Trench One 5: From landscape to Netscape
Trench One 6: Written in stone
Trench One 7: Save our heritage
Trench One 8: Game on
Trench One 9: Time Team on the web
Trench One 10: The great Barbie hoax
Trench One 11: Studying archaeology on the web
Trench One 12: Magical history tour: schools resources on the web

Magical history tour: schools resources on the web

From Trench One 12

‘On a windy hillside two bodies lie close to each other. The man has a broken sword blade in his ribs. There is no obvious reason for the woman’s death. This is murder and you must try to solve this horrible crime.’ As history lessons go, this is better than learning dry dates and the names of kings. But the Tideway Community School and Sixth Form Centre at Newhaven, Sussex, is just one of a growing number of schools that have embraced new methods – and the new medium of the internet – to stir their pupils’ interest in the past.

The murder mystery is the brainchild of teacher Jim Fanning, of the school’s history department. ‘In 1932,’ says the website he set up for teaching Roman history, ‘archaeologists discovered the bodies of a man and a woman buried below the floor of a building outside Housesteads Roman fort. You are going to write a report about the crime. Using this website you will visit the scene of the murder to collect evidence for your report.’

The aim of the website (www.btinternet.com/~james.fanning/RomanMystery/intro/) is to introduce pupils to aspects of life on Hadrian’s Wall through the study of the murder mystery. The website is divided into sections dealing with the Romans in Britain, Hadrian’s wall, Housesteads fort, the murder house, civilian life at a Roman fort, a visit to Vindolanda and the Greenhead Roman Army Museum. Each section contains worksheets, tests and other tasks, together with links to other websites and references to classroom textbooks. The pupils – or ‘detectives’ – are supplied with murder mystery clues at each stage of their studies, as they seek to unravel the archaeological mystery of the killings.

The Tideway school website is part of the Association of Teachers’ Websites (www.byteachers.org.uk/), which has been set up to offer teachers, pupils and parents access to high-quality teaching resources and materials for free. All of its member sites – which cover many other subjects as well as history and span the entire age range from nursery to sixth-form education – are built and maintained by teachers. And they have all been vetted to ensure that they are comprehensive, well-organised and user friendly.

Organised by subject area, its member sites for secondary-level history, include:

• Spartacus Educational (www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk). Covering Key Stages 3, 4 and 5 in the history national curriculum, Spartacus Educational provides online history lessons and a collection of encyclopaedias with 4,000-plus entries, mainly covering the past two centuries.
  
  
• School History (www.schoolhistory.co.uk). The School History website, covering Key Stages 3, 4 and 5, contains a range of downloadable worksheets, online lessons, quizzes and CD-ROM activities, together with links to national curriculum subject areas categorised by subject area.
  
  
• Schools History (www.schoolshistory.org.uk). Not to be confused with the above, this website covers Key Stages 2, 3 and 4, and offers online history lessons, easy to access background material, quizzes, GCSE revision tasks and downloadable resources for teachers.
  
  
• WGS History (www.activehistory.co.uk). Covering Key Stages 3, 4 and 5, WGS History aims to ‘bring history alive through ICT [information and communication technology]’ with a vast range of self-marking quizzes, decision-making games, interactive sourcework exercises and worksheets covering the most popular topics.
  
  
• History on the Net (www.historyonthenet.co.uk). Covering Key Stages 2 and 3, History on the Net is designed for use by pupils, teachers, parents and anyone interested in furthering their historical knowledge, and offers a range of materials, including interactive online lessons, links and games.
  
  
• History Learning Site (www.historylearningsite.co.uk). This site covers Key Stages 3, 4 and 5, and contains a complete modern world history course, together with numerous A-level history courses.

Primary schools are not left out of the growing internet resource bank for history teaching either. For example, at www.clickteaching.com/history/index.shtml, there is a wide variety of downloadable teaching resources, such as worksheets, lesson plans and so on. All of the teaching resources available on this site have been produced by teachers who use the ideas in their own classrooms.

There is also an invaluable online directory of teaching-oriented sites at www.topmarks.co.uk. This lists 1,450 high-quality sites and offers a search facility by subject and age group. So, for example, searching for history sites aimed at children aged eight to 11 produced 76 hits, with Channel 4’s own Homework High website top of the list – followed by the BBC’s Roman History Resource website (www.bbc.co.uk/education/romans/) and then the DfES’s Primary Schemes of Work: History web pages (www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/schemes/history). Alternatively you can just browse the history section, which has 244 sites.

Finally, to keep in touch with the latest developments in the teaching of history via the web, it’s worth subscribing to John Simkin’s Teaching History Online newsletter, which is sent out free of charge every month by email. Simkin runs the Spartacus Educational website (subscribe at www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/history.htm) and the newsletter includes news, reviews of websites and articles on using ICT in the history classroom.

As well as Homework High, the award-winning homework help service, Channel 4’s 4Learning website (www.4learning.co.uk) offers a wide range of free teaching resources for both primary and secondary schools. Its HistoryQuest web pages also offer an interactive guide to the first and second world wars, with a series of games (Timeline, Odd One Out, What Happened Next and Behind the Headlines) to stimulate pupils’ interest and help with teaching. We will be looking in more detail at the Channel 4 website in the next issue of Trench One.