Edwired comments on scrapbooks for Western Civilization

I enjoy reading this guy a lot, and he has such pertinent things to say, including recently a confirmation of my longstanding belief that techniques like scrapbooks and portfolios, while generating better learning, do so at enormous costs...

Yet another slightly different approach to Western Civ

Those who read this blog regularly know that last semester in my introductory survey course I had my students produce scrapbooks of their learning throughout the semester. As a teaching and learning tool, my approach worked very well. As a group my students produced much better work and, based on my end of semester survey, they enjoyed the scrapbook approach more than others they had experienced in prior history classes. A number of them talked about how the format of the scrapbook really helped them to tie together everything they'd learned during the semester--a result that pleased me very much.

But I'm not going to do it again. Read more...