Teaching the Holocaust in Geography
Debbie Moss
In this essay I hope to convince the reader of the potential for geography to enhance pupils' knowledge and understanding of contemporary Holocaust education. Geography is a subject which has until relatively recently been underrepresented in the area of Holocaust education. I hope to contribute to the discourse from academic geographers, who would advocate placing Citizenship, an important dimension in geographical education, at the centre of their work. I will make clear to the reader how developments in the pedagogical framework of geographical education should be used to ensure that Holocaust education relates to pupils experiencing education in the 21st century and which relates to the future needs of these pupils and society. I will be using evidence from my own practice in teaching in schools, teacher education and work produced as part of my project for the Fellowship in Holocaust Education from the Imperial War Museum and Institute of Education.
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Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs): the benefits, challenges and creative possibilities encountered by geography trainee teachers
Mark Jones
Mobile devices are now a part of everyday life whether it is mobile phones, media players or hand held computers. This small-scale study examines the extent to which secondary school geography trainee teachers made use of a hand held computer during their PGCE course. Each trainee teacher was allocated a university loaned Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) in order to assess firstly, its usefulness in supporting the trainee’s organisation, learning and teaching during the PGCE course and secondly, the pedagogical potential of using PDAs with geography classes... Drawn from the data, a number of factors which influenced the trainees' use of the PDAs are discussed. These include the functionality of the PDA, the preferred familiarity of alternative digital hardware, the intensity of a PGCE course, the school and university environments. This work in progress raises important questions for teachers and teacher educators about how trainee teachers are introduced to and experience mobile digital technologies during a PGCE course.
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