Young children using ICT in History

Using ICT to support History teaching

We have to remember that ICT is not just about computers, it includes using tape recorders and video and digital cameras, these resources will prove invaluable in teaching and learning history at KS1.
Developing an awareness of chronology is fundamental. The areas of study recommend that we should move from the familiar present to the more remote past.
ICT can help children do this in an exciting way.
What information might we want to include, and how can we include it?

Digital scanners
Key Stage 1 Programme of Study: history
4a. Historical enquiry ñ sources of information photographs
5. Organisation and communication
Photographs: most families have photos going back a generation or two. Digitally scanning these images and saving them for later inclusion in an electronic publication is exciting for children and also protects the original.
Documentation: perhaps children would like to include copies of birth certificates or other documentation relating to their family history.
Sensitivity is important here; not everyone is willing to disclose details of family history.

Tape recorders
Key Stage 1 Programme of Study: history
1. Historical enquiry ñ adults talking about their own past.
Pupils could be encouraged to formulate questions, or subjects for adults to talk about.

Digital cameras
Key Stage 1 Programme of Study: history
4. Historical enquiry ñ artefacts
5. Organisation and communication
Many of us have some memento from our childhood, a favourite toy, book, or game. Use a digital camera to photograph these, then import the picture into a word processing package and include some text.

Word processing packages
Key Stage 1 Programme of Study: history
5. Organisation and communication
Aspects of their own or their parentsí lives can be reported using a word processing package. With help children can import relevant images.
Using all these aspects of ICT children can create a family book, or an electronic timeline. If you have access to a multimedia authoring program so much the better, you can make full use of the technology, perhaps importing sound clips from interviews or songs from the past. Some families may even have family videos.

How else can we make use of ICT?
You can make use of a variety of applications to look at various aspects of life past and present:

• Toys and games: My daughter loved to play with her ëLittle Professorí. My favourite toy was a construction kit that made use of lethal metal spikes to support different architectural features. Iím quite certain long since banned on safety grounds. My father enjoyed playing with his clockwork Hornby Train Set.
  You could make a database of favourite toys looking at materials, movement etc.
• Playground games, particularly ball and skipping games: Peter and Iona Opie made a study of childrenís games and rhymes through the ages, and have written several interesting books on the subject.
• Clothes: look not only at the styles, but also the materials and the quantity. Less than 100 years ago children had two sets of clothing, one for weekdays and ëSunday bestí.
• Holidays: where did our parents, grandparents or great grandparents go on holiday? How did they get there? What did they do when they were there?
• Food: what sort of food did our parents and grandparents eat? Where did they buy it? How did they keep it fresh? What foods were considered luxuries?
• Homes: what sort of furnishings were there? How was the house heated? Was there a shower or a bath?
  Remember not too long ago many houses had outside toilets and no plumbed-in baths. My grandmother had a ëwash houseí ñ an outhouse with a copper boiler where she would do all her washing every Monday. She also had a ëmeat safeí on the north wall of her house where she kept her meat and dairy produce; she never had a fridge.
• Domestic appliances: how have these changed over the years? My mother got her first fridge on 6^th February 1952 ñ it cost about £90 ñ a massive sum for then. In contrast she got her first deep-freeze only about 10 years later. How many families bought a television to watch the coronation in 1953? What size was it? The screen on ours measured 9 inches (diagonally)!

These are only a few suggestions that may help to stimulate your own ideas for teaching History to young children.