This was a short project from Spring semester, 2007, in the Educational Technology class at Georgia Tech. The goal of the project was to create some sort of educational software based on the learning theories and educational techniques we had learned about in the class.

Our project, HistoSynth, was aimed at Middle School history students. The goal is to help students be able to do history like a real historian, by analyzing and synthesizing ideas from primary sources rather than just reading a text book. To help them do so, our software would provide the sources and multiple ways to visualize them (placed on a map, over time, etc.) along with scaffolding to help students read the sources critically and put the information together in a way that supports an argument.

Interactive Demo Read Paper

Front page

The front page is just a jumping off point, and would include things like current assignments, quick links to what the student has been working on, and some recent activity, e.g. classmates' discussion on sources.

We did not mock up any of the assignment and other administrative pages, just the part for viewing sources and building reports

Timeline

The timeline would show world events, which the student could select and view related primary and secondary sources. The goal here is to give some context to the sources, e.g. what else was happening around the same time, what else was written around the same time, and how perspectives on the same event or the same primary source have changed over time.

The timeline can be filtered both by time and other criteria like the part of the world events happened in.

Students can click on any primary or secondary source to view the actual source, see the Source section below.

Map

This page is also to give students some context on the sources, but spatially rather than temporally. The mockup isn't really complete, the student would see sources on the map and could click through to view the source.

Source

The source page would have the actual text of the source. Students and teachers can engage in "anchored discussion" of the text, commenting and asking questions on specific pieces and responding to other students' comments and questions.

There are also links to related sources and events for additional context and broader points of view.

Evidence Aggregator

Students use the evidence aggregator to begin gathering evidence and answering questions. This is a scratch worksheet for use during research, and it's meant to help students gather what they know and think about what they still need to find out.

Pre-Writing Worksheet

The pre-writing worksheet provides structure for forming arguments and providing evidence. Students can pull evidence out of their worksheets and group them together into points that support an argument. The completed worksheet is then used as an outline for a final report.

Report

This page helps the student write up a finished report on the evidence they have gathered. An outline built from the pre-writing worksheet is available to remind the student of what they have found, and interactive help tells the student what each section needs to include.