Hey all, it was a pleasure to have class with you all. I thoroughly enjoyed our discussions and the many great insights I learned from you all.
Some of you expressed interest in seeing my finished project. I’d love for you all to take a browse through it’s pages and create your own timeline. I’d also much appreciate any feed back.
Here’s the link: http://gmu.mossiso.com/698/
Have a pleasant Christmas break. I’ll think warm thoughts to you all as I spend the time in warm Arizona. 
Poland’s Cultural Identity and the East
The Baroque era (1562 – 1764) was Poland’s Golden Age. It was a time when Poland was the largest nation in Europe. Its geography lent to a crossroads of East and West; a place where Slavs, Russians, Jews, Tartars, and Ottomans influenced a culturally diverse landscape. Artistic highlights from this period include royal wares, liturgical objects, paintings of nobility and religious images, rugs and textiles including pillaged Ottoman tents, decorative glassware and ceramics, equestrian items, and Hussar armor. (more…)
I didn’t see the request to post a summary of our projects until last night, and I am presenting tomorrow, so I don’t know if this is still relevant, but here goes:
My final project reflects a long-time educational objective going back a decade or so when I myself discovered the fascinating Indian Ocean as a region in connection with maritime history and Islamic history while I was teaching. As I explained, I have recently received a request to help create a web-based teaching materials on this topic at the beginning of next year. I am also creating a preview lesson for the web site for the NCSS annual meeting coming up soon (too soon).
To summarize, the purpose of the web site is at once general and specific. At the general level, it is to bridge with a Sackler Gallery exhibit on Portuguese entry into the Indian Ocean trade after 1498. The bridge will be a backward one into the history of the region before European entry. I see this as very necessary because many teachers and textbooks leave the impression that (a) the region only became important to global trade after the entry of the Europeans, or possibly, like other important historical movements, there were the Romans and Greeks, then nothing, then the Renaissance era Europeans and then we Moderns; (b) everyone in the Indian Ocean trading region rolled over and played dead the moment Vasco arrived. Well, some did, on the ships the Portuguese waylaid and in the path of the cannons they fired, but the region as a whole did not. Not only did survivals of the regional coasting trade persist well into the era of European dominance, they persist even today. So, for students in survey classes, and for the general public, this web site will provide a visually accessible introduction to the role of the Indian Ocean over a long period, stretching back to ancient times. It will not be a historians’ treasure trove, but it will provide a sample of information that should create an impression of the region that is hopefully memorable.
Pedagogically speaking, this assignment addresses an issue I have been exploring for some time through instructional design, and that is, how to teach the interaction among cultures/societies/civilizations as a distinct topic of study. To bring this concept to the level of the concrete, it involves finding ways to investigate and present the people who were agents of interaction, the places that were scenes of such interaction, and the objects that represent such exchanges. These will be featured through investigation of such primary sources as travel accounts, technologies, port cities, trade goods, artistic objects, and so on, placed in context through the linked map/timeline.
A narrower objective of the web site design is to feature relations between Oman and the US in history, particularly in terms of a voyage and treaty that sealed a very positive relationship between the two in the early to mid-19th century. Ordinarily, this could turn into a multicultural love feast in which I wouldn’t involve myself, but there is another story here that has historical and pedagogical validity. The primary source materials on the voyage of the Peacock and Edmund Roberts’ efforts as merchant and American official provide the opportunity to highlight a formative period in US foreign trade and diplomacy, to investigate the role of trade in the growing US economy, and to give teachers a lesson that can help them to place the teaching of US history in a global context. Most teachers focus on the period after 1800 as Westward Ho! and Inward Ho! The role of commerce on the global stage is not often featured. This investigation of Atlantic-Indian Ocean links through primary source documents will hopefully be an attractive and stimulating lesson that kills several birds with one stone.
I am fairly nervous about how much of this I can put together for the final project, especially because I don’t have more than descriptive powers in the digital realm (and the dreaded PPT arena), so I am focussing my presentation on the Indian Ocean in history, and particularly on investigation of travel accounts as a sample of the use of primary sources and their presentation on the web. By the end of the course, I will have also prepared the sample lesson using the US history materials. The rest of the web development awaits the first of the year through the spring, but this course will have been invaluable in setting the parameters for that development, and making it tons better than it would have been without my exposure to these ideas, technologies, and existing projects.
My project reflects who I am, especially my future career in the military. I have a great interest in how we remember/memorialize acts of valor, both in and out of combat. Also, in all likelihood the first time I will ever teach a history class it will be at the Naval Academy teaching American Naval Heritage.
With that said, I have decided to take on the subject of William Lewis Herndon and the S.S. Central as mentioned in last week’s class. This is a great story from its very origins. Herndon, in the middle of an exceptional naval career took command of the mail ship S.S. Central America. His ship was struck by a powerful storm that disabled the ship’s boilers. Captain Herndon went down with his ship and about 3 tons of California “49er” gold. The gold was rediscovered by treasure hunters in the late 1980s, leading to a decade long court battle with insurers. I believe that the story between the ravenous court battle over the gold and the relative anonymity of Captain Herndon, need to be examined and pose an exceptional opportunity to challenge students, promote critical thinking, and encourage professional development as future Navy or Marine Corps officers.
Recently, as many of you know, Lendol Calder paid a visit to our class blog, during which he asked the question: “Calder makes history teaching seem so technical, so architectural in its emphasis on design, a critic might conclude. Is this close to what you meant by “scientific”?” I would say “no,” and here is why: Often times, the best and most enriching classes do not fit a specific design or archetypal structure.
After rereading Lendol’s article, Uncoverage: Toward a Signature Pedagogy for the History Survey, I would claim that learning history isn’t as scientific as the question suggests; I believe that he holds a more flexible viewpoint, based on the reading. Moreover, I personally think the point he was driving at was not alluding to a rigid and highly-structured scientific design for learning history, but a design that takes shape gradually over time as students learn what they are being taught. Does this make sense?
For example, Calder states:
“Historical thinking, like other forms of disciplinary thinking, begins with clear-eyed wonder before the world. But questioning is an extraordinarily difficult skill for most students, probably because for their whole lives teachers and textbooks have posed the questions for them (”Write an essay on the following question . . .”). Feeding students a steady diet of other people’s questions is a sure-fire prescription for mental dyspepsia. So the first move students need to learn is that of asking good historical questions. To this end the first meeting in every unit is designed to intensify students’ desire to inquire.”
I think this very concept is important to consider. I would venture to say that most students do not approach learning history based on scientific inquiry. Rather, their minds are more receptive to the information at first, and then logic slowly falls into place, which could resemble a kind of scientific process, based on however one chooses to define “science.” But to think of learning history as something technical? I don’t think I can fully accept that idea, and I am glad that Calder asked the question.
Cheers,
Matt
First, I would like to make the comment that I believe everyone in the class has really good ideas for their final projects. What is also wonderful is that I feel our projects are more the part of a collective effort, and it is great that we all got to exchange ideas during Tuesday’s class.
My idea for the final started off quite innocently. I’ve always known that John Evelyn, the famous 17th century diarist, bares a relation to me on my grandmother’s side. I’ve always had an interest in learning more about the man, yet I’ve never found the time to read his diary; until just recently. This new found interest in Evelyn has given me direction for my final.
In short, the idea for my project is geared towards helping students learn how to read primary sources. I would like to take segments from Evelyn’s diary, Vaclav Havel’s Open Letters, and Fredrick Douglas’ writings and get students to read and analyze them. To equal out the playing field, I would also allow students to choose from women in history, such as , Florence Nightingale, Martha Ballard, Dorothea Dix, etc. The main point of this exercise would be give students the necessary tools for conceptualizing primary sources, as well as getting them to take away the “big picture” from the various writings.
To keep them interested, I would also want them to choose anyone they would like to be from history and get them to act out a certain part of a speech, letter, etc. They would be able to do this in groups to make the effort collective. Of course, their ideas would have to get approved by me, their imaginary teacher. This would be made necessary to eliminate the chance of a student choosing somebody controversial, or offensive.
I sincerely hope this will develop fully in thought as well as in practice.
What do you all think?
Hello all!
My friend, Dr. Cathy Waegner, who lives in Germany recently sent me an email in regards to my post on Utopia. Dr. Waegner conducted research on Utopia a few years ago. Dr. Waegner is a professor of English at Siegen University in Germany.
Her comments are as follows:
“Dear Matthew and Sal, Thanks to you, Sis, for forwarding Matthew’s email. I looked into the blog and the DAACS database – hot stuff! First of all, I loved Matthew’s description of his relationship to Utopia (and Sal’s excellent photos brought back memories for me too…) Secondly, the database was mind-boggling – and to think that Utopias 1, 2, 3, and 4 are just a stone’s throw away from 160 John Browning! I noticed that Garrett Fessler and his James River Institute for Archeology will be excavating a new site (First Settlers’ Campground) in Williamsburg in 2007. Do you know where that venue is? Maybe Matthew can be in on that from the beginning. There are also two other slave cemeteries which have been researched by Colonial Williamsburg – I’d like to locate them the next time I’m in W-burg. That database didn’t exist when I did my modest work on Utopia, but Garrett Fessler gave me photocopies of his findings and reports which obviously were fed into the database. (By the way, I noticed that his name is listed as “Dr. Garrett Fessler” – he was too busy to complete his doctorate back when I was interviewing him, but I’m glad to see he finally did it!) I have to quit now, but we can keep in touch on all of this. Good luck with your investigations, Matthew–
Lots of love, Cathy
P.S. I was also fascinated by your sleuthing with regard to your English grandmother!”
I would like to personally thank Dr. Waegner for her kind words.
Albany Congress of 1754 Project
The objective of the project is to provide a learning module that exposes high school or undergraduate college students to primary source documents, gives the students experience in interpreting these documents and historically thinking about the issues and decisions that faced the Indians, American colonists, and the Board of Trade in England. The module would occur sometime during the middle of a course on colonial America and is estimated to take approximately two weeks to complete. In the weeks leading up to the module we would have sessions giving the students a sense of the historical landscape from the perspective of the Indians, colonists and English in Britain. (more…)
To help everyone remember what you presented tonight, please write up a 2-3 paragraph summary of your final project and post it here. And, as you think of other suggestions for your colleagues, offer those as comments.
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