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.