Categories
Uncategorized

Possible Text for Final Project

In conceptualizing my final project based on the Atlantic Slave Trade I am relying this week on sources from Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. I chose Gilder Lehrman because they have free, accessible, wide-ranging resources for teacher of U.S. history, particularly for high school courses. I am also using Gilder Lehrman because they have detailed “information architecture” for primary and secondary sources. I will need to check for guidelines on reuse, but my hope is to mine resources from their organization in order to create consistency in terms of format, metadata, and scholarship.

Here is a sample of some of their full-text scanned and transcribed primary sources: https://www.gilderlehrman.org/featured-primary-sources

I selected this text by Robert Livingston because it presents a different view of slavery and slaveholders who sold and purchased kidnapped African men and women. In addition to having a scanned high resolution for students to transcribe, there is also a full transcript available on the site. This would challenge students to dissect the writing before analyzing the language itself and the text’s meaning in its day versus present-day.

As Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History states, “Livingston’s callous description demonstrates the slave-trade investor’s emphasis on the financial loss, rather than the human cost.” This is highlighted in the following excerpt:

We have thank God had the good fortune of haveing one of our Guinea Sloops come in, tho after along passage of 79 days in which time they buryed 37 Slaves & Since 3 more & 2 more likely to die which is an accident not to be helped, and which if had not happend we Should have made a Golden Voyage but as it is there will not be much left I fear, unless the other Sloop meets with better Luck

Robert Livingston to Petrus Dewitt, July 29, 1749. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC03107.04449)

Additional resource: Myths and Misconceptions on the Slave Trade

Categories
Uncategorized

Possible Media for Final Project

Below find a media examples that relate to one of my final project ideas. My idea is to create a cross-curricular project with AP Language. As a topic I have selected the slave trade. I know this is not the most original topic, but because it is a major part of American history and so often discussed in our cultural discourse, I wanted to create a project that complicated the issue/topic. I want to approach this project with a focus on a change-over-time in terms of the language used to discuss, defend, or protest against the slave trade from 1619 through 1860. I chose these two years because 1619 was the year of the first Africans to arrive in what became the United States (13 original colonies/states), and 1860 was 1) the election of Lincoln but before the start of the war and 2) the year of the last known kidnapped African to be sold in North America after passage across the Atlantic. (His name was Cudjoe Lewis, 1840-1935.)

As for the reasons I chose the following image and video file comes from my desire to mix different types of sources in this broader change-over-time topic. Both of these sources will inspire students to think about the slave trade from multiple perspectives. Also the lecture features a host of primary sources images. These sources combine presented expertise (Philip Morgan) with a primary source for analysis. My goal is to challenge students to think about the issue of slavery and the slave trade and to apply historical empathy as Wineburg described.

Philip Morgan: The African Slave Trade,  1500-1800 from The Gilder Lehrman Institute on Vimeo.

“Decks of a Slave Ship” from The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade, Ancient and Modern, compiled by William O. Blake (Columbus OH: J. & H. Miller, 1861). (The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC00267.038)

Categories
Uncategorized

Using Images and Film

I’d like to frame this blog post based on the questions I answered for my entry titled “Teaching History Today.” In answering these questions again, I will apply the use of images/film to lead students to deeper historical inquiry and discovery.

1. How do I make history relevant to students?

I believe that images and films are vital components of teaching history. Never should they drive the content; however, they can be used to spark intellectual inquiry and to analyze and provide sub-text, text, and context. Images and film can also be used to make history relevant to students in ways that lectures and readings cannot. Aside from the fact that many students are visual learners, images and film can also complement content and inspire critical thinking when compared, contrasted, and discussed. It is for these reasons that I use many images in my courses — and see media as valuable on multiple fronts as primary sources, as case studies, and as part of a more comprehensive presentation of content.

2. How do I make teaching history interdisciplinary?

While I cannot assess my effectiveness as a history teacher who approaches teaching from an interdisciplinary perspective, I can confirm that I strive to teach history this way. At some point in each U.S. history unit the class has a lesson on the era or period’s art, music, science/technology, and primary video clips (when applicable). For example, when I begin teaching Manifest Destiny our first lesson involves analyzing paintings related to the theme including Gast’s American Progress among six others. I use the lesson as a jumping off point for the unit. In terms of film, when studying the Cold War I use video clips of “Duck and Cover,” “Red Menace,” and 1964 campaign ads as part of our content. For our unit on the Civil War I do a lesson called “God is on our side,” and the classes analyzes and listens to several Civil War era songs. We begin with the lyrics and then move to performances of the songs by various artists and groups. Songs include “Bonnie Blue Flag,” and “Lincoln and Liberty” among others. One final example of interdisciplinary teaching is during our study of the Gilded/Progressive Era where students, in groups, each choose a discipline-based theme and create a historic newspaper with articles written by the students that reflect issues relevant to that time period. So in many ways, the use of images and film in my class are what makes my teaching history more interdisciplinary.

3. Why do I teach history, and should the method matter?

I will repeat the first part of my answer from the original post and then apply the use of images/film to the second part of the question.

“The first part is easy. I love it. The most consistent feedback I get on evaluations, going back 15 years, is that I am passionate about what I teach.”

Absolutely the method matters. Perhaps more important — effective and varied methods matter.  It doesn’t matter if you use primary sources if you don’t use them in a way that influences and increases student learning. Dr. Caldor, in his theory of “uncoverage” mentions that in trying to redesign his course he taught one semester with primary sources, hoping that this approach would transform his classes and lead to greater historical thinking. He admits it was a failure, painful, and was in some ways more dry than just lecturing. Varying pedagogical methods and using them effectively lead to student engagement and it is only when students are engaged that deep and critical learning can take place. Films and videos are keys to creating a pedagogical “tool bag” that can enhance such student engagement.

 

Categories
Uncategorized

HIST689 Project Audience

The audience for my final project is students ages 13-18 who take Latin and Ancient History and Geography as well as AP English Language and AP U.S. History. The Latin/History project will focused on 7th graders and 12th graders, and the English Language/U.S. History project will be focused on 11th graders.

In addition, the audience will also include (indirectly) fellow faculty members in the humanities at the Harpeth Hall School who can use this projects and methods as inspiration for future DH work.

Categories
Uncategorized

HIST689 Project Proposal

I am still unable to speak with specificity about my final project because it involves working with other teachers in other disciplines and those meetings are scheduled for next week. However, I do plan to create two projects with a Latin teacher that overlap with history. The first is a project that involves ORBIS and also makes use of several historical primary sources including Diocletian’s Price Edict. This project will be designed with an interdisciplinary focus that includes economics, Latin, and history. The second project involves the use of open-source programs such as Voyant, Knot, and Palladio.

The other group I am working with includes US History teachers (both AP and non-AP), English literature teachers, and AP English language teachers. I also envision designing a project with them that use Voyant, Knot, and Palladio using primary sources that service both disciplines. However, I would also like to create a crowdsourcing project, perhaps using oral interviews uploaded and marked using the University of Kentucky’s OHMS database. The details of this project should emerge more next week.

1. How will digital media and/or digital tools be important to teaching my target audience one of the essential lessons I’ll be focusing on in my project?

All of these projects will involve students as both consumers and producers in terms of digital media and digital tools.

2. What, specifically, about the digital environment will influence what you do and why?

I intend to use the digital environment to give create student-teacher learning whereby there are general outcomes but the mode, manner, and method will be shaped by a process of discovery. I would like to follow both Wineburg and Caldor’s models of empathy and uncoverage. I will also need to make sure that the digital tools used in these projects enhance and enrich the curriculum rather than diminishing or detracting from it.

Categories
Uncategorized

The Heart of History Teaching

1. What elements of historical thinking have remained at the heart of history teaching over the decades?

Critical thinking is a key component of historical thinking that has remained a constant of teaching history (and other social sciences) over the decades. I often find that students who are critical thinkers come away from courses I teach and the course content covered with a new lens through which to see and understand the world and civil society.

The importance and use of primary sources also remains at the heart of teaching history. We rely more on textbooks and secondary sources today more so than a century ago, but history teachers still use primary sources a great deal in their classrooms. This is also connected to critical thinking because it is in breaking down primary sources that one begins to see that history and historical outcomes are fluid not static, murky not clear, complex not simple, and require rumination not memorization. Finally, historical thinking recognize that while history is the record of past events it is relevant to the present.

Ultimately the intangible thing that I can control and use as a history teacher is the title of this entry: heart. I am passionate about my subject, and model that passion for my students.

2. How have history teachers responded to technological change in the 20th and 21st centuries?

In my experience, historians are lifelong learners and most fellow educators with whom I work have worked tirelessly to integrate and adapt to technological change. Many technological changes, in particular informational databases and full-text journal articles and primary sources have made research more accessible for scholars and students alike. Also the capability to show video clips, play audio, and even lecture (with better visual tools) have changed the way that history teachers teach. My teaching career launched in tandem with the new millennium, which coincided with a digital revolution capable of reaching a mass audience (including classrooms). My first year 1999-2000, I relied on overhead projects and clear plastic transparencies of my notes, and students relied on heavy textbooks and workbooks chosen by our district. With the increased democratization of information and the internet I now bounce from a Prezi to a PollEverywhere to a YouTube clip almost seamlessly.  For me, I am a better teacher, with better access to what feels like an infinite number of resources, because of technology.

3. How have external expectations constrained teaching and learning in history, and how might the digital turn disrupt those constraints?

I talked about a specific constraint in one of my answers in Module 3:

“I would note that while many in our profession are already tapping into creative student projects and regularly using open-sourced technology to mine or visualize data or use existing programs to build geo-spatial models or online exhibits — there are still structural curricular limits. For example, I teach AP US history with a standardized test that measures more traditional skills, i.e. primary source analysis, multiple choice, essays, and thesis statements. While I can incorporate some of the projects and assessments into my course that Dr. Kelly mentions, I am still largely bound by the test and my ability to prepare students for it. Until ACTs, SATs, and APs go away (if ever) then many of us will continue to be constrained by a curriculum and assessment we cannot control.”

As for how the digital turn might disrupt such a constraint? That is a question for which I do not have an answer. I know in the high school where I teach, AP courses are on the rise not decline. Further, standardized college entrance tests such as the SAT or ACT continue to fuel spin-off industries like test prep courses and professional tutoring agencies. College institutions will have to take the first step in dismantling this constraint, which affects high schools across the United States.

 

Categories
Uncategorized

Final Project Ideas for HIST689

I have several ideas about the final project for this course but they are a bit “outside the box.” I understand that the goal is to create a student web-based project with learning opportunities and goals for students and stated desired outcomes.

Creating an individual project based on a topic or unit for a class I teach would be fine, but I’ve been recently named coordinator for a Digital Humanities initiative at Harpeth Hall School (my day job in addition to one adjunct class per semester at Belmont). One of my tasks for the summer is to work with two teacher groups to design  projects that incorporate DH methods and online tools. I am working with a 1) Latin teacher and 2) a larger group that includes all junior-level English and history teachers. Aside from my DH goals, I am also a junior-level AP US history teacher giving me a dual role in that group whereby I would be creating a project for a class I teach. Another goal for my DH coordinator summer work is to design a digital infrastructure where these and other projects can be hosted as part of a larger digital portfolio. The goal is to produce something along the lines of the LEADR lab at Michigan State University: http://leadr.msu.edu/projects/.

For this class I would love to work on these two separate but connected projects. I recognize that this would change the typical questions and important historical issues that the HIST689 project is designed to spark, but I am hoping that with Dr. Kelly’s approval I can find a way to approach the project requirements with a little creative license. There are still difficult questions and issues for students to make sense of– just not necessarily and solely tied to history or a course that I teach.  My goal would be more along the lines of Lévesque’s argument to move (or combine) substantive content with procedural content using practices, tools, skills and methods related to DH.

 

Categories
Uncategorized

Teaching History Today

This module forced me to rethink the what, who, how, and why of my own teaching. I have never read any of the authors/historians given for this module (other than a little Wineburg), and I appreciated the holistic approach each provided while simultaneously offering a slightly different view on how best to teach history or rather how best to teach students to study history as a living, fluid, complex discipline. From reading about and reflecting on  “threshold concepts” to “decoding the discipline” to “uncoverage” it is more apparent to me than ever that teaching history has changed little over the past century. In my own research of educational trends during the Progressive Era: elective courses, practical majors (as opposed to purely philosophical or classical majors), extracurricular opportunities, and professors as experts are still core elements of teaching history and other mainstream subject areas. I have argued that a paradigmatic shift is long overdue and we are in the midst of just such a transition. Incidentally, it’s one reason that I joined the DH Certificate Program at GMU.

In teaching a course last fall in the Honors Program at Belmont University, we held an event featuring Dr. Joel Harrington, author of The Faithful Executioner (a book the class read) and department chair for the Vanderbilt’s History Department. Before he began he asked the fifty-five members of the Honors Program in attendance to introduce themselves and share their major. After they finished I had my own epiphany. There was not one history major, no English or Political Science majors, no foreign language majors, no economic majors, not even a single sociology or anthropology major. Instead the majors were all interdisciplinary, skills-based, or broadly categorized. Examples included: global leadership studies, nursing, publishing, music business, and sports science. I realized in this moment that I needed to reinvent my teaching and my discipline if I were to stay relevant (not to mention history as a subject). That includes both what I teach and how I teach. The readings and activities associated with this module only reinforce this conclusion, although there are three questions that will inform the way I actualize and implement my approach to teaching history today:

  1. How do I make history relevant to students?

I think the answer to this question starts with using current events, social media, and role play to generate empathy in an effort to “humanize history.”  I made one attempt to do so using Twitter and allowing students to choose a figure of study from the Early Modern European period (the course’s title and scope). It worked great and culminated in a “Meeting of the Minds” in-class debate where the students channeled their historical figure to debate current issues. It was also a great deal of fun.

2. How do I make teaching history interdisciplinary?

I also strive to do this but have fallen short of a true course redesign. My greatest success is allowing students to complete a capstone project that takes the heart of our topic (in this class “Making the Modern City”) and apply it to Nashville. You can see from the student projects that their topics were wide-ranging and truly interdisciplinary. Their shared capstones were/are part of my own final project for HIST680 with Dr. Robertson.

http://drpethel.com/nashville/exhibits/show/past–present–future–downtow

3. Why do I teach history, and should the method matter?

The first part is easy. I love it. The most consistent feedback I get on evaluations, going back 15 years, is that I am passionate about what I teach. In watching Caldor’s interview I realize that I already employ aspects of “Uncoverage.” But I have much to learn to help students “decode the discipline” and get past “threshold concepts.” I also need to move more toward experiential learning and away from the  text-driven/teacher-driven  model. The method does matter, i.e. digital learning and projects help with the first two questions. But also important, my passion for the subject matters too. Because I love history I need to dissect and reexamine my methods as I continue to teach.

Postscript:

Dr. Kelly’s article “The History Curriculum in 2023” was music to my ears and I agree wholeheartedly with his view of teaching history and of the state of our history curriculum as it stands now. As an addendum to this post I believe his article has pushed me further toward a total course redesign for undergraduate and 9-12 history courses. At the high school where I teach they unveiled and made a substantial financial investment into a maker space that they named “Design Den.” And while it is open to all classes, it is not geared toward history or the humanities. We need history “lab” spaces and we need to better investigate ways to use 3-D printers and the like in our curriculum. As historians we cannot simply remain vessels of knowledge or even master teachers, we must also figure out how to harness new technologies to engage students actively and as participants while not abandoning basic skills of research, writing, and critical thinking. It is and will remain a challenge but one we must accept if we hope to stay relevant in a drastically changing landscape in higher education, and more important, skills that translate into the professional world.

Categories
Uncategorized

HIST689 Introduction

I am looking forward to taking HIST 689 with Dr. Kelly as the final online course for the post-graduate certificate in Digital Humanities through George Mason University.

In the first two courses I gained a real sense of the trends, direction, and scope of Digital Humanities. In addition to technical expertise, the courses also provided meaningful readings and activities. I hope that this class will further add to this new base of knowledge and skill.

Professionally, I juggle several different roles. I am a secondary school educator at the Harpeth Hall School where I also serve as the archivist. I also teach as an adjunct at Belmont University in the Honors program as well as the Global Leadership studies department. Most recently I taught an interdisciplinary class entitled “Making the Modern City.” In the last several years, I have also added author to my list of professional achievements. This fall will bear the fruit of two and a half years of research and work with the release of two books. Athens of the New South: College Life and Making Modern Nashville will be published by University of Tennessee Press and A Heartfelt Mission: A History of the West End Home Foundation published by Orange Frazer Press. Adding my GMU coursework on top of my day job and writing this past year was a challenge but well worth the time and effort. Next year I will add Digital Humanities Coordinator to my list of duties at Harpeth Hall, and I will be continuing the development of my project from Dr. Leon’s class in partnership with the Metropolitan Historical Commission. The project, Nashville Sites, will be modeled on the History of the National Mall project and will initially launch this fall with continued development (and funding, fingers crossed) in 2018.

I look forward to this course, and I hope to find a way to incorporate and tailor my work in HIST694 to further Nashville Sites as well as my work with teachers (as Digital Humanities Coordinator) at Harpeth Hall.

Categories
Uncategorized

Final HIST694 Post

It is time to close out HIST694 with a final blog post about building the prototype for Nashville Sites and doing public history.

Having just put the finishing touches on this version of my course project, I feel comfortable reflecting on the experience as a whole. I think that this course and this project has enabled me to realize the full potential of doing digital history. From developing personas, a social media strategy, and an evaluation plan to building content, metadata, and walking tours–this digital project has been both challenging and rewarding. At times this project felt like a sprint, other times it felt like a marathon. In reality, most projects dealing with large amounts of information (whether a book or a digital prototype) are both.

Perhaps most exciting is the continuation of this project beyond the semester. As I mentioned in my screencast video, this project started with an idea inspired by the Histories of the National Mall.

While I ran into technical problems with using the “mall theme” I continued my course project by creating a prototype using the Berlin Theme in Omeka. I also used Neatline to build two walking tours: Upper Broadway and Lower Broadway. These two tours focus on different historical markers and themes that will appeal to different types of audiences. I also used Exhibit Builder to create a “Up from the Cumberland,” which is a thematic exhibit with four parts: Maps and Geography, Athens of the South, Nashville’s Acropolis, and Broadway. Each of these nested pages links and cross referencing the majority of the items in my collection. Each part of the exhibit was designed to focus on different areas related to Nashville history. Following the order above, I organized these pages to target history, and historical markers, based on several categories: geography and urban growth, secondary and higher education, government, and architecture.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the course, the assignments, and I have learned a great deal. I am more confident in my abilities as a project manager, public historian, and digital humanist. I look forward to next semester and hope that the course is designed in a way that I can continue this work.

css.php