Do you remember learning to read? I am a very lucky girl – I don’t.

What I do remember is lying in bed with my Read it yourself Ladybird Book, reading to my mother. I was so intrigued with the images of Cinderella. They were different to the usual ‘soft’ images. They were almost digital (in a pre-digital time!). I grew up in a house full of books and enjoyed reading stories about The Famous Five, Mr Twiddle and The Faraway Tree……

I remember my kindergarten teacher writing a...

One of my favorite parts of history class as a high school student was participating in simulations. Role-playing, mock trials, fake battles – replaying any moment in our nation’s past inspired me as a student and made history come alive. I remember once in AP US History being assigned roles as Confederate and Union leaders in the early 1860s and told to prepare for the oncoming war. We spent a week strategizing troop movements, building economic policy, writing speeches and organizing our...

Discussion and debate in the History classroom are necessary if we want our students to truly engage with the material and think critically about the past. How to generate discussion, however, can serve as a challenge for many educators – particularly in wired classrooms where students are constantly connected to computers or devices. Yes, technology can sometimes serve as an impediment to live discourse. Students, and even teachers, sometimes find it easier to immerse themselves in an...