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“I asked my parents why a wall was so important”: Teaching about the GDR and Post‐Reunification Germany
Author(s) -
Streitwieser Bernhard,
Lys Franziska
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
die unterrichtspraxis/teaching german
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1756-1221
pISSN - 0042-062X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1756-1221.2008.00018.x
Subject(s) - blackboard (design pattern) , communism , the internet , curriculum , newspaper , political science , media studies , sociology , law , engineering , politics , engineering drawing , world wide web , computer science
Fifteen years after the ‘peaceful revolutions’ brought about the collapse of communism and the reunification of East and West Germany, a heated debate rages over the legacy of communism and the continuing impact of 1989. This paper describes a new course that explores the contentious issues in this debate through the innovative use of the course management system Blackboard. The paper describes how using Internet technology (video and audio links to archival and documentary footage, historic recordings, web linked academic articles, newspaper reports, internet sites, on‐line quizzes and virtual discussions) has brought today's undergraduates into the current debate and engaged them technologically in ways that deviate from more traditional teaching models. Such a course is not as prevalent as one would expect, least of all in undergraduate curricula in Germany and the United States.