Surviving Contact and Colonisation: Two Digital Resources

This year I’m not teaching middle school history. So, rather than have my digital resources languishing in a virtual repository on my computer, it’s time to begin disseminating them.  

The Education system in New South Wales has developed greatly since I first began teaching in 1971. The last few years, since the Digital Education Revolution, have seen an exponential rate of growth in digital learning materials  As a class room teacher, up until last year, I was consistently building new resources.

Authentic Materials

Moving into the digital era lent great richness to the teaching of history.  No longer were we dependent on other teachers impressions of history, published as basic text books, but now we could direct our students towards rich digital archives and libraries.  My work was directed in this manner.

Here are two digital resources that I developed for my students.  They address a syllabus topic Aboriginal and Indigenous Peoples, Colonisation and Contact History.

Laptop Wraps

Both of these units were deliverd in a form called a Laptop Wraps as they were intended to be used on a small Lenovo Thinkpad. Laptop Wraps were a launching device for digital pedagogy; easy to build; capable of connecting with rich sources of online data; or, existing digital learning objects.  They could be nested easily withing open source learning platforms like Moodle or micro blogging tools with library storage such as Edmodo.

Adobe Captivate 8 could well change the face of digital education enabling interactive educational resources to be produced across a variety of mobile platforms, at the same time. It's specifically designed for authoring interactive e-learning materials across a variety of mobile platforms. With GPS capability it can also leverage the geolocational features of mobile devices, but for the moment let's continue with the resources I've been building.

Downloading the laptop wraps

I've built many of these, burning the mid-night oil and at times gathering, processing and using my own digital materials, as well as making abundant use of online resources. What follows are just two examples. They are intended as a contribution to professional discussion and are offered in this light.  If anyone person or organisation feels that I am breaching their copyright, please advise me.

Just click this link to download the files.