Hallowe’en greetings (1900). Toronto Public Library, Special Collections OSB-CARDS-N-148 CC by 2.0
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Tag: pedagogy (Page 8 of 9)
So guess who is Active History’s newest contributor? Me! Over the next year, I’ll be writing a few blog posts for Active History about the teaching of Canadian history. My first post went up today, and is my latest Historian’s Toolkit, focusing on the CBC Digital Archives. Here’s a sneak peak:
Anyone who has searched the internet for videos to use while teaching Canadian history has run into one big problem: the overwhelming dominance of American media online. Adding “Canadian” or “Canada” to your Google search doesn’t necessarily solve this problem. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t great Canadian videos, soundbites, and films available. You just have to know where to look for them! This post is going to focus on my favourite place for Canadian audio-visual material: the CBC.
Read the rest here!
An autumn day at a summer cabin on the Gatineau River, Quebec, October 1950 / Chris Lund. Canada. National Film Board of Canada. Photothèque. Library and Archives Canada, e010955747 / CC BY 2.0
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Betty of Shediac, N.B. with her cocker spaniel at Pointe-du-Chêne (October 1948) George Hunter. Canada. National Film Board of Canada. Library and Archives Canada, e010948805 CC BY 2.0
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Come and Help with the Victory Harvest, You are Needed in the Fields (1939-1945), Library and Archives Canada, e010756935 CC BY 2.0
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Floral buggy in the Labour Day parade, Front St. (September 1913) William James Topley. Library and Archives Canada, PA-010537 CC BY 2.0
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Makeshift bath in Prairies, Audrey James washing up, Portage-la-Prairie, Manitoba (August 5, 1954). Rosemary Gilliat. Rosemary Gilliat Eaton Fonds. Library and Archives Canada, e010975221 CC BY 2.0
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One of academia’s dirty little secrets is that few professors any receive any kind of educational training. The assumption is that since most professors have PhDs, and are experts in their topics, they are fully equipped to teach this information to others. I’m not entirely sure how this is supposed to work. This harkens back to older models of education where students went to university to hear scholars spout their wisdom. But as countless studies and articles have shown, “telling isn’t teaching.”
If you’re lucky, and you have extra time on your hands (HA!) you might want to take a workshop or a class taught by your institution’s learning and teaching centre. Most universities have them these days, and they provide services to professors (and sometimes to students) who wish to improve upon their teaching. Unfortunately, this isn’t an option for everyone because: workshops are often only offered at certain times of the year; you might not be able to find one that suits your needs; when you’re teaching four courses a semester while trying to finish your doctorate, your “free time” consists of sleep; you simply don’t have the time. Some of us also want to have much more comprehensive training than a workshop can offer, but don’t have the time or the resources to do a certificate in education.
Thankfully, there are options available for such individuals. While I did benefit from the learning and teaching centre at UVic, most of what I’ve learned since I’ve started teaching has come from research that I’ve conducted myself online. Since I’m doing a series of blog posts this month all about going back to school, I thought that it would be well worth the effort to put all of that research together into one convenient package. So in this blog post, I’m going to provide you with a guide to online pedagogical resources. This list is in no way comprehensive, since there are literally thousands of websites and blogs these days devoted to teaching and learning in higher education. Instead, these are some of the resources that I’ve come back to over and over again, and that I believe have helped me to become a better teacher.
A family picnic at Lake Waskesiu, Prince Albert National Park, Saskatchewan (July 1950), Frank Royal. Canada. National Film Board of Canada. Library and Archives Canada, e010955736 CC BY 2.0
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It doesn’t matter how many times you teach a particular course or how many years of experience you have – everyone gets nervous on the first day of a new semester. You’ll wonder, will my students like me? Will I sound like I know what I’m talking about? And inevitably, no matter how computer savvy you are, you will end up looking like an idiot within the first ten minutes while you try to get the computer working (I practically live on my computer and this still happens to me). The attention spans of your students might be less than a minute, since many of them are still in vacation mode. All of this could add up to a potential disaster.
But it absolutely doesn’t have to be this way! As the veteran of many first days of classes, I’ve developed some effective strategies to make the day go as smoothly as possible. So in this blog post, I’m going to give you some tips and tricks to make your next first day of class an awesome day of class (was that too corny?)