This paper highlights the emerging prospects and conflicts from the application of new
technologies, primarily computer-based multimedia and the Internet as cognitive learning
tools in the modern Greek history classroom. The relationship between the use of multimedia
technology and the teaching of modern Greek history is a very recent one as the
materials and the case studies available are limited. Nevertheless, the emphasis in the use
of multimedia and the Internet as cognitive learning tools rather than instructional media
tools in the hands of designer-developers for the purpose of creating prescribed linear
communications and interactions in order to transmit information to the learner creates
both opportunities and deficits when dealing with modern Greek history. Aspects of
modern Greek history that are on purpose overlooked by the official curriculum surface
when collecting and analyzing primary sources, while ideas such as the understanding of
the Greek nation as an eternal entity, not a product of history are easy to communicate in
a traditional linear fashion but very difficult in a constructivist learning environment
when students are again asked to create history via the use of primary sources. “Some of
our best thinking results when students try to represent what they know. Thinking is
embedded in the tasks and functional requirements of cognitive tools” (Jonassen et al.,
1993).
The case of Greece is an important one to study because of the strong emphasis the
Greek educational system attaches to the teaching of Greek history from antiquity to the
present for purposes of highlighting a national identity (Avdela, 2000). At the same time
the official Greek state is promoting heavily the use of computer based multimedia and
the Internet setting the stage for new opportunities in learning which in turn promote
creative thinking that are bound to challenge the official line. Rich in contemporary
history the modern Greek history classroom is an excellent setting to apply new
technologies as cognitive learning tools rather than as instructional media. Additional
challenges such as the particularities of the modern Greek language with its ideological
and political manifestations in texts in correlation with the socio-economical and political
complexities experienced by Greek political life offer additional leverage for creative
thinking on part of the learners to challenge the official linear history timeline promoted
in the textbooks.