Dinosaurs Guide to Technology | The History of Science Society

Vol. 42, No. 1, January 2013
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The "Dinosaurs" Guide to Technology in the History Classroom

by Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, The University of Florida

Like other historians of my generation, I am not entirely comfortable with the heavy use of technology in my classroom. I do not teach the kinds of courses that rely on huge amounts of data interpretation or require the solution of complex problem sets that one characteristically sees in the sciences. I want students to concentrate on the power of the spoken word, and to focus on the historical material I am presenting. I want to avoid the many distractions that come with too many gizmos and gimmicks we commonly associate with technology, and I want my classroom to function as a kind of intellectual space that re-creates a feeling for the past, at the same time that it promotes the art of engaging it in a scholarly way1.

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I also find it a struggle to be working with technology that is not always well supported at my institution and that often proves unreliable. Technology should be decreasing our "stress load," but all too often it is actually doing the reverse. Besides the fact that it can be embarrassing when the technology fails in front of fifty or so people, nearly all of whom know more about it than their teacher, it can be a serious time-waster in a classroom where meeting time is a precious commodity. I really do not want to be futzing with my computer once I am in the classroom! So, my philosophy of technology, briefly stated, is to keep it minimal, simple and spare, otherwise it ends up controlling us, when we are supposed to be controlling it—and just think of the amount of time we spend learning to work some new piece of software if we try to stay current. In short, I aim for a minimalist approach, so I am down to two kinds of digital technology that I consider essential to my teaching, especially in a large lecture format: (1) the use of PowerPoint, preferably the latest version and (2) an e-learning platform, or a course and learning-management system or LMS (individual institutions may use "Blackboard," "Moodle" or "Sakai," among others). In my experience, both enhance the learning process and add to the efficiency of instruction, making it worth the initial investment of time and effort, and both are worth the risks that come with reliance of technology. That is why PowerPoint and LMSs are now considered standard practices in university teaching all over. Most students now actually demand them and think us dinosaurs if they do not find them!

PowerPoint: I've been a heavy user of PowerPoint since 2002 when my undergraduate students first introduced me to it. It is a powerful instructional device that conveys information immediately, and if used deftly, can literally evoke the kind of historical experience that can take us into the past. I use images very heavily—paintings, photographs, illustrations, and even graphs where need be, along with some text to accompany my lectures.

Google image from the title page of PowerPoint Lecture 8, Tuberculosis: The Romantic Disease from one of my classes. I chose "Ophelia," by John Everett Millais (1852) to introduce the class to the nineteenth century artistic obsession with consumption. Elizabeth Siddal, the model for this painting, was a famous consumptive and a favorite with Pre-Raphaelites.

I use a range of examples from well-known paintings in art history many of which are available as Google images, to forgotten ephemera from popular culture, to original documents that can be shared immediately with students (just think of the wonders of working with students on a digital image of an archival document). I scour digital archives for images that have never been published in print media. The National Library of Medicine, for example, has marvelous images as do a number of PBS web sites that are designed for classroom use. There is nothing more exciting than to be engaging in original historical research in your actual teaching. Combined with a novel, lively lecture, each classroom becomes the opportunity to convey the excitement of historical research, no matter how introductory the course may be. I think of it in terms of sharing the excitement I feel when I find something in the archives, and students do pick up on that excitement as they are introduced to the material. I also use music heavily, as well as excerpts from films and YouTube clips, that are easily embedded in the PowerPoint presentation. Multi-media formats are especially effective ways to teach cultural history—so much so, that I now wonder how I managed to do this before 2002 (well, I do remember having to lug film equipment and music players to class). The down side to scouring digital archives and You Tube is that it does take time, and entering the material on PowerPoint is in itself time consuming and sometimes frustrating, but a great deal depends on how much information you want to put on the slides. My advice is to keep the text minimal; if too much text is included students will spend their time writing it all down, word for word, instead of listening to the lecture and processing the information being conveyed. And it can be overwhelming. The preparation of a one hour lecture usually takes about five hours, depending on how elaborate the slides become and how much novel material one is including. This is a serious investment of time, but once completed the experience of learning is enhanced, the teaching is greatly improved, and the slides can be used in the next cycle of teaching, as they are easily modified each time the course is taught. Unfortunately, in a number of places, formal PowerPoint instruction is increasingly hard to find, and IT experts on campus may send you to web sites that supposedly teach it to you, among other things. I found some of these "self-help" web sites frustrating and difficult and recommend that you get a friend to show you the basics and then teach yourself some of the add-on features (I love to play with the transitions between slides for example, as a way of introducing dramatic special effects). There is an alternative presentation format that is gaining popularity called Prezi that does not have the linear formatting of PowerPoint, and that has an active, more dynamic feel to it, but it may not work for a lecture in history. The web site that shows you what Prezi can do is located here: http://prezi.com/4jrranugjj6p/turn-a-powerpoint-to-prezi-prezihelpcom/

E-Learning or any other "LMS": This is the name for a course or learning management system, a kind of digital space where you can perform virtually all the functions associated with teaching, and that can actually go beyond the traditional classroom. It is much easier to use than a web site and private so that you do not have to worry about cyberstalkers tracking your course and the interactions you might be having with your class. The mere act of placing my syllabus on one of these (at UF we use "Sakai") saved me dozens of e-mails or phone calls, and I didn't have to go through the ordeal of photocopying it over and over to replace misplaced copies. The best part of the system is that it enables you to upload pdf files for your reading materials that students can access immediately, as well as uploading the class PowerPoint slides—photocopies are increasingly things of the past as are course readers, or readings deposited in libraries. Some teachers are reluctant to upload their slides thinking students will slack off in class, but I did not find this to be the case, especially if the slides have minimal text. My students used the PowerPoint slides I uploaded for their use, which they often downloaded to their cell phones as well as iPads or other computing devices. The iPad method of note-taking is fabulous, incidentally. Students were able to download the PowerPoint slides, and then insert their own classroom notes in the original file, creating a customized digital notebook that includes everything that happened in the class, plus what they have read on their own. Most of these course management systems also have an announcement page where you can post formal reminders of exam dates or to announce changes of plans and readings. I use the announcement page heavily to add new links that point students to current events or provocative readings. It is also connected to an internal e-mail system. I found it really useful because it allowed me to separate messages from students from the blizzard of mailings I get on my ufl.edu account. This allowed me to respond to my students quickly, and even more importantly enabled me to keep a clear record of student communications, and in chronological sequence, which is a good way to clear up any misunderstandings should they take place. Course management systems can also can be used to receive student papers, or assignments, which can be checked rapidly with a plagiarism-detecting software package like Turnitin that is part of the LMS, and grading can be done digitally right then and there. There is a gradebook feature to record grades that you can then program to calculate the final grades, and there is a chat-room or discussion room capability if one wants to use it. So far, I do all my grading, recording and calculation in hard copy, but I am considering moving in that direction in the near future. The down side of some of these is that they are not all intuitively easy to learn or to employ, and they all do things a bit differently. Some do not work well with the Mac world, or work better with some browsers, or not at all with others. Most campuses do offer formal instruction on e-learning, and have some kind of support system in place to help faculty trouble-shoot, though they may close early on workdays and not be available on the weekends, when one actually has the time to be figuring things out. Some of the same functions can be employed in some social media like Facebook, which is much easier to use, and more effective at rapidly creating a community of learners, but they are not proper substitutes for the kinds of e-learning platforms I am describing here, and may pose a new set of instructional problems. Students are often reluctant to open these accounts and most universities and colleges are now in the process of developing strict guidelines for their use. My own institution strongly discourages the use of social media for instructional purposes, except for extenuating circumstances requiring formal permission from the administration, and many schools do not permit "friending" between faculty and active students.

The increased emphasis on on-line instruction and the reliance on digital technology is of course posing other new challenges. Not only do students have the opportunity to make all kinds of embarrassing comments about their teachers on half a dozen websites out there, but they have created e-communities of various kinds that enable them to write papers together, or to share quizzes and examinations. Digital test-banks pose serious problems for the larger courses that use an examination format. My present solution is to have students return exams to me after reading them over (I do not use blue books but provide them with a stapled bundle of paper). I explain to them that I am protecting the integrity of the course for their sakes, and I make their exams available should they wish to consult them. I try to minimize opportunities for digital photography and digital sharing of the exam. This is in addition to, of course, trying to come up with novel questions each semester, as unrealistic as that may be in a course with a finite amount of material that is taught repeatedly. And to make it worse we have yet another challenge, from a growing number of internet businesses that will write original papers for students for a fee, capitalizing on the fact that Turnitin and other plagiarism detecting software is making it difficult to replicate existing work. Suffice it to say that instructors now have to actively revisit all kinds of learning and teaching strategies over and over as new technologies are developed and that find their way into our classrooms. It is not unlike a kind of technological arms race, sometimes amusingly reminiscent of Mad Magazine's "spy vs. spy" cartoons. I say, get used to it—this is teaching in the digital age!

My final comment is confessional in nature: I go out of my way to learn from my students, especially on the use of technology in the classroom. I come early and leave late. If there are breaks I take them with my students. I develop close relationships with some—usually the ones in the front rows of the class who I can watch closely as they take notes. I ask them about their preferred devices, and I ask them about what works for them. I respond to criticism, and do what I can to facilitate the process of learning this way. And if I haven't a clue what they are saying about the latest gizmo or software program, I ask them to teach me about it—we are after all, members of a learning community, so why not have students teach us, for a change?

1: At least one recent study suggests that students prefer effective lectures to technology: see Léo Charbonneau, "Students Prefer Good Lectures over Technology in the Class," University Affairs, November 21, 2012. http://www.universityaffairs.ca/students-prefer-good-lectures-over-the-latest-technology-in-class.aspx

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