Association for the
Advancement of Computing in Education
Celebrating 30+ Years of
Service to the IT in Education / E-Learning Community
Celebrating 30+ Years of
Service to the IT in Education / E-Learning Community
When Herb Mahelona and Amy Burvall started making music videos parodying familiar pop songs set to history or literature-inspired lyrics, they did not conceive it would develop into a full-blown "project" that would appeal to such a variety of niche groups and reach far beyond the boundaries of their small Hawaii classrooms. To date their collection of 53 videos, produced with relatively no budget and basic tools, have earned over 3 million views on YouTube since being uploaded a year ago and their most popular video – French Revolution to Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance"- has been translated by fans into French, Spanish, German, Dutch, and Cantonese. What is most intriguing is perhaps how this humble teacher-created content has been made useful in not only high school classrooms, but in universities, home-schools, re-enactment clubs, museums, and media/tech conferences around the globe. Mahelona and Burvall consider themselves to be "Digital Bards" or "Technotroubadours" of sorts, and believe in the power of music, storytelling, rhyming verse, and humor in augmenting the learning experience. Their videos have not only instigated conversation about History in cyberspace, but have inspired others to create their own musical interpretations of academic subjects as well. The "Historyteachers", as they are called on YouTube, are getting used to the idea of being "teacherpreneurs" and actively use social media such as Twitter and Facebook to communicate and collaborate globally with "fans". This session will reflect on the use of music and other multi-media elements as "hooks" or remediation for learning, address the impact of teacher and student-created digital content and the importance of connecting/collaborating on an international scale.
History for Music Lovers: http://www.youtube.com/user/historyteachers
Herb Mahelona was born and raised in Honolulu, a graduate of the Kamehameha Schools, and the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and has been an educator for the past twenty years. In the classroom, he has taught various subjects, including world and Hawaiian history, art, music appreciation, choir, humanities (music history, art history, and philosophy), Korean language, filmmaking, Flash animation and web design, Photoshop, and music composition. Aside from being a teacher, he is a composer, arranger, musician, web designer, and filmmaker. He currently resides on the island of Hawaii where he is the choir director choir at the Kamehameha Schools Hawaii Campus. He currently plays cello in the Kamuela Philharmonic Orchestra, the University of Hawaii - Hilo Symphony, and performs often with the Kona Music Society, and teaches cello and piano privately. He is the director of the Kamehameha Schools Alumni Chorus, Mamalahoa Chapter, and is a member of the Royal Order of Kamehameha. He recently completed his third opera for the Hawaii Youth Opera Chorus, to be performed in the spring of 2012. He is also half of the YouTube duo known as “historyteachers”, utilizing his technical and musical know-how combined with the skills of fellow teacher Amy Burvall to create history-themed music video parodies that have gained a world-wide following.
Amy Burvall has been teaching in the Humanities for 19 years on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Originally from San Diego, California, she attended a performing arts magnet program in High School and has been involved in various aspects of theatre production throughout her life. She earned a degree in Humanities from Hawaii Loa College and attended the University of Hawaii's graduate program in European History. For the past 11 years she has been a leader in educational technology professional development programs at both St. Andrew's Priory (where she taught for 8 years) and Le Jardin Academy International Baccalaureate School, where she currently teaches Theory of Knowledge and World History. She is a committee representative to the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools and Hawaii Community Foundation's "Schools of the Future" grant program and has led teacher tech integration trainings at Le Jardin, the School's of the Future Conferences (2010 "Techstorians" and 2011 "E-portfolios"), and the International Baccalaureate Conference (Montreal, 2010). Her work in the "History for Music Lovers" project has appeared in Wired magazine, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, CBC, NPR, and various international blogs and media (French TV "L'effet Papillon", FOX news, Taiwan News, etc.). She is looking forward to presenting at TEDx Honolulu in November, 2011 as an invited speaker.
