TEACHING ANCIENT HISTORY WITH ICT: A DIGITAL EDUCATIONAL “RIDE” INTO THE CLASSICAL WORLD

The purpose of this paper is to make a project oriented pedagogical proposal in the area of teaching ancient history in senior high school. The activity to be presented aims to combine as efficiently as possible the benefits of a primary text based and educator guided history teaching and those offered by modern ICT learning tools. Students in class are guided to use an interactive map called “Cruiser”, which has been developed ad hoc (i.e. exclusively for teaching school history) by Talent Information Systems S.A., a company with long experience in digital mapping systems and dynamic simulating tools especially for use in education area. The activity can in fact be approached as a pattern for history scenarios designing with the use of the Cruiser, as it is up to the educator’s imagination and needs to adapt basic elements of the Cruiser capabilities and tools to any history teaching objective. It is our belief that certain digital tools, when used as a well-focused and supplementary pedagogical means, can be of great assistance to a skilled history teacher who has the ambition to serve the class both as a facilitator and, not less, as the key figure that holds the responsibility to shape students’ historical consciousness and understanding ability.