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DUALITY OF HISTORY IN A 2.0 CONTEXT
Pablo Folgueira Lombardero
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2020
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Duality of history in a 2.0 context1
Pablo Folgueira Lombardero
Abstract: The point of this paper is reflecting on Marc Prensky’s theories and its
relation with History. Firstly, we are going to focus on his theories, then we are going
to talk about History as a legacy content, and finally we will think about the chance to
consider History as a future content as well, leading us to consider it as a dual subject.
Key words: Marc Prensky, legacy contents, future contents, duality, web 2.0,
History, Digital History.
Introduction
The approach to history in educational contexts is something very old, as old as
we would not exaggerate if we would say that it is a “traditional subject”. This is the
reason why it has always been approached as a subject that our pupils have to learn to
pass an exam, most of times without even noticing the relationship that can exist
between the historical contents and our students’ reality. However, in our opinion, there
could be a most interesting and enriching approach to historical events if we can change
the point of view from which we see history.
In the following pages we are going to propose a new and different approach to
history and its relationship with new technologies in the context of the web 2.0
(O’Reilly, 2005), using the theories of Marc Prensky as starting point and using them as
common thread for our proposal.
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This article is a new version of the article “Dualidad de la Historia en el mundo 2.0” published in the
Spanish journal Tiempo y Sociedad in January of 2015 that can be downloaded from:
[Link] [11/06/2020]
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I. Marc Prensky’s theories
In 2001 Marc Prensky formulated a theory that, from our point of view, is very
relevant and outstanding: in two papers published in the journal On the horizon
(Prensky, 2001a; Prensky, 2201b) he developed the concepts of “digital natives” and
“digital immigrants”. According to his theory, digital natives are the ones who were
born from the middle of the 80s decade onwards, and they are people who have grown
surrounded by technology, so using it is something natural for them and part of their
daily life. On the other hand, digital immigrants would be those people who have been
reared in an analogue world, so their using of digital devices is the result of a learning
that would be more or less difficult depending on their inclination to learn. With these
concepts, Prensky explains the gap between young and adult people in the use of
technology (Locke, 2017).
According to Mauro et alii (Mauro et alii, 2017), in the last years this separation
between digital natives and digital immigrants have been criticized, because it forgets
important matters as every person’s will to learn how to use digital devices, for
instance, and, from our point of view, this is something very important (Folgueira,
2009; López, 2013).
However, instead of focusing our analysis in the concepts of digital natives and
digital immigrants, we want to focus it in other different issues that Prensky set up in his
papers, specially in the first one (Prensky, 2001a): the definitions of “legacy contents”
and “future contents”, and their role in education.
According to Prensky, legacy contents can be considered as the educational
contents that have been taught from many years (or even centuries) ago, contents that
we can consider traditional contents or even “contents from the past”. As Prensky
himself claims, they are important contents, but it come from past times that are not our
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students’ time, so they are not very motivating or interesting for them. They include
reading, writing, arithmetic, or the understanding of ancient texts, for instance, that this
author considers that will become less and less important in our students’ future
education.
On the other hand, future contents are the ones that involve technological and
digital subjects, and subjects that can be used to understand technological development
as well, as sociology for instance, that can be very interesting for our students as well.
These are the contents that will be more motivating for our students, so they may be
more interested in them.
II. History as a legacy content
History has been taught since many centuries ago, and its teaching has been
developed in a way that can make it be considered a “legacy content”. In fact,
sometimes history has been taught as a scholar subject without any relationship with
reality, and sometimes through lectures in which teachers just explain long series of
dates that have not any interest for students that just memorise them and then forget
them after the exam.
In this case, a teacher who is really interested in her or his students’ learning
should make important efforts to enrich the process of teaching and learning, through
the using of different methodologies, for instance. And it is very clear that this teacher,
someone who would probably be considered a digital immigrant, should use technology
in class in order to interest a group of students that are digital natives.
In this regard, teachers’ will of using the tools, materials and resources that the
development of web 2.0 allows us, such as blogs for example (Sobrino, 2011; Sobrino,
2013b) is something very interesting because these resources allow teachers to teach in
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a different way, and even research (Sobrino, 2013b), apart from being very motivating
for students and a good way to improve communication between students and teachers.
However, we can consider the using of other different digital tools, such as
Google Earth, that can be very useful in the teaching of geography and that can make
easier the acquisition of academic competences (Sobrino, 2013b: 158). In these cases
we can see that teachers, as they are users of these resources, have assumed an
important role in the using of the tools that technology provides us, as they have known
how to use them and adapt them to their needs (Cornellá et alii, 2008: 5-6).
But we have to mention the development of MOOC’s as well, and how they can
be used to teach in the university and even in the dissemination in history and in other
different subjects (Peña-López, 2013; Yuan & Powell, 2013; Ruipérez & García-
Cabrero, 2013: 463-468), as they allow users to approach to the topics they are
interested in without going out their homes through interesting courses created using
attractive and motivating methodologies.
Moreover, we can mention the using of these new digital tools in researching
(Bresciano, 2008), as the using of the digital tools and resources allows us to develop a
new and different approach to our topics of interest (Aróstegui, 2001: 431), causing an
irreversible transformation in historical research.
Internet can be very useful when we want to compile information about sources,
both primary and secondary ones, which have been digitised (Flores, 2013: 2013). And
we can use image viewers, such as Google Earth (or SigPac in Spain) when we want to
develop the territorial analysis for archaeological researching, as they provide us an
important and huge amount of information from our own offices (Folgueira &
Menéndez, 2015: 162-164).
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Finally, we can use technology to publish the results of our research (Sánchez,
2014), creating videos or other materials that can be uploaded to websites such us You
Tube, Slideshare or Scribd.
To sum up, we can see that the using of technology can enrich not only the
teaching of history (and other subjects), but its researching and its publishing as well,
making our subject more interesting and motivating for our students who are digital
natives.
III. History as a future content?
After explaining history as legacy content and the way we can enrich its
teaching, now we are going to explain the most important point in our text: the
possibility of considering history as a future content as well.
In fact, if we assume that a future content can be an educational content which
allows us to understand the development of “new technologies” (Prensky, 2001a), it is
almost evident that history can be a future content as well, as every technological
development appears in a historical context.
In the case of the “new technologies”, considering internet their most
outstanding example, their development is related to the searching of a new
communication network that could resist the potential attacks during the Cold War
(Martínez de Velasco, 1995: 331-336; Martínez de Velasco, 2001-2002). From this
point of view the knowledge of the late modern history allows us to integrate the
knowledge of the technological development in its historical context, so we can
understand this technological development in a global and complete way (Folgueira,
2013; Folgueira 2015: 139).
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Moreover, from this point of view, we can think in other different possibilities
that are very interesting as well:
Firstly, we can integrate the current technological development in a global
technical and technological one using a retrospective point of view and relating the
different devices with previous ones and going back in time even to prehistory.
Secondly, we can study the evolution of different devices from an archeological
point of view, creating series of typology that can be similar to the ones archaeologists
created to classify and study roman pottery, for instance.
Indeed, the fast technological and technical evolution of digital devices allows
us to notice a clear evolution to smaller and more complete gadgets, with an increasing
storage capacity and even with different kinds of batteries. This fact will allow us to
classify these gadgets from the point of view of their typology or from a technological
point of view, in a way that can be very similar to the one archaeologists use when they
want to study the things they find in the archaeological sites.
IV. Conclusion: A dual history?
Everything we have say so far allows us to consider that history is a legacy
content, but, however, if we approach it with an open mind from an open and
globalising point of view, we can consider that it is a future content as well (Folgueira,
2013; Folgueira, 2015). And in this double nature of history lies its dual character, as
we can approach history from two different perspectives.
In our view, if we consider history just as a legacy content, we would have a
descriptive history, that can be used just to tell series of events, and this fact can lead to
make history something separated from reality that our students will consider boring
and even useless.
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However, if we see history as a future content as well, it would be an
explanatory subject through which we could use the knowledge of the past to
understand and explain the present technological development, giving history a meaning
and a utility, and making it a subject that our students will see as useful and interesting.
From this point of view, we have to reflect and even debate about the “kind” of
history we want to teach, because depending on the history we teach, history itself will
survive or not.
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