5 Historical Misconceptions Explained - Maybe?

This is an interesting video to share with your students for a couple of reasons in my eyes. 

The first one is that maybe there is a great deal of truth to these new found facts and raises the question of why do we find the need to alter history to suit our needs?

And secondly, how do we ensure our history is truthfully recorded and left for future generations to analyse?

We are already seeing living history challenged and debunked such as the absolutely nonsensical debate that possibly man never landed on the moon. Then certain sectors of society claiming that that Jewish Holocaust of WW2 never actually happened.

They are 20 years only a slick youtube video away from a classroom full of kids believing them, and carrying that story on as fact with no eye witnesses to challenge them.

History should be a recount of factual events for generations to reconstruct and analyse, not a dangerous game of Chinese whispers. 

Plenty of great discussion material for teenagers.

Teach your students to identify worthy web sites for research

Quite often as teachers we send students off to blindly find information on the internet on a selected topic.  Most of the time my students come back with the information I expected them to find, then there are those that have found some valid but obscure information on the topic and then there will be information which is is either misleading or completely false.

Joseph Goebbels once said "If you repeat a lie long enough, it becomes truth. // If you repeat a lie many times, people are bound to start believing it." And this is the risk we run on the internet as anyone can pass off information as reputable content.

So to inform our students about reputable and validated websites UC Berkely have put together a concise website that highlights what to look for on a web page to ensure it is a quality source.  Access it here.

Furthermore they have put together a great handout for students which they can use as a checklist for quality information on the web. Download it here.

Enjoy!