Human Interest

The NSW School Museum of Public Education website provides a range of digital resources that can be used by teachers for the area of study Change and Continuity in the local area.  The school museum is located in North Ryde and dates back to 1877. 

The NSW Schoolhouse Museum “collects and preserves objects and items relating to the history of public education in NSW” such as early texts, pupils’ work, teaching resources and items from children’s daily lives.  The museum provides students with primary sources of information regarding school life dating back to 1877. 

Whilst the museum offers excursions, the website contains rich digital resources for student inquiry.  The digital content accessible via the website allows students to compare life of the past to that of today through the focus of schooling.  This content includes a flickr account (https://www.flickr.com/photos/nswschoolhousemuseum/) with rich visual photographic resources, an online archive of the museum’s collection (http://ehive.com/what-is-ehive), fact sheets such as “Early School Days” which recounts traveling to school, discipline, and what children took to school and youtube videos. These technologies allow students to “transcend the passive learner role” and take control of their learning. (Mishra, & Koehler, 2006, p. 1035)

The varied digital resources provide teachers and students with wide scope of inquiry and diversity of representations.  To use in the classroom, students could be shown the photos from the museums flickr account to make a comparison with the classroom the students are in.  After making a list of the similarities and differences, a class discussion about the change and continuity could follow.  Through this inquiry approach to pedagogy, “students are producing knowledge by investigating a situation” (Gilbert & Hoepper, 2014, p. 46).

Gilbert, R. & Hoepper, B. (2014). Teaching Humanities and Social Sciences; History, Geography, Economics & Citizenship in the Australian Curriculum. 5th Edition. South Melbourne: Cengage Learning Australia. (Chapter 3 Planning for teaching through critical inquiry)

Mishra, P. & Koehler, M.J. (2006). Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A

Framework for Teacher Knowledge. Teachers College Record Volume 108, Number 6, pp.1017-1054

This site is well structured, informative, easy to read and easy to navigate.  A great example of how to set up a site which effectively informs teachers about what you have to offer. 

This resource is part of an initiative by the Australian Government to capture stories and aspects of what makes up the Australian Community Heritage. The website is directed by four key aspects- People, places, events and groups. Within each of these headings teachers (or students) have the opportunity to search use an interactive map to find their local community and discover the different aspects that is seen as heritage. This resource also provides users with the opportunity of contributing their own family or community stories.

Teaching Idea:

This website is a perfect opportunity for students to explore online, gather information and contribute to an online resource which is a key content area within stage 2 (Board of Studies, 2006). While it is assumed that students have already developed key skills in relation to the use of websites it is important that tasks being used with this resource have been scaffolded in a way that student learning is optimized (Dufficy, 2005).

An engaging activity that could be used with this resource is for students to create their own admission to the community website. As Gilbert and Hoepper (2011) contend the use of ICT within the classroom provides a significant opportunity to engage students learning. Further more, they contend that an effective investigation involves students having a goal at the end of their unit that they work towards (Gilbert & Hoepper, 2011). By using the goal of a submission the teacher has the opportunity to engage students in a process of exploring, gathering, creating, editing and producing their own individual text about their heritage. Processes that the NSW Quality Teaching framework outlines as an important technique in assisting students gain a greater significance from the task.

Resources:

Board of Studies, (2006). Human Society and It’s Environment K-6 Syllabus Board of Studies. 

Dufficy, P. (2005). Designing Learning for Diverse Classrooms. Sydney: Primary English Teaching Association Australia.

Gilbert, R. & Hoepper, B. (2011). Teaching Society and Environment. 4th Edition. South Melbourne: Cengage Learning Australia

NSW Department of Education and Training. (2006a). Quality teaching in NSW public schools: A classroom practice guide. Sydney: Author. Retrieved 5 May, 2012 from https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/media/downloads/proflearn/secure/clasprag.pdf