UnConferencing History Education Part 2

Having some success in the bid to get more time for teachers to talk to teachers at annual conferences. I've put together a description of what my ideal (asterisked with the note that this not a full UnConference, but the ideal middle ground that gets things moving).

Take a look through the list and let me know what you think. We could definitely use some feedback.

The History UnConference

830 - 900 Arrival and Registration (possibly some activity to get people started, it would cool to have a power point rigged up to a projector, and people could add thoughts about the day - sort of like a Twitter feed, for the non Twitter users.)

900-915 Greetings

915-930 First lightning round of presentations - five presenters for 2 minutes each, 8 slides timed to 15 seconds each. A quick way to get people going.

930-1030 Keynote about a topic

1030-1045 Lightning Round #2 - 5 more quick presenters

1045-1100 Display and Find your workshop

1100-1200 First Round, Teachers divided by grade level into smaller groups of 15 or so. One moderator leads discussion around theme of the conference in your classroom. Each person talking for two minutes about the theme and their classroom. 15 minutes groups talk about the challenges they face. Poster Paper each group writes out three key challenges that they face in the classroom related to this.

1200-100 Display and Lunch, Poster Paper is posted in the main area for teachers to see what other groups were discussing. (Digital aspect could interview teachers about their experiences, a sort of speaker's corner booth.)

100-200 Regular presentations/sessions which people have signed up for.

200-215 break and display

215-315 Final round related back to the original morning discussion. Teachers could meet in smaller groups again with different people, each tackling a set of challenges posted in the morning. Similar discussion format facilitated by a moderator and secretary. Notes would again be posted afterwards with online component to share results. Teachers asked to come up with solutions to each set of challenges, with specific actions.

UnConferencing History Education

As a seasoned veteran of the History Education conferences circuit each fall, I've been thinking a lot about them lately. My experiences and impressions of the annual teacher conferences has really only declined over the past few years.

From my own impression, numbers are increasingly down and increasing participation in provincial teaching bodies continues to be a struggle. And yet, there really has been little talk of changing the format of the annual conferences or the way in which they do business. For displayers, which is often my own role, it affects how we can get our message out to the education community.

After several conversations with other displayers and presenters this past fall, we put the challenge out to each other to convince our own respective provinces to try something new and look to the unconference movement. An unconference is essentially "a facilitated participant-driven face-to-face conference around a theme or purpose."

It seems strange that so much effort is made to bring together teachers, who all teach the same class and subject material, but not actually provide space and time for them to talk to each other.

Which is why I'm really happy that some preliminary discussions with my provincial teachers conference organizers seems to be going well. I'm putting together a pitch to get some more unconference like events built into the standard day. I would really like to have displayers take part in some Lightning Talks, which I've seen used really well before. I'm also hoping to create some sessions based around getting teachers talking to each other and setting their own agenda.

What kinds of things do you think should be included in this conference. I'm hoping this will be a lot of fun. I'm also encouraged when I see stuff like TeachMeet in the UK.

What's a Historian to do

We're working on a new website for Canada's History and I've spent the afternoon working on our New Research section. Academic research - understanding it, writing it, finding it - needs to be a part of high school history classes. It' s just not acceptable that young students should graduate from high school with no real sense of what historians do at the academic level.

But here in lies my frustration. I've been reading the Canadian Historical Review and a great article about Gender and Class in early Montreal by historian Elise Chenier. It's a really interesting piece that I think would be even more interesting given the emphasis on volunteering for high school students. It examines how young elite women moved from debutant balls and high society to more engagement in "volunteering" as economic times deteriorated.

Of course, I've been reading it through my account as a former student at the University of Western Ontario. I also am on campus at the University of Winnipeg so I could read it here in the library. But for the average high school teacher, where are you supposed to go to download a copy of this article. Worst of all, the University of Toronto Press charges $13 to get a PDF of the article. An annual subscription only costs $60 and it is just not reasonable to expect the general public to pay at that level for individual articles.

It's a frustrating experience for those who believe that academic history had an important place in high schools, in particular challenging students and encouraging them to study history at the university level. What's a historian or teacher to do?