Charlene Landvogt

‘Online Database Project’Spirit of ANZAC Prize

Overview of Project

Project overview: This project is targeted at year 9 Australian History students studying World War 1 (WW1). They will complete an assignment on a soldier from their local area who served and died in WW1. They will investigate both his history (profile) and describe the battles he fought in (contextualisation). They will then upload this information onto a website and begin creating a central database where these various local histories are collected. This will be termed their Major Study for the semester. Students will present both the soldier’s profile and the discussion of the battles he fought to the class.

Links with VELS

Strand 1: Discipline Based Learning (5.25 Sem 1, 5.5 Sem 2).

Domain - History

Dimension: Historical Reasoning & Interpretation.

Dimension: Historical Knowledge & Understanding.

Links with VELS

Strand 2: Physical, Personal and Social Learning (5.25 Sem 1, 5.5 Sem 2).

Domain - Personal Learning

Dimension: The Individual Learner.

Dimension: Managing Personal Learning.

Links with VELS

Strand 3: Interdisciplinary Learning(5.25 Sem 1, 5.5 Sem 2).

Domain - Information and Communications Technology

Dimension: ICT for Creating.

Current position....

Currently I am in the process of finishing the unit outline for this project. I still need to refine and review how I am going to present this information to students.

I realise, however, that one of the most important (and initial) parts of the project will be preparing the students for their research.

I have therefore included in the following slides three introductory activities teachers may like to use to help get students thinking about the process of research, before they even begin researching.

Introductory Activity 1: Presentation of a list of soldiers students can choose from

Students will obviously need to select a soldier to research.

I think it is important, however, that students have a wide variety of soldiers to choose from. That way they can select a soldier that they find a connection with.

I will use a slideshow presenting an array of soldiers and ask students to nominate which soldier (and battles) they would like to know more about.

The next three pages are example slides of the presentation I am developing.

Charles Scharness

(406)- Buried at Beach cemetery, ANZAC Cove.- Born in Essendon. - 20 years old at enlistment.- Died on 25th April, 1915.

Frank Trickey(696)

- Buried at Lone Pine Cemetery- Enlisted in Essendon. - Died at the age of 19.- Died on 25th April, 1915.

Eric Edgerton(Lieut.)

- Buried at VB Cemetery- Born in Moonee Ponds- Died at the age of 21.- Died on 11th August, 1918.

Introductory Activity 2: Discussing Images

Students will be given a picture of their soldier’s grave stone as part of their research.

They will also, inevitably, come across other images in the course of their research.

It is therefore important that students discuss how to use and question sources effectively.

The following activity is designed to be used on an electronic white board and requires the teacher to find an image of a grave stone, such as the one to the right.

Start with a blank screen, with the image fully covered and tell students that you will reveal each section in part.(You will need to explain how families paid for inscriptions on soldier’s tomb stones).

Questions for discussion...- Why is the information written on grave stones crucial to our understanding of a soldier?- Why did families pay for inscriptions on grave stones? Why was it important to them?- What type of text or tone of text do you expect to read on soldier’s grave stones?- Do you expect the type of inscriptions on grave stones to differ between battle fields (e.g. Gallipoli and the Western Front)?- Whose view of events and history do we read when using a grave stone as a historical source?

Reveal the first part of the tomb stone.

Questions for discussion...

- What does this information reveal about the soldier?- If we only had this part of the tomb stone, what would we know about him?- If we only had this part of the tomb stone, whose version of history, whose perspective, would we be reading?- If this was all that was written on the tomb stone, what might you assume about the soldier’s family?

Reveal the second part of the tomb stone.

Questions for discussion...- What additional piece of information does this sentence reveal?- Who else may be adding to our understand of this soldier?- What are we being told about the soldier?

Reveal the final part of the tomb stone.

Questions for discussion..

- What does this final part of the inscription tell us?- How does this change your understanding of the soldier’s past?- Who wrote this inscription?- What do we need to be mindful of when reading this inscription?

Introductory Activity 3: Use of Websites....

Students will be using websites during their research of a soldier.

It is therefore very important that they aware of the uses, and limitations, of websites.

It is also important that they are prepared and aware of what information they need before they access a website. This will make their web searching and researching more productive.

The next slide shows some guiding questions a teacher might use when introducing students to the website monumentaustralia.org.au

Questions

1) What is the purpose of this website?

2) What information might you search for on this site?

3) What would you need to know before using this website?

What’s to come...

I hope to upload unit outlines and other classroom activities in the future.