| Grade Level | System Requirement | Product Number |
|---|---|---|
| Grades 7-12 | Apple 128K | A247 |
| Kids travel through the 20th century in a “chronomobile,” and the only way to progress is by knowing history. They choose categories — headlines, popular songs, literature, movies, conversations, or cultural artifacts. Students are then shown three items from the category that they’ve selected and must choose which item occurred most recently in history. In the process, they develop sequencing skills and cultivate historical knowledge. | ||
Introduction
What Is Time Navigator-and Why?
Time Navigator is a simulation that helps students develop their knowledge of twentieth-century American history and culture. The underlying scenario of the simulation creates an environment in which time travel is possible. Students go back into the past and must “navigate” their way toward the present. Along their journey, they may encounter certain challenges that add excitement and variety to the experience. All the while, they’re developing their knowledge of— and, ideally, their interest in—American history.
Designed for use by high school students, Time Navigator focuses on the skill of sequencing— that is, placing historical events, persons, or artifacts in their correct chronological order. For example, while it’s important for students to know that the stock market crash that began the Great Depression occurred in 1929, it’s even more important for them to know that it occurred after World War I and before World War II. In other words, knowledge of the correct sequence of events is more valuable than knowledge of specific dates. When students have a good sense of the order in which events occurred, they are better equipped to understand cultural movements, themes, and paradigms; to appreciate the expectations, assumptions, and constraints that people at various periods in our history lived and worked with; and to look for possible cause-and-effect relationships among historical and cultural phenomena.
The concept of “cultural literacy,” as articulated by E.D. Hirsch, Jr. in his 1987 book of the same name, has generated a great deal of attention and controversy of late. Not everyone agrees with the basic premises of Hirsch’s thesis: that modern Americans lack a collective core of knowledge that serves as the underlying context for full, rich participation in the society and culture, and that to be “culturally literate” an American must possess a particular body of knowledge that constitutes the “basics” of “American” or “western” culture. But in light of recent studies that reveal the unfortunate lack of knowledge young Americans have about a wide range of topics including geography, history, mathematics, science, and current events-there seems to be little doubt that a very real “knowledge gap” is developing between what most educators agree American students ought to know and what they really do know.
While the term “cultural literacy” per se may be relatively new, the concept really isn’t. The educational field usually called “American studies” developed in the years immediately following World War II as a response to a growing sense among scholars and educators that Americans were less “literate” about their own culture than many people in other cultures. In the years since the war, American studies has increased in recognition and importance as an interdisciplinary field that seeks to provide students with an integrated sense of Americar culture, embracing history, literature, art, music, anthropology, sociology, minority studies, and popular culture studies.
The majority of American history books used in high schools today reflect the influence of American studies by devoting sections to interdisplinary aspects of history. For instance, in discussing the 1920s, most textbooks of course deal with “traditional” historical events, persons, and issues, such as Teapot Dome, Prohibition, Sacco and Vanzetti, and Calvin Coolidge. But they also devote many paragraphs to the opening of the first shopping center, the first network radio broadcasts, and the popularity of major musicians, writers, movie stars, and athletes, such as Duke Ellington, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Clara Bow, and Babe Ruth. In short, modern textbooks reflect the growing awareness that there’s a lot more to history than politics and wars.
To be sure, Time Navigator is a history package. But it also is very much an American studies package. Students using Time Navigator will encounter wars, presidential elections, political scandals, and constitutional amendments. They’ll also encounter influential and popular movies like The Sheik, Gone with the Wind, and Doctor Zhivago. They’ll learn about the Ford Model T, the first newsreel films, zoot suits, and silicon chips. They’ll overhear “conversations” about the tounding of the N.A.A.C.P., the first Nobel Prize in literature won by an American, and the forced relocation of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. They’ll read short synopses of such best-selling or critically acclaimed books as The Call of the Wild, The Souls of Black Folk, The Great Gatsby, and Silent Spring. And they’ll hear brief excerpts of such popular songs as “In My Merry Oldsmobile,
“”Yes! We Have No Bananas,” “Stormy Weather,” and “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”
With Time Navigator, students will develop their skill at determining the correct sequence of a wide variety of historical and cultural events and artitacts while at the same time enriching their knowledge of their culture and gaining a greater sense of the cultural “feel” for of any given period in twentieth-century American history.
Summary Description
In Time Navigator, students “go back in time” and then maneuver their way toward the present by selecting the most recent historical events or artifacts from groups of three. Students can choose to work with headlines, conversations, songs, movies, literature, or artifacts.
Curriculum Area: Social studies; interdisciplinary*
Subject: History and American studies (particularly twentieth-century American history and culture
Topic: Historical sequencing
Type: Simulation
Grade Level: Junior and senior high
Classroom Use: Individual, small groups, or large group
*For information about use in non-social studies classes, see page 31. Time Navigator includes Management Options that allow teachers to “customize” the program to their classroom needs. See pages 17-26 for information about using Management