I-learned-that-every

I’ve written a lot about annual “What If?” history projects I have my IB Theory of Knowledge students create (see The Best Resources For Teaching “What If?” History Lessons).

We only spend three days on it, and then students share their presentations with the class. Afterwards, I make arrangements for my TOK students to help my Intermediate English Language Learner history students to create their own. You can see lots of examples from both types of classes at my Best list.

I’m also sharing one from my TOK class at the bottom of this post. First, though, I thought readers might be interested in seeing what my TOK students wrote in their evaluation of the activity. They had to answer three questions:

1. What did you like about the project and why?

2. How could the activity be improved?

3. What did you learn about the idea/concept of history by doing this project?

Here are some of their responses. Obviously, the most important question is the third one.

1. What did you like about the project and why?

The responses here emphasized liking to be able to pick partners and events.

2. How could the activity be improved?

The responses here all focused on wanting more time. Also, some suggested they’d rather make a video than a slide deck.

3. What did you learn about the idea/concept of history by doing this project?

I learned that small events throughout history had a major impact and affected how things are today.

I learned that sometimes historians tend to believe something in history and have to go back and look for evdience in order to confirm if it is true or not.

From this project I learned that while many things are incorporated into history just one change could have made a dramatic impact on our lives today.

I learned that every event was caused by another event which was caused by another event. Therefore, history is a never-ending cycle, and that everything happens for a reason. By changing the course of history we better understand the course that history actually took.

I learned that history is very boring but has a huge impact on our present and future.

History wouldn’t be as harsh if we made better choices back then.

I learned that maybe things were meant to go the way they went because most of the alternate histories were bad.

The world could be completely different because a simple event did or did not happen. Those simple events can actually change the world.