Overview: After playing the Middle Ages Time Machine Adventure at activehistory.co.uk, Sidney wrote a complaint letter to the Time Travel Holiday Agent about her experiences. One half of the class wrote similar complaint letters focusing on the negative dimension; the other half wrote travel brochures focusing on the positive experiences!
Examples: This approach can work for any period or topic that has positive and negative sides to it.
Taking it further: Students could be paired together to produce a dramatised dialogue – the holidaymaker could storm into the travel agent demanding a refund by explaining the things which had gone wrong, whilst the travel agent would stress all the positive experiences which are either being omitted in the account or which provide a more rounded view of the situation / period in question.