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Reviews and Analysis of Sites
Catlin’s Indian Gallery: Genre—Teaching Resource, Technical—Timeline and Lesson Plans
Catlin’s Indian Gallery, created and maintained by the Smithsonian Art Museum, includes a section called Catlin’s Classroom featuring a number of digitized primary sources and lesson plans for the classroom.
Though based on a museum exhibit, the creators of the lesson plan section did an excellent job of incorporating primary sources into specific lesson plans for use in the middle and high school classroom. Included in each lesson are links to sources on the site as well as external online sources. Other online sources include contextual materials (transcripts of treatises from the Library of Congress, for example) and ways of obtaining more information on particular topics. A search, though provided, isn’t necessary to find materials on certain parts of the site. National standards covered in each lesson plan are explicitly stated. Not all the standards are for history; some of the plans are interdisciplinary. While Westerners in China will focus on history standards, it will also list associated world history standards with a lesson.
The site states that the lessons were created through a “consultation with a panel of teachers” however, all of the teachers listed reside in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. It would have been more beneficial to consult with teachers across the country, especially since the teachers and students in the D.C. metropolitan area are the most likely to be able to actually visit the exhibition in person rather than relying on the website. The scholars and teachers for Westerners in China will be chosen from around the country using various methods of solicitation, including H-Asia, conferences, and contacting local scholars and teachers for recommendations of other people around the country to contact.
Browsing for a specific lesson plan in Catlin’s Classroom is possible by topic or standard. The topics are based on the four sections covered in the Campfire Stories section of the site. Having the ability to browse by standard is helpful for those teachers looking for lesson plans to cover area they’re less familiar with. The lessons on Westerners in China will also offer browsing by the standards—the “eras” in the world history standards.
The disappointing aspect of Catlin’s Classroom is the lack of integration between the interactive primary source module Campfire Stories and the lesson plans. Campfire Stories contains a wealth of information but does not link to any of the lesson plans. This makes the materials harder to use since it is not even obvious they are present somewhere else on the site. Within Campfire Stories are more than one hundred of Catlin’s paintings, his personal notebook digitized, at least ten flash movies with audio interviews embedded that analyze the paintings, and a contextualizing timeline. Technically speaking, the reason for the lack of integration with the lesson plans is the use of Flash in creating this section. A search cannot be performed easily on Flash movies. This makes it hard to find specific paintings and contextual information in the Flash section. While the transcripts for the audio interviews with scholars and curators are located elsewhere on the site and can be searched on, they are not linked to Campfire Stories.
Campfire Stories is an impressive resource. However, the contextualizing timeline, a potentially useful feature, has several flaws. The timeline is color-coded, but it is not clear what each of the three colors represents. When an event is clicked on, the information appears on it in a box above the timeline, but it is brief and lacks links to lesson plans or other sources for more information. Furthermore, almost none of Catlin’s paintings are listed on the timeline—the gallery is completely separate and cannot be viewed at the same time as the timeline. The gallery images are also not linked to the lesson plans, though they are important sources in most of them.
The visual presentation of materials on Westerners in China comes from this site. The timeline will follow the horizontal lines with color-coded historical events so that and when an event is clicked on, the information will display. However, more depth and context on each event will be provided. Additionally, there will be numerous links between primary sources on the timeline and lessons. Unlike Campfire Stories, the timeline on Westerners in China will feature prominently, complementing and integrating the lessons and primary sources.
Several small sites: Content— Westerners in China
Several sites on the web represent a particular person or subset of people who visited or lived China at a time. For instance, there are many sites on Marco Polo that discuss his journey, his background, and what he wrote about in his travels. Several sites integrate pictures and objects with short excerpts from his travel writings, such as In the Footsteps of Marco Polo. This well-designed site follows a linear format by tracing Marco Polo’s journey on a map. Other sites, such as Marco Polo and His Travels, include mostly background information on Marco Polo and some accompanying images.
Another group of Westerners who went to China were the Jesuits, and they are represented well on the web. While most of the sites focus on the background and biographies of specific Jesuits (such as Matteo Ricci), some also include excellent primary sources such as maps and images. For instance, Missionaries and mandarins includes writings by Jesuits and images of handwritten documents. These might be integrated into some of the biographies on Westerners in China.
Paul Fordham’s Internet East Asian History Sourcebook is another resource for primary sources online. In the sourcebook is a section called “The Western Intrusion”. Though not all links are functional, and none offer a significant amount of contextualization, these sources could be added as external links from lessons on Westerners in China, used for content on the timeline, or added to the database as primary sources.
None of these smaller sites include lesson plans or specific ways to integrate the materials into the classroom. Westerners in China could include some of these materials in the database or as external links from the lessons, biographies, and historical events on the timeline.
Asia for Educators: Content and Genre—Chinese History Teaching Resources
The only site close in terms of content and genre to the proposed site is Asia for Educators, created and maintained by Columbia University. This site covers a broad array of material (not just history) on East Asia and took many years to complete. In fact, the content of the site originates from a serious of printed “Teaching Workbooks” on China and Japan created collaboratively by scholars and teachers over a period of about twenty years. A few years ago, these scholars and teachers decided to digitize the materials for purposes of accessibility and linking materials together.9
There are three main ways to browse the materials on the site: by subject area, file type, and time period (the time periods follow the standards, as Westerners in China will also do). Since the project is not yet finished, some of the sections say “under construction”. The material covered is so broad (from the beginning of China and Japan up to the present) that many of the sections are not very detailed. The menus are a bit frustrating to navigate (and in some browsers they won’t work at all) but all of the materials display in a new window, a nice feature when wanting to read and then return to the previous page. On Westerners in China, many of the materials within an historical event or biography will also show up in a new window. For instance, clicking on a lesson plan will open a new window so the user is not required to leave the current place on the timeline when he or she wishes to return to it.
Although the creators of Asia for Educators claim they strive to connect materials using internal links, relatively few links are embedded at all. For instance, under Subject > History > China > Key Points on the menu is a section called “Introduction to China during the Ming and Qing [Outline Reading]”. This section is entirely plain text and includes two important sections without links on “Europeans in China” and “China and Catholicism 16th-18th century”. The text mentions Matteo Ricci, the Dutch embassies in China, and several other Westerners who played key roles. However, even upon returning to the home page and performing a keyword search on “Matteo Ricci”, only this and three other records are returned — and not one of these contains links to readings or sources on Matteo Ricci. Since Ricci is often considered the most important Jesuit in China, and the Jesuits played a key role in Chinese history, this is unexpected. Even more surprising is the lack of discussion of American and other European missionaries in China during the nineteenth century. Many Western women left behind diaries or wrote letters home during this time period, yet this group isn’t even mentioned.
Also included on the site are several “teaching units”. However, only three cover Westerners in China. One explores several selections from Marco Polo's travels; one examines Lord Macartney and the Qing Emperor on the kowtow incident, and one discusses the British during the Opium War. No additional teaching units on other Westerners (Jesuits, embassies, Americans, etc.) are present, and no comparative analysis is attempted between those Westerners discussed. Besides Marco PoloÕs travels, the only other primary source by a Westerner in China is one written by Lord Macartney. The teaching units do, however, include sections that would be useful for creating the format of lessons on Westerners in China, such as an introduction to the sources, a background reading, primary sources, discussion questions, a vocabulary list, and suggested activities. The only section that would definitely need to be added is one that integrates current history standards.
Asia for Educators, tthough written and prepared mostly by academic scholars, is primarily aimed at an elementary through early high school audience. The teaching units are not detailed or complex enough for AP or college students. Westerners in China will build on this site by narrowing the focus to a particular subject and providing more information aimed at older age groups, including college students. Older students would be able to obtain basic background information in a survey textbook and then come to the site for materials and sources to supplement their reading. Often sources mentioned in these textbooks are not provided in the book itself.
The technical architecture of this site, with the exception of popup windows, is not appropriate for Westerners in China. The menus on the homepage, which divide the sections well (subjects/file types/time periods) and are based on audience, are difficult to navigate.
Because Asia for Educators was mostly written prior to the web, many materials listed in the resources and bibliography sections are for purchase only. In several teaching units, for instance, a cd-rom or set of slides is suggested for use with the unit, but these must be purchased separately. This would make it much harder for a teacher to actually use a lesson. Since all the materials on Westerners in China will be in a database or externally linked, none of the lessons will require integration of non-web materials. Non-web sources will be discouraged and only allowed in a bibliography.
The links listed on Asia for Educators are proof that few sites are currently available for teaching East Asia in the classroom. The only site that includes primary sources on “Westerners in China” is the Internet East Asian History sourcebook.
Another section on Asia for Educators, called the “forum”, attempts to link teachers from around the country and within states. However, from a brief glance at the section, there don’t seem to be many people posting messages. For this reason, Westerners in China will not include a forum. Feedback will be encouraged through the contact section.
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9 Interview with Roberta (“Robin”) Martin, one of the project directors and creators of Asia for Educators, in Education About Asia, Volume 5, Number 3, Winter 2000. When contacted through e-mail, Ms. Martin provided minimal additional information but did say that the project was over twenty years old.