Don’t let the spartanesque look of the initial web page on the website fool you (http://www.virtualjamestown.org/. This project is rich in primary and secondary sources as well as ways in which both students and teachers can interact. There are ten teaching scenarios ready for use that students, or any user for that matter, can work on that require historical thinking. The maps amd images show how the area was settled and populated from 1607 onward as well as photos of aritifacts with explanations of the artifacts which allow the user to get a good idea of what kind of tools, pottery and various items were used by the Jamestown population of the 17th century. (more…)
October 18, 2006
October 16, 2006
Why books will always be used!
This was a tough weekend. I usually find time on Friday and Saturday to do the study and reading for this class. But this past Friday and Saturday I was fixing the server that this website lives on.
It just brings home one more point. Books will be used forever. Long after the last plug on a server is pulled, long after the data on a hard drive becomes unreadable due to incompatible hardware, the book will be there. Just like it always has. It can’t be turned off, it can’t be hacked. Anyhow, despite that bit of anti-technical rant, I’ll endeavor to expound on the qualities of a few websites.
Projects, Here and Abroad
Much of the excitement surrounding digital history is its great flexibility. Not only does new media offer multimedia capabilities, changing what content might easily be presented to students, but it also is adaptable to any age group. The ability to quickly and effectively incorporate images and sound, with or without the use of textual narration allows younger students the opportunity to engage visual material they might find more approachable, while older students can appreciate the connectivity between objects and the open-ended possibilities of the Web. (more…)
Projects and Other Projects
I first examined the World History Matters and History Matters projects sponsored by the Center for History and New Media looking for shortcomings. Although failing in this initial endeavor, as I found no glaring deficiencies, I learned to appreciate these projects as models for incorporating technology not just into learning history, but teaching as well. From these two model databases I have decided that three essential requirements must be met in order to have a useful digital history project. Firstly, as in all good academic history primary sources must form the backbone of your project. They must be available for students and other site visitors to interact with, by listening, reading or watching. Secondly, there must be a mechanism through which site visitors are guided to historical thought. This mechanism could be as complex as an interactive game or as primitive as simply posting a few samples of how historians think about sources. Lastly, a good project will emphasize teaching as well as learning. Well developed sites will supply teachers with exercises, assignments or questions to pose to their students. Recognizing that educators provide the historical context for student learning makes this requirement all the more important in creating a successful digital history project. (more…)
October 15, 2006
World History Sources and DoHistory
These two projects are quite different. It is hard to find any weaknesses in DoHistory or WH Sources, except that they and the other projects on the CHNM site ought to have more revealing and clear titles–that seems to me the signal weakness in the suite of projects as a group. They are all excellent, but their titles can be confusing and too generic. It might be a function of titles chosen before the sites were fully developed in content and scope. DoHistory, for example, might have been envisioned to house a future project along the lines of the Martha Ballard Diary resources, but it is alone in the category now, so it should have its own title, or attach a subtitle. The site is so remarkable an example of a unique digital history resource that its title should not be generic, because people can’t easily find it. It does come up on a search, but not on a browse of chnm. (More on DoHistory below). On the other hand, World History Sources, which I visited on an earlier occasion, used to be a list like a WH version of the Webography resource collection (annotated rather than reviewed, I recall). Now it could be “Historical Thinking Matters,” or “History Matters,” or “DoHistory.” Nothing is distinctively different enough about these titles. (more…)
Weeks 7 & 8 – A Critique of CHNM Projects
Up to this point in the course, we have learned how digital technology has re-shaped the traditional pedagogy of historians. Digital media as a tool for learning has made information more accessible and readily available for the historian. This post will look at a few of the projects that the Center of History and New Media at GMU has worked on in the past, as well as analyze their strengths and weaknesses…(well mostly strengths.)
The first project that we will look at is called World History Sources and is located at this link: World History Sources. Upon first glance, the site looks very easy to navigate. There is not a lot of clutter, which makes a world of difference when trying to access the various sources one would need to conduct research. For instance, the links on the main page of the website provide access to more specific information. This is very helpful when doing research for an essay because the user does not have to sift through a lot of pointless information just to find something on say, Trade in World History. What is also quite effective about the website is that it offers interactive multimedia features to help one analyze specific aspects of World History, such as music. By actually hearing and seeing the music played, the historian may arrive at a better analytical interpretation of the music, as opposed to just reading about what’s being played. The ease at which one can navigate this site also matched with the interactive features makes World History Sources a full-fledged winner. (more…)
Teaching with the web– Neolithic archaeological web sites
This post was originally intended as a comment on Michelle’s post, which was very amusing and honest about her method. It can be illuminating to toss in a search term just to see what comes up. The Tax Museum piece was very funny, though I was not excited enough to visit. How about looking for a Death Museum? Then it got too long. I intended to share my experience looking for a very definite item to use in teaching (objective: give students quick and representative access to the actual sites to supplement the texts’ generalizations about the Neolithic period), namely Neolithic sites. This would satisfy the objectives of illustrating specific examples from history, illuminating “how do we know” about the period, and investigating “how do historians/archeologists find out about the past?”) I started with two important, far-flung neolithic sites, namely Catal Huyuk (Turkey) and Skara Brae (Orkney Islands, Scotland). (more…)
The Mystery of History: Teaching through Detective Work
Many of us have examined the Who Killed William Robinson website to see the way a real murder mystery from the 19th century is being used to introduce students to the practice of historical research. What many may not know is that that site is only one part of a much larger initiative involving five other sites and a series of smaller exercises. They are all part of a website called Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History.
The William Robinson site was the first in this series created in 1997. Additional mysteries were added in 2003 and 2005. A fourth phase of work for the site was just approved in June of this year. The project is currently housed at the University of Victoria and receives funding from the Department Canadian Heritage.
October 13, 2006
Week 8: Easier said than done.
At first, I thought that this assignment would not be so hard. I decided to try a stab in the dark and type “teaching” into Google. Number one on the list was a site authored by Honolulu Community College designed for faculty development. It has sections, or subpages on topics from “the first ten minutes of class” to how to deal with stress. Great! My job is done! No, wait – this isn’t a teaching project; it’s a how to teach project. (read on…)
Now what? My next attempt was to try typing in various events and places which interest me and see if anyone is working on a project about any of them. The closest I came to success using this tactic was to peruse the History Channel’s site at www.history.com for something which was teaching – not just an advertisement to buy DVDs. There is a link to a nice site about Teddy Roosevelt, titled TR: An American Lion. It has various video clips and is supposedly being used by New York City schools for teaching. I decided that this falls into the category where a teacher is offered a catalog of available videos and chooses what fits into their curriculum of the moment. It didn’t seem like a true teaching project as much as textbooks on TV.
More stumbling. Sometimes wandering around (let’s not call it surfing, because that implies that there is purposeful direction involved) the internet is very frustrating. If you don’t know the right question to ask (or who to ask it of) and you can feel like you are just a bit lost. I eventually discovered the American Social History Project, of the Center for Media and Learning at CUNY. The address is www.ashp.cuny.edu. It’s a page similar to projects undertaken by our own CHNM. The content is similar in nature to our Week 7 assignments. However, it isn’t geared toward students. If it is supposed to be, I didn’t get that impression; and it therefore wouldn’t be doing an effective job.
My impression of this assignment was to find an online project geared toward students, in that students can use it as a learning tool…a supplement to books, periodicals, etc… I was staying away from sites like the Smithsonian and National Historical Site sites; because while they do teach, they are designed for a broader population than students.
I finally stopped at www.taxhistory.org. This site is sponsored by Taxanalysts, which is a .com entity with some commercial purpose I suppose. I decided to ignore that and stick to their apparent non-profit arm. The page is titled the Tax History Project and is designed to give an overview of the history of taxation in America. One part of the page is the “virtual museum of taxation.” I think it needs to be virtual, because no one would visit it in person. Brick and mortar museums require a lot of upkeep. Everyone hates taxes, can you imagine getting donations for the tax museum??? It would be a fundraising nightmare. That said, there are reasons you might want to know about the history of taxation. This may be the place to find it.
This site also has the problem of audience. I’m not sure who their target audience is. The layout is fine, easy to read, and colorful. Could that be because the site is managed by what appears to be a corporate entity? Unlimited time, manpower, and maybe lots of money too? Even so, I got the feeling from scanning around the site that they were serious in their endeavor to document the history of taxes in America. It has a place. You don’t have to go to the library. Because it’s not authored by an educational institution, I’m suspect of it; but I’m sure that what’s there is verifiable.
In then end, I’m not sure if I completed the assignment or not. I’m anxious to see what everyone else will bring to class and how they found it. I find lots of personal pages about historical stuff of all sorts, created by people who are passionate about their interests, but not educators. Some are nicely annotated and informative – some are the ramblings of idiots. Google doesn’t differentiate. Not many which make Google’s top ten for any search are authored by professional historians.
I think that I may have had trouble with this because of the method I used to find what I was looking for. I hope others either had the same problems or did much better than me and can enlighten me.