My Dissertation Project
The way history is taught in Primary School is more social anthropology. It takes a period, like the Vikings, and pupils learn about how they lived, transport, big buildings, maybe the food and so on. The aim of this project was to find historical figures, make them interesting and teach pupils to think about their decisions. This would then hopefully encourage children to reflect about their own decisions.
Key features
Each figure will have some short, interesting facts, a biography, a timeline and a quiz. The pupils can earn coins, unlock more figures and are quietly encouraged to expand their knowledge. If the figure has a rival, the two will be compared and pupils will reflect on the two people. Which was right, were they both right in different ways, what could have been done better?
Learnings
History is even more interesting and intricate than I imagined!
I had not made a complex website before with databases used to form whole pages, PHP storing how many coins each user had. I also had to think carefully about what children would enjoy and pitch it at exactly the right level which took a good amount of research.
Challenges
It was knowing where to stop. I love history and spent hours researching the various people before and during making the site.
