Abstract:

Much has been said about the use of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in education. Needless to say, these have facilitated the way as the subjects are taught in our schools, but it is necessary to take a step further and allow that it’s use help transform education. This means reconsidering some aspects of educational programs and methodologies, as well as giving up thinking of ICT as mere instruments which facilitate our teaching task.

This research aims to analize the combined use of ICT and the Archival as methodology to elaborate teaching unit contents, and its contribution to the development of significant learning and critical thinking in students. Although the research has been made for the case of a teaching unit content of the subject of History of Spain in the second year of High School in the Basque Country, it is important to highlight that the technique of combining the previously mentioned resources -namely, ICT, primary and secondary sources-, is applicable to other teaching units of History, as well as those of the remaining Social and Human Sciences. Therefore, ICT become an invaluable tool in this process of developing significant learning.

Nevertheless, some researchers claim that the constructivist learning limits progress in acquiring knowledge, because only advanced students would be able to acquire new knowledge to the detriment of those students lacking conceptual knowledge. In this regard, it is important to note that the teacher can not fully detach the process of teaching in that primary sources provide students, or digital tools, as if it were a history lab or such, or university students, but by giving them the tools needed by a script, the background needed (scaffolding) and an equal partnership.

Consequently, some of the aspects that will be investigated in this research are the following:
a) the potential use of ICT to transform educational programs and methodologies, toward significant learning processes. This research will show objective tools as moodle platform, copies of written historical documents and graphics, as well as videos and in-depth interviews with experts in the field;
b) the consequence alteration of the traditional development of the History class in order to supply students with the necessary resources, archival sources, and computing resources;
c) and, because the main purpose of the proposed methodology is to develop active learning, a continuous, formative and multi-agent evaluation process is required. This will consist of three different parts: self-assessment (carried out by the student), co-evaluation, and the so-called ‘process evaluation’ (carried out by the teacher).

The ultimate goal of this work is to develop a methodology that integrates the use of ICT and other resources, to achieve a transformation of the way we teach students to develop active learning, and so they can be competent men and women in the future, and to look critically at a world of diverse and disparate information.

Keywords:

Education, Information and Comunication Technology, significant learning, methodology, historical archives.