Speech at the round table on "How best to use digital technologies in teaching history from primary to high school".
Virtuous collaboration between History and New Technologies: the laboratory of transformation processes
The speaker's speech and the subsequent workshop revolve around the ways in which young adolescents can develop an interest and passion for history: in this sense, digital technologies, always together with books, can play a very important role because they encourage the birth of collaborative work in the classroom, for a more participatory and interactive workshop teaching based on problem-solving. The attachments also present concrete examples of didactic units developed also with him, shown in all the phases in which group work is divided; furthermore, the attachments contain a wide range of online resources useful for teaching.
STUDENTS AND PASSION FOR HISTORY
Manuals are crowded with facts, problems, dates, places, characters. To get passionate about history, students have to grasp its meaning, but school history does not answer their existential questions about the meaning of life, power, values...
The teacher who guides you through this labyrinth reduces the amount of information and uses reading keys. It offers the possibility of making the historical facts understood and how they have influenced the common destinies up to now. In what way? Using a model of explanation that makes understand the fundamental transformations of the past, to better interpret the present.
This is how students' satisfaction with understanding history can arise.
DIGITAL AS A RESOURCE: A CONCRETE EXAMPLE
The model of transformation processes lends itself in an exemplary way to the use of digital. Let's see how, starting from an example: "The Italian unification process: a political path".
The introduction focuses on the present situation, then compares it with the initial situation of the process itself and with the final situation. This is followed by a phase of formulation of hypotheses solicited in the students, on the possible reasons for the transformation: it is the first of the recurrent problem-solving phases. Problem-solving is, in fact, a key operation, because it stimulates the curiosity to discover.
During the course of the Didactic Unit, other fundamental cognitive operations are used: periodizing, describing the constitutive phases of the process, thematizing and selecting the information, explaining the changes, confronting ourselves with today.
The class does not take on the traditional role of a listening audience, but becomes a laboratory of ideas and elaborates explanations starting from the knowledge of the facts, both under the guidance of the teacher and autonomously in the workgroups. Internet, Lim, tablet, but also smartphones and iPods, share folders and software easily available are agile tools for use. However, there is also a manual.
In the laboratory class, the teacher gives a general overview, organizes the work, indicates the websites validated by him containing the information to answer the initial questions, he constantly carries out tutoring.
WEBQUEST AND RETURN
In the Webquest phase, the protagonists are the group of young people: they circumscribe the research according to the questions (theme), build timelines, look for the appropriate cartography, information, texts, images, and videos. They organize themselves for communication with the class trying to give the required explanations and confront themselves with today. Finally, I am aware of the evaluation method.
Returning the group to the class is more challenging than questioning because students must demonstrate that they have logical - communicative and digital skills, managing to interact with the class.
All this is a research path - an action that requires a certain amount of time, but if it is entrusted to file sharing via the Internet during the so-called domestic work, it is done with passion and without particular complaints... at least for now!