History, ICT and Media Literacy
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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).
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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.
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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
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They have: A war machine,
censorship, propaganda
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We: Take out,
suppress, eliminate, neutralise, dig in
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They: Destroy,
kill, cower in their foxholes |
We launch: First strikes,
pre-emptively
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They launch: Sneak missile
attacks, without provocation
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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 |
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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.
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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.
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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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