As I progress in attempting to connect curriculum to real-world applications I believe one place in world history this can occur is the teaching of genocide throughout world history. I decided this the other day as so many students are familiar with the Holocaust or more recent genocides in Rwanda or Darfur but few if any were familiar with the Armenian genocide which precluded all of the aforementioned events.
The question that has arisen most recently is how do I want students to approach the project. What I came up with is possibly a comparison of the events taking place in the later stages of the Ottoman Empire (Armenian Genocide) to one of the other more familiar. I also believe I am going to remove the Holocaust as an option and instead have them focus on one of the more recent African genocides. I believe this combines curricular concepts, with historical events and more recent, almost current events.
The largest struggle is working through the fact that some of these internet sources are blocked and finding ways to enable students to get the best, most accurate information. It is also important to work with students on finding a way to recognize and avoid bias in their findings. I am getting closer to having a list of resources they can access that I believe will help them become informed of the events in a way that is informational.
Rob, Its refreshing to know that you are trying to mesh historical world events and current events. I am often ranting that history is being made every day but we keep our students in the dark on the most current, life-changing issues that affect them. I hope all goes like you want it to and continue to put Social Studies at the forefront of student learning.
ReplyDeleteHi Rob, I'm sorry to hear that many of the online resources that you want to use are blocked. I recommend the use of delicious.com to document and share your bookmarks to all of these online resources, I have used this resource with my students and it has been really successful and I have been impressed with the improvement in the general quality of work produced.
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Tom