The Story of Australia THE NEW COLONIES History Project

The New Colonies is a teaching aid and student project resource for studying the history of the new Australian colonies. It is an interactive computer based program on CD-ROM suitable for use in the middle/upper years of the Australian Curriculum.

The New Colonies is centred on a fifteen minute audio-visual narrative, which combines drawings, narration, music and sound effects to tell the story of the establishment of new Australian colonies in the early 1800s. It tells of Van Diemen's Land, Hobart and Launceston, bushrangers, the Hentys, Batman and Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne, the Swan River Colony, Colonel Light and Adelaide.

The program is a comprehensive student project resource that challenges learners to create their own version of The New Colonies narrative by replacing all, or any, of the drawings in the original movie with images that they have either drawn or painted themselves, or those that they have searched for and chosen as replacements, which depict their interpretation of the history of the new Australian colonies.

Develops Historical Thinking

The Australian Curriculum places an emphasis on the use of narratives as a strategy for developing young people's historical thinking. Research on narrative-based approaches to teaching indicates that learners grapple with the past in much the same way as historians, making sense of it by analysing, ordering and linking events in storied form. With this research in mind, The New Colonies was designed as a project resource that challenges students to 'do' and 'make' history in a manner that resembles the historian's craft.

Introduces Historical Methods and Procedures

The process of selecting and inserting the images into the program introduces learners to the use of historical methods and procedures, focusing on the interpretation of evidence and the use of narrative to construct accounts of the past, involving them as participants rather than spectators in the study of Australian history.

Develops Research Skills

The search for and selection of the images helps in developing student’s research skills and helps them learn how to reason historically with content and to understand that historical accounts and illustrations of the past may differ or conflict because people select and use evidence in different ways for different purposes.

Promotes Historical Reasoning

The program assists learners to develop patterns of historical reasoning by encouraging them to ask questions, foster debate, use evidence to support a position and to communicate that position effectively. The production of the movie gives students a feeling of accomplishment and builds a sense of pride in their achievement.

The New Colonies History Project can be used by individual students, by students working together in groups, or by the entire class working on one project. The process of producing the documentary fosters debate among the participating students and enables them to exchange ideas, refine points of view, make and justify choices, and appreciate the ideas of others.