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Experiments with Non-Traditional Teaching Methods
Part of my teaching philosophy is that teaching and learning can be playful. One kind of play that can work well in the classroom is translating course material into visual representations. I do this and I encourage my students to join in.
Not All Tech is High Tech!
I have had a lot of fun using an old technology--the Overhead Projector. This has let me draw colourful, playful, little illustrations explaining material and concepts from the course. Click on it to zoom in. Click here to see a series of them on the Counter-Reformation.
Student-Created Study Sheets
Students condensed the chapter on Egypt onto one page.
Rules of the game:
1) You get one page to do this.
2) Get your info from the textbook.
3) You can draw, cut-and-paste, type or (if you are not an arts or crafts type) make a webpage.
4) Marks are for completeness, correctness, and creativity.
Want to see some examples? :
EXAMPLE A EXAMPLE B EXAMPLE C EXAMPLE D EXAMPLE E EXAMPLE F EXAMPLE G
Rules of the game:
1) You get one page to do this.
2) Get your info from the textbook.
3) You can draw, cut-and-paste, type or (if you are not an arts or crafts type) make a webpage.
4) Marks are for completeness, correctness, and creativity.
Want to see some examples? :
EXAMPLE A EXAMPLE B EXAMPLE C EXAMPLE D EXAMPLE E EXAMPLE F EXAMPLE G
Tumblr Blog
In the cultural survey course everyone is encouraged to keep their eyes open for things that remind them of the course. We discuss them in class, but we have recently started posting them to a class blog on Tumblr.
Good features: you can post images and videos and you don't have to be a member to post. There is an email address for each Tumblr site for direct submissions. Very user-friendly.
Good features: you can post images and videos and you don't have to be a member to post. There is an email address for each Tumblr site for direct submissions. Very user-friendly.
Personal Ads for Historical Figures
Students wrote personal ads for major figures of Romanticism. We posted them on Tumblr.
Animated Videos Explaining Course Concepts for the History of Art and Culture
Very sadly, the site I used went belly-up! So these videos no longer exist.
This was another video in which two would-be train robbers discussed women artists and the history of art. Their arguments came from Linda Nochlin's famous article, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?"
Twitter Posts From the Renaissance
As a homework assignment, students have made Twitter profiles for important Renaissance thinkers and artists. Here is one student's version of what Albrecht Dürer might have tweeted.
Class Website
The intranet at our college is functional, but not very attractive or intuitive. The advantage of a class website is that it is much more visually attractive and can be accessed from one's bookmarks with one click.
Learning About the Black Plague
Because we are still fascinated by the Bubonic Plague, there are lots of fun things to bring into the classroom such as historyteachers' catchy music video, or the Giant Microbes' yersinia pestis stuffed toy which I toss around until 1/3 to 1/2 of my students are "infected". Then we discuss Boccaccio's vivid, first-hand description. Last year I used a cute mouse cookie cutter to make not-so-cute dead rat cookies for the last day of school. Although you don't see them here, there were some with chocolate sprinkles for fleas.
