Three of my colleagues - Liz, Rachel, B., and Kim, all historians - wrote a lesson plan with the purpose of increasing students' literacy within the domain of historical documents. As a budding English teacher who worked on my project with two history buffs, I was very interested in comparing my group's lesson plan with theirs, assuming there would be some overlap. One thing I found interesting, though not too surprising, is that both of our groups chose to address the Common Core Standard to "compare and contrast treatments of the same topic in several primary and secondary sources" in the lesson plans. This is indicative of the importance of and emphasis on developing the ability to work with, analyze, and distinguish between primary and secondary sources in the history discipline. However, the approach my group took was very different from that of our colleagues'. We chose to utilize a specific primary source and one secondary source to allow students the opportunity to think about and form their own opinions about the use of technology in the classroom, particularly in regards to the BYOD initiative. But, as I understand it, Liz, Rachel B., and Kim approached their lesson already coming from the stance that allowing students to bring their own devices creates fruitful learning opportunities. Though, to be honest, it is not very clear in their lesson plan what technology the students would be using to conduct the I-Search on a history topic of their choice. However, it is certainly clear that this group envisioned technology playing a pertinent role in their lesson; whereas our group took a much more skeptical stance. I am not surprised by the connections their group made.
What did strike me as noteworthy about Liz, Rachel B., and Kim's lesson was their use of technology to initiate interactive discussion. I thought the Last Supper clip was a great way to begin class. It is entertaining, capturing the attention of students, and a clear example of the ways historical sources may be skewed to convey a particular message. I think the historical inaccuracy of the clip would be obvious enough to students that they would have a lot to say to each other about the potential pitfalls of a secondary source, getting them motivated, and hopefully excited, to investigate primary and secondary sources on their own. I also liked that this group used a multimedia text, rather than a document, because it demonstrates to students the multitude of forms a secondary source may take.
