Teaching through the Stereoscope: Bringing Public History into the Classroom

As I discussed last week, this year for me involves wearing two hats simultaneously, as a public history student as well as public elementary school teacher. While attending graduate classes and working as a Research Assistant with the London Heritage Council, when I can spare a moment, I am also an Occasional Teacher with the Thames Valley District School Board. Now that teachers have had an opportunity to settle into their classes (and catch a few colds from their students), the phone is starting to ring!

The life of a supply teacher can be a sink or swim experience.  Finding a way to capture the students’ attention in the first fifteen minutes of class can mean the difference between a fantastic day, and a not so fantastic day...

Not surprising, to gain their attention, I bring public history and my museum training into the classroom…with a stereoscope. For anyone who is unaware, a stereoscope was the View-Master of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  These were commonly found in the parlours and sitting rooms of Ontario homes, as a leisure activity and early form of 3D technology.  Looking through the lens of the stereoscope at the stereograph card (which has two photographs of the same image side by side), the technology merges the images into one, making it appear further in the distance and three dimensional. Not unlike the popularity of the 3D movies today, the viewer could feel like they were transported to that location, scene or event without leaving their home. 

Aside from a few Grade 8 students who remember their school trips to museums like Eldon House, most students I show this to have never seen this object before.  The excitement for this odd looking device is usually instant. I approach it as an inquiry-based learning experience, where students, as a group, generate questions about the object and use their observational skills to gradually come to solutions about what the mysterious item could be. They recognize it has a lens for viewing, and often early guesses include that it is a type of binocular or microscope. Throughout the day, I return to the object with the students, and let them examine it more closely during their own time.  By the end of the day, they formulate their last questions and observations, and then I show them how it works with the stereograph card. When I have the students asking to look through the lens again, or staying after class to ask more questions about the item, I know I’ve succeeded! With virtual reality becoming more popular as well, the stereoscope is an item students can relate and compare to their modern technology and gaming. 

Stereograph images were often of famous landmarks and tourist sites like the Taj Mahal.

While bringing unique and interesting artifacts into the classroom is an essential part of my supply teacher survival kit, it therefore also raises questions for me about the different methods teachers are using to make teaching history more engaging for 21^st century students.  My hope is that the days of students thinking “history is boring” are coming to an end, as teachers find new ways to educate beyond the textbook.  In recent years, digital methods and using video games to teach history is becoming more and more common.  For the technologically savvy history teacher, some are using simulations of famous battles to get students engaged in the material. One criticism of these methods is that simulations, as a form of augmented reality, may be teaching non-factual history to students. On the other hand, teachers are finding that these simulations result in students becoming more interested and invested in “what really happened” during that battle or war, and that the learning extends beyond the classroom with students still talking about it on their free time. 

Regardless of engaging with old technology or new, as a supply teacher, I am somewhat limited as to what I am able to teach on any given day and mostly at the mercy of the regular teacher’s lesson plans. Ultimately, as much as I try to bring the museum into the classroom, I recognize that there are some experiences that cannot be recreated. In the not-so-distant future, I will be blogging about the challenges and benefits of experiential learning, immersing students into the museum and public history setting.  During my placement with the London Heritage Council, I will have the opportunity to participate in the coordination of their Museum School London program, where students from both the London Catholic and Thames Valley School Boards adopt a local museum as their classroom for one week.  

In the meantime, check out this website for interactive history simulations, created by Iowa teacher, David Harms:

https://www.historysimulation.com/