• 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 Iā€™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…

  • Understanding Political Cartoons

    Helping students to understand how political cartoons are constructed and how every part of the image, and the way the parts relate to each other, are important when analysing such cartoons Students often struggle to identify the main message of a political cartoon, because they do not know how to read the different aspects of…

  • Teaching Strategy: Family and Relations

    Helping students to get to engage with the biography of an important historical figure Students take on the role of people who have to explain their relationship to a leading historical figure, thereby broadly mapping out his or her biography. Students are given a person that is in some way related to the historical actor…

  • Teaching Strategy: Planning a Documentary

    Helping students to decide the relative importance of different factors, events or changes Students plan a documentary by deciding how much time should be allocated to given topics. Students imagine they are planning a one-hour documentary. The teacher gives them a list of topics that need to be included. They plan by labeling and shading…

  • 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…