Students as Curators of Inquiry – Authors of History


Each June students leave my classroom and move on to their next social studies teacher.  Before long there will come a time when they leave the social studies classroom all together.  However, right now they are my students, and as their social studies teacher it is my job to prepare them for their future.  A crucial aspect of that process is helping them to be curators of inquiry and authors of history. Through my teaching I want to extend a hand to my students and pass the torch of inquiry, where content and skills come together to prepare them for civic life in a global society.  I want my students to be empowered through inquiry. The C3 Framework emphasizes the importance of students as stakeholders in their education, and is pushing me to develop lessons that will empower my students through inquiry.

Lately, I’ve found myself more and more in search of innovative tools and ideas that empower students and support the type of inquiry in the classroom that I am trying to create.  As a part of that search, in the summer of 2013, I started working with Learn NC and Microsoft Research on a new innovative and interactive timeline tool called Chronozoom. At first glace, Chronozoom appeared to simply be just another fancy timeline –albeit representing time from the Cosmos all the way to modern day, which I must admit is pretty cool!  However, as I continued to work with the tool, I realized that this was the tool I had been searching for.  Chronozoom was something that would empower my students, give them a voice, and allow them to become authors of history.

Chronozoom has several great components that lend to its effectiveness in social studies.  As a teacher, I am able to create timelines for my students about the various issues, events, and people that we study in class. These timelines allow students to see big history right away.  While that is really helpful, Chronozoom is most powerful because students can use it to create their own timelines. Students can use their own words to explain events, describe the contributions of people, and present history in all its complexity — focusing on why things happened, why it’s historically significant, and whose perspective is being represented. Students can make connections between the events they’re studying and the ever changing global community they are a part of.  In simple terms, Chronozoom allows students to curate their own inquiry by making decisions about how to represent their knowledge and come to their own self -discoveries about the past. When given an active role in their education, students can then articulate their intellectual breakthroughs in ways that allow them to take ownership of their education.

I think the C3 envisions social studies the same way I do, as place where teachers are preparing students for a world in which they will one day leading.  The social studies classroom must be a place where we provide students with the tools they will need to be active and productive.  Using tools like Chronozoom, with the C3 Framework in mind, is one way to accomplish the goals empowering students to be curators of their own inquiry and authors of history.