Teaching and Research in the New Media: Practice

The third session of the “Intersection between Teaching and Research in the New Media” Pre-Meeting Workshop on January 3, 2008 at the American Historical Association annual meeting in Washington, DC focused on “practice”. This post follows a previous one on “theory” and again will be a lengthy description of the highlights with references and links wherever possible, and discussions of the Digital History Reader, World History Matters, Digital History, and Historical Thinking Matters.

The session opened with Tom Ewing of Virginia Tech comparing results from Google and ProQuest on “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” to point out significant differences that students and scholars will discover (try it yourself to see). He then went on to discuss his experiences with three major projects. The first was the Digital History Reader to support instruction in the undergraduate survey and involved nine faculty members for five years. Although he liked the structure, he felt the major weaknesses were that it wasn’t distinctive from what was already available elsewhere and the intended audience wasn’t sufficiently defined (it turned out it was mostly used primarily by high school students rather than ones in college as planned). His second project was a contributor for George Mason University’s World History Matters, which he found much more enjoyable since as a scholar, he could focus on a topic, provide primary sources, and an analysis–there was no need for him to consider design, coding, or navigation. The final project is Virginia Schools in the Great Depression (under development), which brings together research, new media, and teaching and provides two different parts: educational modules with lesson plans (linked to the standards of learning for history, civics, and economics) and a searchable archive that could be browsed by category, year, topic, and county. Both parts were based on the same domain name to avoid firewall issues at schools. His closing recommendations that we develop projects that collaborate across disciplines, fields, and grades K-16; the we make primary sources available in ways that are classroom friendly and relevant to students; and that we use new media to teach history.

Steven Mintz of the University of Houston (soon to be at Columbia University) reminded the audience of Roy Rosensweig’s utopian vision of a “digital democracy” which would empower students and teachers and would be available free, not the “gated communities” and subscription only services that seem to be so prevalent. Mintz discussed the characteristics of 21st century learners, which includes being multitaskers, prefering visual modes of communication, needing instant gratification and constant stimulation, and placing a high value on interactivity. He called for a “new history for a new century”, one that would emphasize active, inquiry-based learning and the constructivistic approach. As a model he presented his Web site Digital History which allows students to explore history in sixteen different ways (e.g., advertising, architecture, art, food, maps, names). The next version (available soon) will provide an on-line history portfolio for students which can be shared with others. He showed two documentaries (My Lai Massacre and Sam Houston Park) made with Photo Story 3, a free program from Microsoft, to demonstrate that students are capable of high quality media productions using still images.

Kelly Schrum at George Mason University laid out a brief history of history education and how it has been influenced by research on student learning (Knowing, Teaching and Learning History; Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts; Doing History; and How Students Learn) ; Teaching American History program (800 grants have resulted in a body of knowledge on the practice of teaching history); and on-line content (billions of primary sources on-line). She then described three model projects, starting with World History Matters, using the “Women in World History” section to demonstrate the guides to sources, activities to analyze sources (well done!), and incorporation of various perspectives. The second project is Historical Thinking Matters, which is based on the research of Sam Weinberg at Stanford University. This web site not only lays out arguments for the value of history but also shows you how to “do history”. Activities guide students through the process of historical inquiry, videos show historians analyzing documents, and teachers discuss how various methods can be used in the classroom (despite some typos and need for sound editing, it’s among the best I’ve seen). Finally, Schrum mentioned that George Mason University’s Center for History and the New Media will be launching the National History Education Clearinghouse in February 2008 and will feature history web resources, a searchable database of state standards, local historical places and museums, best practices, professional development opportunities, and a forum for participants in Teaching American History.

The discussion that followed included the questionable accuracy and authority of on-line materials and the challenge of updating information and providing sources; the criteria for evaluating student projects (time and effort, scholarship, creativity; Mintz suggested that projects be developed in phases and each phase graded separately); Fair Use and copyright, which resulted in a lengthy discussion (prepare to substitute, okay to use materials over 75 years old but wider range of materials is available less than 75 years, exemptions and threats for using music and film, difficulty of obtaining permissions, costs, obstacles to posting student work on the Internet); hesitancy of school districts to post student work (privacy protection of students, potential copyright violations, parent and school reputation, hosting on school servers affects bandwidth); whether to use HREF link or copy content and if you need to ask permission; tremendous duplication of efforts among universities and unwillingness of scholars to collaborate; importance of good design to attract younger audiences; whether the new media endangers good writing or expands the various ways to interpret history; and that the history profession is still very traditional (ironically, AHA first published historians and the new media as a booklet before placing it online).