Students Can Learn
From Anything – Italian History and … Cable TV?
My combined knowledge
of Italian history can best be summed up into the following buzz-words: Pizza,
World War 2, and Rome. Sadly, limiting a country to such minuscule, almost
too-broad-to-be-useful words is a part of my biggest issue with learning
History …
… there is too much of it! I have to compress my knowledge into those 'sections' because otherwise I am lost trying to think about Popes, Emperors, Axis powers, pizza, and countless history lessons between 4th and 9th grade.
 |
| WORLD?! WHY DO YOU HAVE SO MUCH BACK-STORY?! |
One of the things
however that is a powerful pedagogy tool for my introduction to history
however is, oddly, the Showtime and the STARZ cable channels. The pay-for-service cable providers have two shows, one entitled The Borgias and the other Da Vinci’s Demons. Both
of these shows pander to the crude hunger for a channel that can show breasts,
however they serve an important function
- they reveal a great deal about history between their sword-fights and
canon-fire scenarios.
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| PICTURED - All Italian History up until 1977 ... Okay, not really. |
In a series of
about 4 blogs I hope to explore the merits of these popular shows, how they
connect to Italian history as taught to our own UTT students, and what they can
be used for in classrooms.
Also? Sweet
sword-fights and canon-fire! And Dracula. Yes, Dracula.
 |
| Bleh! |
Who says education
can’t be fun?
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