiana Learning Team had searched for digital tools that could be used to enhance historical learning. In the first blog about an actual tool I thought I would write about my favourite – HistoryPin.