Digital exploration of the image in the Middle School History Lesson: didactic approaches

Abstract

Digital tools are part of the current teaching and learning landscape. Learners live not just surrounded, but rather imbedded in the digital world, they are knowledgeable about it, so students and teachers consider the virtual possibilities as assets towards a motivating educational experience. History education benefits enormously from developing new ways to attract, motivate and engage students, and digital tools applied to History are a powerful means to enable autonomy and drive in the learning community. Particularly in Middle school teaching, History is a fertile ground on which differentiating and enriching digital tools may be applied. Therefore, this presentation aims to provide an overview on the benefits of online pedagogical resources, as well as, and foremost, to present and showcase the main pedagogical digital tools that the Portuguese history educational textbooks and publishers are applying and developing: to make History 'alive', and be able to 'see' historic moments when they happened, to interact with primary images sources through the digital resources presented, may derive and foster the competencies of communication in History, analysis and evaluation, making the students take ownership of their learning process, all peaking the students' critical thinking which, in turn, will promote the holistic development in the subject of History.