OHASSTA

I just got back from the Ontario History and Social Science Teacher's Association annual conference that took place this weekend in Toronto. I was a great chance to see what kinds of projects people are working on, and lots of online material. There was also a great presentation about the work being done by the Critical Thinking Consortium, more on that later.

I was really interested to see how interested teachers were in primary sources online. I attended a workshop from John Myers, OISE, and Lisa Singer from the Ontario Archives. They have a new website that they have just launched that puts together lesson plans and primary sources. It's fun stuff and I think it really ties well with the idea of teaching about what historians do. You can check it out here.

One of the teachers asked how they would find information to cut through the multitude of primary source websites that are now being produced. Thus I've created a new list of the best primary source websites on the net. The list will keep growing so check it out often.

It's funny though, after all of these cool projects I realized that there is less out there for teachers interested in teaching students how to create their own digital projects. This is a big focus of my own work with the History Society newsletters. It's a creative place on the web, and as I have said before, there is no reason why science should have first dibs on technology.