Luna Notes is an easy to use annotation tool for YouTube videos. The extension brings up a window to the right of the YouTube being played. Clicking in this window allows the generation of a note that is linked to the time in the video at which the user clicks in the window. Restarting the video after taking a note opens another note box. These notes are saved associated with the video allowing review and immediate access to locations in the video associated with a note (click on the time stamp in a note). Luna Notes is presently free.

This is a post I obviously first offered some time ago, but it seems even more relevant now given recent and ongoing events.

Donald Trump has added a new dimension to his complaints and proposals for his reelection. The President of the United States warned of a national education crisis on Thursday: the “ideological poison” of “radical” history education. He has proposed the development of the “1776 Commission” to address what he sees as flawed history instruction. I have seen this movie before.

I am not a great student of history and have often noted with some pride that I got through college without taking a history course. This was a significant challenge as my major professor in graduate school taught the grad course on the history of psychology and was a noted scholar focused on the history of the emergence of “life span developmental” psychology. 

The limitations of my formal education aside, I have some insight into the exact issue that Trump raised and I have read a good amount on the topic and the role K12 history courses should serve.

My focus as is so often the way anyone becomes interested in a specific issue originated in a unique way. Much of my early interest in technology (say late 1980s) was focused on how technology tools could play unique roles in the hands of students. I was interested in David Jonasson’s concept of mindtools [https://frank.itlab.us/forgetting/learning_mindtools.pdf] and from this Cindy and I proposed “technology integration”. Our efforts extended Jonasson’s list of technology tools to include other tools such as digital probes and photography. A core concept in Jonasson and our argument was that students at all levels should have opportunities to engage in age-scaled tasks that explore content areas. We adopted “Do …” as a way to explain what we thought was both motivational and would enable authentic learning. For example – Doing biology, Doing writing, and to explain the background for my present focus, “Doing history”. 

History seemed perfectly suited to personally authentic tasks as one’s community and family provide a history within which students are embedded and tasks can be created to enable investigations and authoring related to such histories. 

Without any formal background in history, I found inspiration in my own personal experiences. I grew up on a farm and for some reason I was allowed to explore the contents for our attic. My father was a radar operator in WWII in the South Pacific and he had old equipment in the attic. Battery operated radios and a ham radio. He helped us string a wire from the house to a nearby tree as an antenna for the ham radio and when he had some time would sit with me and write down the content of Morse coded messages we could find. He also had a shoebox of 620 negatives he had made while stationed overseas. These negatives are large and you can contact print them (you don’t need an enlarger). He would create collections of photos in the field his comrades could send home to their families and make a little money. I became interested in photography.

The connection? At some point, I began creating technology-enabled, exploratory environments and my first prototype created in HyperCard was “Grandma’s Attic”.

The idea was that learners could have access to a simulated attic providing access to artifacts associated with a family with certain characteristics (e.g., I was working in North Dakota and focused on groups settling the state – e.g., Norwegians, Germans from Russia). The resources of the attic – letters, diaries, photos in a photo album, newspapers, magazines, physical objects such as a spinning wheel – could be examined in an effort to put together impressions about the family. Historians are trained to apply what is often referred to as the historians’ craft (often a college course) which involves techniques for collecting information from the type of resources described here and making objective observations that could be used to make arguments about the lives of people associated with and creating such artifacts. So doing history offers a great opportunity to problem-solve, engage in critical thinking and argumentation, and other potentially generalizable cognitive skills in addition to acquiring the facts and stories of history.

The concepts of doing history and authentic learning tasks scaled to K12 student capabilities resulted in Cindy and my writing and receiving several significant grants – a Technology Innovation Challenge grant and Cindy’s Teaching American History grant.

It is the preparation for writing these grants that I connect with Trump’s claims about the failed purpose for all K12 students taking history courses. Educators are expected to accomplish so many things and this list just seems to grow. The great controversy with learning history has been whether it is about teaching what might be called Patriotism and a shared perspective of the cultural background we all share OR whether it should be what I would describe as what historians study and write about – what actually happened in the past and what are the consequences of these past experiences as the American people have moved through time. This difference of opinions has been described in many ways. I remember reading this book as I helped contribute to the others working on these grants. If Trump’s complaints about how students are being influenced by their exposure to our history interests you, I would recommend the book to provide context.

I come down on the side of learning the facts of our history much in the same way I argue we need to understand and act on the facts of science. Certainly, history would be one of the courses in which issues such as slavery and enduring inequalities of all types should be considered. Denial of the facts of our past is not what education should be promoting.

An analysis of the aims and goals of teaching history

This may be the first post ever on this site that has anything to do directly with stock market. Meta (Facebook) is down 20% today after an earnings call that showed a significant decline in revenue. Meta claims the downturn is the result of Apple changes to iOS14 that make it easy for iPhone users to avoid Facebook ads. No ads no ad revenue. This is tough for a free service that depends on ads to keep things going. Investors who need the companies they support to make money are bailing.

The interaction of the various tech companies is interesting. Apple tried ads but gave up. Google has some software of its own but mostly encourages android phone developers. Meta has the users and the content that allows the display of ads. Apple wants to push privacy and the other two major players need to have content with ads and Facebook is such a popular service so a prime opportunity for displaying ads. What next? Facebook could simply pull the free Facebook app from the Apple store. Using a browser to view Facebook on an iPhone is not a good experience. Would that be like threatening a nuclear option?

The relevance for education – targeted ads fund many free online services used in education.

 I explore tech applications wherever I am. Apps that identify flora and fauna are useful when you are in a unique location. iNaturalist is a good example. You take a photo of what you want to identify with the app and then allow it to use its AI to guess or just leave the photo unnamed in your collection and someone will likely take a look and try to help out. The photo I submitted (not this one) had some local geese in the background and someone wanted to know if I needed to know the name of the geese (Nene). 

I usually am more interested in the sophistication of the technology than the identify of a tree so I pick something I recognize. This is a plumeria. It is interesting because it loses its leaves and often flowers before new leaves grow. It produces the flowers that is typically used to create the leis tourists and Hawaiian dancers wear around their necks. I thought it would be a good test for the app because my photo has few leaves.

I have found the best identification can be obtained with the nonspecialized Google Photo. If you bring a photo into Google Photos and open the image, you should locate this icon below the photo. This will apply Google lens. 

Lens seems to work as well as the specialized identification apps and has the added benefit of allowing immediate search for what it returns as possible identifications. Click on one of the matches and it takes you to the source for that photo.

Here is what the Plumeria flower looks like. Early in the season it can be difficult to find one on a low branch to photograph. People have this need to pick them and when I see one often it is not there when I walk by the tree again. I assume this is an annoying tourist thing.