PowerPoint arouses many strong feelings, but the debate over the popular program typically pits advocates against detractors: fewer people discuss "how" PowerPoint should best be used in the classroom. Howard Strauss of Princeton University has observed that "a lot of the stuff that people try to do in smart classrooms is done badly," but…

When the American Council of Learned Societies held its annual meeting in Montreal last week, topics such as open access, scholarly publishing, and "The Global Academy and the Geography of Ideas" figured on the agenda. This article discusses the first item of business at the meeting: the debut of the Humanities Indicators project, with a first set…

This paper discusses the results of empirical research examining history teachers' opinions on teaching recent history, and on the revocation of a moratorium on teaching former Yugoslavia's recent history in Serbian minority schools in the Croatian Danube region. The research was conducted in 2003, involving a sample of 29 primary and secondary…

Facing the trend and pressure of globalisation, the history curricula of Hong Kong and Shanghai have been undergoing reforms in order to better equip the youth for coping with rapid contextual changes. At the same time, there have been attempts to reposition nationalism in the changing contexts. This paper aims to compare and contrast how the…

Conference proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference on the Teaching of Psychology: Ideas and Innovations, sponsored by the Psychology Department of the State University of New York at Farmingdale. The conference theme for 2011 was: The Future of the Undergraduate Psychology Major: New Directions in an Evolving Educational Climate. The Conference…

Through an examination of one undergraduate American history course at a large university in the southeastern United States via interview, observation and content analysis, we attempted to discern if the pedagogical methodology was relating to the students in such a way as to foster students' ability to construct meaning beyond simply…

This document comprising of two essays, "Challenging Prospective Teachers' Understandings of History" (G. Williamson McDiarmid) and "Reflections of a Journeyman Historian" (Peter Vinten-Johansen), provides a uniquely detailed account of what students study and learn in a historiography course. The course described is unusual in its attention to…

This unit for teaching U.S. history was designed to help students understand, appreciate, and analyze the magnitude of the Founders' creation. It permits them to understand issues confronting the Founders in 1787, to become involved in the process of resolving these issues, to comprehend the actual solutions developed by the Founders, and to…

A history professor describes his involvement with project HELDS (Higher Education for Learning Disabled Students) and discusses ways in which he accommodates LD students in his classes. Among the general techniques advocated are taping, use of analogies to help the students understand concepts, and emphasis on context of events within time…

Man's association with animals throughout the history of the United States is emphasized in these social studies activities. (JH)

Suggestions are made for realizing the essense of a culture, the general spirit premeating and expressing a era, and an event in time that must be explored -- all within the walls of a classroom. (Author/JH)

The degree to which Canadian history and social science textbooks inform and sensitize Canadian students to the events of the Holocaust is examined. Evaluated by a panel of independent judges and presented in comparative perspectives, 72 history and social science textbooks authorized for use in Canada's secondary schools were found to have…

"Ancient Egypt," an upper-division, non-required history course covering Egypt from pre-dynastic time through the Roman domination is described. General descriptive information is presented first, including the method of grading, expectation of student success rate, long-range course objectives, procedures for revising the course, major…

Considered methods for improving the teaching of history and social science by creating learning conditions that will maximize the opportunities for students to engage in critical thinking as they deal cognitively with methods of inquiry by which historical and social science knowledge is discovered and verified. (Author/RK)

Eight secondary seniors participated in an archaeological excavation, an experience in confluent learning, that is, an attempt to duplicate real life in the context of an education discipline. The three week experience gave the students an exciting sense of history, archaeological skills, and a feeling of camaraderie among new friends. (JH)