An interactive online version of this book is available at https://pressbooks.lib.vt.edu/chattygeeps/.
Step into the history classroom through the looking glass of generative AI.
In Teaching History with Chatty Geeps, Amy Allen and David Hicks invite history educators to explore how ChatGPT can deepen (not dilute!) the work of historical thinking. Drawing on their technocuriosity framework and years of collaboration with teachers, they show how “Chatty Geeps” can be used to scaffold inquiry, strengthen feedback, and make the invisible work of learning visible.
Chapters pair Victorian metaphors, primary sources, and a little Wonderland whimsey with classroom-tested strategies for using Chatty Geeps to help students question, corroborate, and contextualize evidence. It’s a book for teachers who care about evidence, complexity, and historical thinking skills, but who are also willing to experiment, play, and occasionally tumble down a rabbit hole.
Rather than treating AI as a threat or a miracle, Allen and Hicks position it as a mirror: a tool that helps teachers and students reflect on what it means to learn, to reason with evidence, and to stay curious in an algorithmic age.
