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History, ICT and Media Literacy

This cartoon is a copy of a copy of one which was on the web some time ago ( I was unable to trace the original, and had to get someone to do a copy for me from memory). 

It makes the point that there are important issues of reliablility, provenance, interpretation and information literacy surrounding the use of the internet, and there is some evidence to suggest that even secondary aged pupils do not have a sound grasp of some of the issues surrounding the reliability and authority of information posted on the internet (see below)

 Part of a historical education in the twenty first century should be to enable young people to make what Scott Harrison terms 'mature use' of the internet (see Chapter 2 of History, ICT and Learning).

Why history teachers should be more explicit and 'upfront' about using history to develop pupils' information or media literacy

Many pupils do not have a clear grasp of the ways in which school history will be helpful to them in their lives outside school, and when they leave school (Adey, K. and Biddulph, M., 2001, The influence of pupil perceptions on subject choice at 14+ in geography and history, Educational Studies, Vol. 27, No. 4: 439-451). There is also considerable unease about film and television portrayal of history 'at a time when young people have such an inability to distinguish between truth and fiction' (Beevor, A. 2002, TES, 11 October)

If we are going to spend time in history classrooms talking about reliability, inference, corroboration, utility and so on, we should be explicit about the uses to which these terms can be put in everyday life. If we spend time looking at Tudor portraits, we should also get pupils to look at newspaper images, internet sites and extracts from television programmes. There are no school subjects better placed than history to get pupils to learn not to accept all they are told at face value- that the internet is not the ultimate repository of trustworthy and reliable information, that people organisations and governments do not always tell 'the whole truth', and that the media do not always report their sources of information in a neutral and transparent manner. Given the importance of information or 'media' literacy in contemporary society, history teaching should be more 'upfront' about addressing it. This requires history teaching to encompass the present as well as the past.

Matt Howe's (small scale) survey of secondary pupils' views on the comparative trustworthiness of a range of media sources showed that even at the age of 16- after at least 9 years of studying history- many pupils regarded the internet as one of the most trustworthy sources of information. (See p. 200 of Chapter 8, Haydn, T and Counsell, C. (eds),History, ICT and Learning)One of the aims of school history is to teach young people to handle information intelligently, and part of this is to acquaint them with the principles of procedure that historians subject information to in order to establish the validity of claims, the reasons for the differences between accounts and explanations, and the trustworthiness of sources.

As Reuben Moore notes:

'Whose idea was it that we should teach history through ICT? The answer is that it should have been ours. The skills, approaches and attitudes that we teach in history are the vital ones for teaching pupils to use the internet. No one else teaches them as directly, as systematically and with such attention to progression accross years 7 to 13, as we do... The internet has increased the opportunity through its scope and its resources, but its proper use demands a certain kind of rigour that is already evident in the professional practices, language and debates of history teachers- and has been for over 20 years.

'What is more, there is no avoiding it, "Yeah, tried the internet. I couldn't find what I was looking for." We have all said this and heard it from others. It's just too big. You are overwhelmed by information and adverts. So people get hot and bothered and consider tha whole thing a waste of time. But we must use it. There is no way out. The internet is not a passing trend. Our young people will use it in their daily lives.. And on the internet, they will continue to confront interpretations and representations of history. All adults, no matter what they do with their lives, need to be able to see how and why the historical interpretations that bombard them were constructed. Otherwise they are prey to propaganda and manipulation, not to mention cynicism and lack of regard for truth.' Moore, R. (2000) Using the internet to teach about interpretations in years 9 and 12, Teaching History, No. 101: 35

ICT offers a range of opportunities to develop the sophistication and maturity of pupils' media or information literacy, not just with regard to the use of internet sources, but also the facility to access a range of media sources. The following are some ideas and suggestions for using ICT to develop pupils' media literacy.

Problems of Evidence: from Nancy Banks Smith's review of 'Sex, lies and aliens' a Channel 4 documentary on The Sport The article can be accessed by using the archive feature of The Guardian's online site at www.guardian.co.uk It can serve as a light introduction to the ways in which newpaper stories enter the public domain.

(Guardian 22 October 1997) tells the story of a mother who believed that one of her children, Lyndon, had been turned into a fish finger. This is a brief extract from the article:

Leaning forward, Sarah (the reporter) asked with almost Japanese delicacy, "Is there any chance I could have a look at Lyndon?' A fish finger was produced from the freezer. 'I know it's a difficult question, but what made you think that this fish finger might be your son?' The woman ventured that Lyndon used to go stiff too. "Apart from that,' asked Sarah, 'there's no other family resemblance?' Tony (the editor) was on his mobile again. 'The fish finger story. I'm not sure how genuine it is yet. Go to Asda. Buy a box of them. Get around to her house. Mix him in with them and see if she recognises him.' the story finally surfaced as Mum grills fish finger kid. World Exclusive.

One of my students started a lesson by asking the pupils how many of them had been on the internet- most of them had. He then asked them how many had ever been on an internet 'chat' site- about half of them said they had. He then led into a lesson about the reliability of information by telling a story of his niece, who had dabbled in internet chatrooms and got hold of a good looking photo of a graphic designer, 'Bazza from Birmingham', only to subsequently find that 'Bazza' was not who he made out to be, was not a graphic designer, and was not the person in the web photo. He got hold of appropriate photographs from web sites to illustrate the story. The pupils were engaged by the story, it made a useful point about the dangers of internet chat sites, and it led into discussion of the reliability of different types of historical source.


Background information to the Oliver Cromwell spoof page (http://freespace.virgin.net/susan.inwards/index.htm)

Sadly, the original site has gone, and only the 'front page' of it has been saved. The original site included correspondence which the author had received about the site, mainly in terms of requests for help with homework, coursework projects, from people who had not realised that the site was a send-up, in spite of the clues given. It also pointed out the other sites which had uncritically incorporated the site into their 'Links' page, ('most sadly of all, the BBC was taken in, a sign of the rapidly approaching end of civilisation': 'Yahoo, Excite and Webcrawler actually think that this page is authoritative'). Some extracts from the original site:

'What?!?! I'm not going to write your high school term paper for you? You'lll have to - gasp- read a book? That's right. I get far too many messages like these: (some examples of e-mail correspondence received):

'i need your help with this cromwell thing please just lik write your name and your source or something please. (Nicole)

'Help me plz I choosed oliver cromwell for my project! and I need some info of him! is O.C. reaspnsble of the king execution? I need more about the religion and the irish question.' (Salsa)

'I've been given a question for my history homework, please could you help me with it- 'Was Oliver Cromwell a hero or a villain?' (David)

'Please, please send me some pictures by Tuesday the 7th, I need it for my history homework. (Nimrod)

'You mention that Cromwell banned slavery in Britain in 1655. Do you have any more details on that? Which month, did he say anything on the subject, how did he do it? How many slaves were there, from where were they etc? (Jon)

'Your page is crap. I only have about half an hour to come up with a diary of Oliver Cromwell, but because you are crapping on about your life and reletives, you haven't put the obviose diary in.' (Andrew)

'I was really disappointed at the fact that I copied all this information from your website and it may not be accurate. Please could you correct this IMMEDIATELY.' (Pupils from a London school)

Some of the author's responses:
  • 'Still want to contact me? You have been warned- particularly clueless or irate messages will be saved and appended to this page, headers and all, and disrespectful commentaries added. There are 3 main categories of people who send me mail:
  • Furious students upset with my unwillingness to write their papers
  • The simultaneously naive, persistent and curious who acutally thought this was authoritative, wanted even more, and so paged through (and then disregarded) all the warnings in search of my address.
  • Those of us who laugh at the other categories.

'Many communities have a facility known as a library. These facilities contain hundreds (and in some cases) thousands) of storage devices made by binding together what appears to be laser printer output. The people who work in the 'library' call these things 'books' You might especially like to check out the books with the simple single letter titles like 'A' 'B' and so on, all the way to 'Z'. That series is called, for some reason, an 'Encyclopaedia'. It is rumoured to hold gigabytes of information, stored in alphabetical order. Of course, there is no search engine, you have to turn the pages yourself. However, you might find that resource helpful.'

'Well where is the accurate information?

The following lists real references, which I did notuse to build this page. Many thanks to Joyce Sampson of Florida State University for suggestions:

Contact the Huntingdon Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon, UK. They also have a web site.
Contact the Public Record Office, in Kew Gardens, part of Greater London. They also have a web site.
Read a book:
Barry Coward's Oliver Cromwell
Christopher Hill's God's Englishman
Cromwell as a soldier by Thomas Stanford Books
Tom Reilly's Cromwell, an honourable enemy.


The following are extracts from a Guardian article called 'Mad dogs and Englishmen, (I'm afraid I haven't got the date for it). It gives examples of some of the 'differentiated vocabulary' used in the (first?) Gulf War in newspaper reports in the British press:

We have:
Army, navy, air force,reporting guidelines, press briefings
They have:
A war machine, censorship, propaganda
We:
Take out, suppress, eliminate, neutralise, dig in
They:
Destroy, kill, cower in their foxholes
We launch:
First strikes, pre-emptively
They launch:
Sneak missile attacks, without provocation
Our men are:
Boys, lads
Their men are:
Troops, hordes
Our boys are:
Professional, lion-hearted, young knights of the skies, desert rats
Thier boys are:
Brainwashed, Bastards of Baghdad, fanatical, paper tigers
Our boys:
Fly into the jaws of hell
Their boys:
Cower in concrete bunkers
Our missiles are:
Like Luke Skywalker, zapping Darth Vader
Their missiles are:
Ageing duds
Our missiles cause:
Collateral damage
Their missiles cause:
Civilian casualties
We :
Precision bomb
They:
Fire wildly at anything in the skies
Our PoWs are:
Gallant boys
Their PoWs are:
Overgrown schoolchildren
Our planes:
Suffer a high rate of attrition
Fail to return from missions
Their planes:
Are shot out of the sky
Are zapped

The following is an extract from the Oxford Magazine, Noughth Week, Trinity Term,1998, (author unknown) titled 'Major technological breaktrhough', it makes the point that the book possesses formidable advantages over other media sources for the rapid accessing of information:

'Introducing the new Bio-Optic Organised Knowledge device, trade named BOOK. BOOK is a revolutionary breakthrough in technology: no wires, no electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on. It's so easy to use, even a child can operate it.

Compact and portable, it can be used anywhere- even sitting in an armchair by the fire- yet it is powerful enough to hold as much information as a CD-rom disk. (I'm not sure that bit it accurate)

Here's how it works: BOOK is constructed of sequentially numbered sheets of paper, each capable of holding thousands of bits of information. The pages are locked together with a custom-fit device called a binder, which keeps the sheets in their correct sequence. Opaque Paper Technology (OPT) allows manufacturers to use both sides of the sheet, doubling the information density and cutting costs. . Each sheet is scanned optically, registering information directly into your brain. A flick of your fingers takes you to the next sheet.

BOOK may be taken up at any time and used merely by opening it. BOOK never crashes or requires rebooting... The "browse" feature allows you to move instantly to any sheet, and move forward or backward as you wish. Many come with an '"Index" feature, which pinpoints the exact location of any selected information for instant retrieval.

An optional BOOKmark accessory allows you to open BOOK to the exact place you left it in a previous session- even if BOOK has been closed..BOOKmarks fit universal design standards, thus, a single BOOKmark can be used in BOOKS by various manufacturers... You can also make personal notes next to BOOK text entries with an optional programming tool, the Portable Erasable Nib Cryptic Intercommunication Language Stylus (PENCILS).

Portable, durable, and affordable, BOOK is being hailed as a precursor of a new entertainment wave. Also BOOK's appeal seems so certain that thousands of content-creators have committed to the platform and investors are reportedly flocking. Look for a flood of new titles soon.

Some quotes:


These can be used for discussion, or simply put on the walls of the classroom as 'food for thought'.

'It's difficult to change the way you see the world. We take on a certain view when we are young then spend the rest of our lives collecting the evidence.' Andrew Miller (2001) Oxygen, London, Spectre: 104

'The problem of the net. The sum of human knowledge is there, but so is the sum of human ignorance, misinterpretation-and malice.' Eason, J. (2000) 'Weblife: urban myths', Guardian Online, 20 July.
'Advances in technology will inevitably mean that, just as people now edit pictures at home on their PCs to make fakes for fun, they will soon be able to do the same with video. In ther relatively near future, it will be impossible to trust any picture, movie or soundbite. If this doesn't frighten you, it's because you haven't really thought about it.... There are people who believe anything.' Birch. D. (2002) 'Technology that fakes the truth', Guardian Online, 4 July.
'The internet is wonderful for historians, but you've got to remember that there's absolutely no one between you and the idiot who is putting this stuff of the web.' Church, S. (2002) seminar, School of Education, UEA, 10 May.
'It's not every day that you encounter a member of the government who appears to understand the net. Most politicians (Clinton, Blair, Blunkett, to name just three) see it as a kind of pipe for pumping things into schools and schoolchildren.' Naughton, J. (1998) Observer.
''There are 93,500 websites devoted to Bob Dylan. All but three are completely useless. Plagiarism can be hard work. Moss, S. (2001) '60 things you ought to know about Bob Dylan', Guardian, 23 May.

'Television too often is a poor medium for the treatment of serious subjects.' Keegan, J. (2001) 'On why the bombing of Germany is a difficult subject for television', an article explaining why it is often difficult to do history 'properly' on television because of the constraints of the medium.Radio Times, 18-24 August.
'I suggest that it is a sound principle never to treat any comment from any spokesman for any vested interest with anything other than profound scepticism, never to ask for a story but to find it out for yourself, and if ever you are being given a story, to ask why you are being given it.' Paxman, J. (2000) extract from the Phillip Geddes Memorial Lecture, quoted in 'All is not what it seems', Guardian, 8 May 2000.
'A consistent theme in this book is that official mendacity was common to all countries, whether or not their government depended on votes. Everywhere, those in power laid hold of the means of informing people- and informed them in terms opposite to the truth. In this process, there was very little to choose between, for instance, the war propaganda of the Japanese government, and the British ministers' assumption that the purpose of the BBC and almost all of the free press was to state and argue the government's case.' Foot, P. (2000) Review of The dark valley: a panorama of the 1930s, Piers Brendon, London Jonathan Cape.
'Among the most remarkable and least studied aspects of world history are the many examples of how easily led human beings can be. Over substantial periods we have been cowed by the blatantly artificial images of kings and tyrants, so that we meekly supported the most pernicious regimes. With amazing credulity, we have been lulled into idolising conquerors, applauding genocide, upholding persecution and condoning exploitation. We have happily been drilled by religious fanaticism into worshipping cruel gods, fearing strange hells, blessing human sacrifices or torture, admiring self-mortification and obeying the oddest of moral codes. We have been willing to believe the silliest myths, we have let our senses be ruled by martial music, poetic slogans, absurd prophesies and exotic images. We may now lay claim to be more sophisticated and less easily manipulated thaam our ancestors, but there is little evidence of this. From the awesome ceremonials round Stonehenge, or the Temple of Karnak, right through to the Romans, the Crusades, Napoleon, Hitler, Kennedy or Yeltsin, the abilty to deploy propaganda skills has been one of the major determinants of historical direction. This has not just been true of political power, but of religion, morality and some extent, economics.' Thomson, O. (1999) Preface to Easily Led, London, Sutton Press.
'Why were there so many soldiers when there wasn't a war? Why were there so many apricot trees in the countryside but never apricots in the shops? Why is there fog over the city in summer? The questions were not dangerous in themselves and Peter had answered them easily enough. Because they are there to protect us. Because we sell them abroad for hard currency that we need. Because there are many factories working at full capacity... Angilina was always content with the answers... What stirred him most was the child's passive satisfaction with responses he knew to be at best, plausible evasions.. As he lay awake, fretting in the dark, Angelina's condition expanded until it became symptomatic of the whole country. Could a nation lose its capacity for scepticism, for useful doubt? What if the muscle of contradiction simply atrophied from lack of exercise?' , from Julian Barnes, The Porcupine, London, Jonathan Cape.

Some websites:

As well as the sites about use of the net and searching/evaluating information on the net mentioned in the book (page 201), the following sites might be of interest, in terms of serving as a way in to issues of media/information literacy:

  • http://www.urbanlegends.about.com A site specialising in explaining and debunking internet hoaxes
  • http://helix.ucsd.edu/~aboese/hoaxes.html A reminder that information hoaxes were around long before the internet. This site is a history of them, from the sixteenth century to the present day, including the example of Mary Toft in Surrey, who claimed to have gven birth to a litter of rabbits in 1726.
  • http://www.cnn.com&business_story=breaking_news&urgent@www.itstrue.eu.com Dave Birch cites this as a good example of a very plausible web spoof site, which comes across as if it is a bone fideCNN site.

Some newspaper articles:

Ian Buruma 'Oh what a lovely war' , discusses issues arising out of the Hollywood treatment of history, with reference to the recent film Pearl Harbour ('It has a huge budget, A list stars and the best special effects that money can buy, so why does it remind me of a 1942 Japanese propaganda film? Could it be mawkish patriotism, catoon like heroes and unashamed glorification of war?'

John Eason, 'Weblife: Urban myths', discusses intenet sites devoted to exploring, explaining and debunking information myths and hoaxesGuardian Online, 20 July 2000.

Michael White, 'Fear and loathing in the lobby', very interesting first section expaining why and how both politicians and the media don't always tell the whole truth, Guardian Media, 16 December 2002.

Dave Birch, 'Second Sight', ('It is easy to fool people into believing bogus news stories', 'The challenge is not finding out facts, but finding out what is a fact.', Guardian Online, 16 August 2001.

John Crace, 'It's the way you tell it', discusses problems of history on televsion and in films, ('How far should we go to make it esily digested?'), Guardian Education, 17 December 2002.

Robert Hanks, 'All this and World War Two', examines the accuracy of the recent TV series Band of Brothers, Independent, 5 October 2001.

Dave Birch, 'Technology that fakes the truth', explores the implications of the fact that all images, movie clips etc can now be easily doctored, Guardian Online, 4 July 2002.

Nick Cohen, Observer Review, 16 May 1999, Interesting dissection of the media presentation of Prime Minister Blair's arrival at Downing St., 2 May 1997. (I suspect there are some pupils who think that news in only 'managed' in totalitarian countries).

Phillip Knightly,'Fighting Dirty', War correspondent discussing how access to official sources compromises journalistic freedom and integrity in wartime, Guardian, 20 March 2000.

Fiachra Gibbons, 'Novelist condemns Hollywood's yen to rewrite history as cultural imperialism', reports Robert Harris's criticisms of recent 'history' films, and the 'dumbing down' of history, Guardian, 20 August 2001.

Alan Travis, 'Labour's hi-tech plan to foil critics', examines the implications of political mechanisms to control/influence the news agenda, Guardian, 7 January 2000.

David Walker, 'Labour website spin "like Orwell's 1984"', explores the presentation issues posed by party political websites. Ideally, it would be good to use examples from all three major parties. I think that it is important when using materials like the last 2 articles that it is presented in a 'balanced' rather than party political way, i.e. the point is made that all political web sites present their case as forcefully as possible- they are not aiming at 'balance', and they will obviously try to present statistics etc in a way that presents their own party in the best possible light. Difficult citizesnship issues here, but is it not better to discuss the information issues posed by political advertising rather than consider it an area where history teachers should not tread?

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