Australian History Summer School

I’ve been a bit absent on this site lately. The reason is that I’ve been working 2 jobs as I prepare to go on leave from teaching until the end of the year. Hopefully I’ll still post some history stuff this year.

The Australian History Summer School in Canberra almost didn’t happen due controversy surrounding its funding – but it was fun to present at, and I got lots of positive feedback.

Here is the recording that the Summer School made of my presentation. Have a listen.

iHistory in educational journal

iHistory is being featured in an educational journal called Learning and Leading with Technology. This came about because I took part in some research about education and technology, which is being produced into a book by the International Society for Technology and Education.

They’ve put together an article that is a forerunner to the book. Go here for a look.

Trial by Ordeal simulation

In Year 8 SOSE, we study medieval crimes and punishments. This is not really a podcast, but it’s a funny video. Instead of getting students to have burning coals put in their palms, I got them to…well, just watch thevideo.

Suffice to say that it involves hairy, salty things.

Technical blowout – postmortem

When listening to the “Medieval Crime & Punishment” podcast, most of the kids couldn’t hear a thing! This was not helped by the noise of their classmates (no, I do not run a perfectly ordered class). Perhaps if I had enough mp3 players so they could all listen at once this problem would be solved.

I think the main cause was that when creating the podcast, I used my super-dooper USB headset, which gives great sound, but does not imitate the $2 earphones the students were using, often sharing them with a classmate.

The positive out of all of this was that the students were really keen to get onto the mp3 players, and so worked really hard on all the other work.

Help iHistory Win!

The iHistory podcast project has been nominated for an Edublog award, in the category “Best audio and/or visual blog“. Help us win by voting online!

It’s easy: go to this link, click on the iHistory option and then “count my vote” and you’re done. Pass this message onto others and vote by Friday 15th December.