Welcome to the history blog!

By John Heffernan

The Junior Certificate offers an innovative and creative teacher a chance to spread his wings in a course that offers breadth and opportunity to utilise various teaching methodologies. From active learning activities like creating tunnels in the classroom to empathise with children their own age in eighteenth-century coal mines, to using Google Street View to explore Pompeii, there is great opportunity to make history interesting and engaging. 

By John Heffernan

The decade of the 2010s corresponds to the centenary of the 1910s which was one of the most eventful in Irish History. As I write the centenary of the Titanic disaster has just passed with commemorations in National newspapers, TV documentaries, and in locations associated with the ship, namely Belfast & Cobh (Queenstown).

I think that this decade is going to have a major impact on how we look at the Irish involvement in the First World War and of the Easter Rising. I do feel that the way we look at and teach these events is going to be different at the end of this decade than at the beginning ... 

John is going to blog for us through the rest of April. John has been really active on the History and ICT circuit and tweets as @johnmayo. In the spirit of international comparison we thought it would do us all good to look beyond our UK concerns and see how one of our nearest neighbours, Ireland, does history teaching! 

By Esther Arnott

Today I've been making my wedding invitations. It's only taken me since last August (which I when I first purchased the card and made the mock up). Oops.

But I have a good excuse. It's taken me so long because I can't but help think about the traditions that have gone before me – and which will continue after me – and ponder about which ones to continue, and whether it is 'right' to break or change those traditions ...

By Esther Arnott

Woohoo it's the Easter holidays next week for us teachers. Collective sigh of relief; collective book carrying home (so we can catch up on marking). But not for my fiancé – also a History teacher (yes, the dinner time chat does include a Teaching History-esq Move me on session most nights!) – because he has been called for jury service. Two full weeks in service to Her Majesty. So this got us thinking ...