The Project’s Guiding Question
How can we use social media to understand and communicate the experiences, beliefs, and decisions of historical figures?
Project Overview
Final Product
The students will create a complete social media profile that presents a historically authentic representation of the chosen figure through posts, stories, comments, videos, and interactions supported by historical evidence.
The final profile should demonstrate:
- Historical accuracy based on research and evidence.
- Empathy that reflects the perspectives and realities of the historical period.
- An understanding of the figure's motivations, challenges, and decisions.
- Effective communication using contemporary social media formats.
- An appropriate use of primary and secondary sources to support content.
Learning Goals
Students will:
- Analyze historical events and their significance.
- Evaluate primary and secondary sources.
- Demonstrate historical empathy.
- Communicate historical understanding through digital media.
- Defend historical interpretations using evidence.
- Apply project planning and execution skills.
- Reflect on their learning and growth.
The Challenge
Students are expected to think like historians, not influencers. Their responsibility is not to gather facts about a historical figure. They must investigate, interpret, and communicate the person’s experiences, decisions, beliefs, and actions within the context of their own historical period.
Students are expected to view events through the perspective of the historical figure and the society in which she or he lived.
Historical empathy does not require students to agree with historical actions or beliefs. Instead, it requires them to understand how people in the past perceived their world based on the knowledge, values, opportunities, and constraints available to them at the time.
When creating social media content, students should continually ask:
- What did this person know at the time?
- What challenges and opportunities did he or she face?
- What beliefs and values influenced her or his decisions?
- How would he or she have explained their actions to others?
- How would people living during that period have viewed these events?
Students should avoid interpreting historical events solely through modern perspectives. Instead, they should strive to create a historically authentic representation that reflects the realities, viewpoints, and experiences of the past while remaining grounded in historical evidence.
The goal is not to become a specific historical figure, but to think like a historian when interpreting and communicating their story.
The PBL Recipe
Ingredients
- Historical sources
- Curiosity
- Critical thinking
- Historical empathy
- Creativity
- Collaboration
Initiate
The students explore a historical era before selecting a historical figure. They investigate major events, social conditions, political movements, influential individuals, and historical trends. This broad understanding helps them make informed decisions about the figure they choose to study. This phase concludes with a Project Kickoff, where students select a historical figure and present a brief project pitch.
Plan
The students conduct historical research, evaluate primary and secondary sources, build a timeline of significant events, and identify key relationships, beliefs, decisions, and experiences that shaped the historical figure's life. Using their findings, students design a social media strategy and content plan for representing their historical figure accurately and authentically.
Execute
The students create a complete social media profile that represents their historical figure and their world. Content may include:
- Profile information and biography
- Historical posts
- Stories
- Videos
- Conversations with other historical figures
- Reflections written from the character's perspective
Creativity is encouraged. Historical invention is not.
Each piece of content should link to a documented historical event, decision, relationship, belief, or experience identified during the research phase.
Every post, comment, story, or video must be supported by historical evidence and authentic historical context.
Deliver
The students share their completed profiles with an audience through gallery walks, digital exhibitions, classroom presentations, or public showcases. They explain their research process, defend their historical interpretations, and respond to questions about their figure and the decisions made during the project.
Close
The students evaluate their work, reflect on their understanding of history, and examine how historical empathy influenced their interpretation of the past. Reflection topics include:
- What they learned
- How their understanding of history changed
- What surprised them during the research process
- How historical empathy shaped their work
Final Dish
A historically authentic social media profile that brings history to life through evidence-based storytelling, historical empathy, and rigorous historical research.
Serves
Students who are ready to move beyond memorizing history and start thinking like historians.
