Local is history is a powerful entry point for students to learn dispositions, skills and content in the discipline of history. Students and teachers at all levels can work on local history projects by using personal and authentic resources that are often just at arms length away. These resources might be in box in your closet, in the files of a local business, or in storage at your local library. No matter where they are located, teachers and students can use local historical resources to make connections between their immediate surroundings and the larger or more generalized stories of the past that are in standards and curriculum objectives. For example, 11th grade United States history in North Carolina includes an objective under Competency Goal 11 (Recovery, Prosperity, and Turmoil, 1945-1980) which says that students should “identify major social movements including, but not limited to, those involving women, young people, and the environment, and evaluate the impact of these movements on the United States' society.” Local resources that depict, describe, or explain how women moved into the labor force during World War II and then moved back out of the labor force afterward can be used to address this objective. Teachers can use these local stories as a springboard to national topics or as examples that help explain larger stories.
Online technology tools can facilitate work with historical resources. Internet resources can make it easier to communication and collaboration. Digital imaging can make physical artifacts like a letter or a photograph available to a wider audience. And, the Web is an excellent platform for sharing the results of historical inquires. This project will focus on using these and other technologies in a 1:1 computing environment to develop online local historical resources. The work for this project can be considered in three parts.
The initial area of work is focused on historiography, which includes what we know about the past, why we want to know about the past, and how we will go about learning something new about the past. Our historiographical work will allow us to locate local historical resources that we think are of value and then think about how and why we should use these to learn about the past.
Next we will work to make the resources that we do find available to a wider audience. This work will involve using technology to digitize the historical resources we have located and then make these resources available online.
The third area of work involves constructing historical interpretations about the past and sharing these interpretations with each other and people outside this project. In some way our work returns to historiography, thus bringing us full circle.
Historiography
Our work on this project should begin as all intellectual work should begin, with questions. Questions are at the root of inquiry in history and the best questions are ones that are not only interesting but also genuine and personal. Once an interesting question has been posed, students and teachers can begin their historiographical work. The idea of historiography may be understood best as a process. It involves at least the following,
1. What do we know about an historical topic?
2. Why do we want to know more about this historical topic?
3. How can we know about the past?
The first two questions are closely related and involve students and teachers understanding what others have said and written about the past. Historiography encompassing all the various stories and interpretations offered by people who have studied the past and who have offered their views. Historiography includes important information that goes beyond summarized accounts of past events. It includes all the twists and turns encountered in the making of a story. We might want to think about historiography as the history of history. In other words, we need to know not just want others think about the past, but how these individual stories differ and how our understanding of the past has changed over time.
Take for example our understanding of the causes of the American Civil War. Historical accounts of why the United States descended into war have changed dramatically over time. Historians and others have espoused many causes for the Civil War from political to social to economic. Earlier on historians resisted the idea that slavery caused the Civil War and played up an argument that the war was a product of differences between southerners and northerners on social issues (e.g. an agrarian ideal), economic issues (e.g. tariffs), and/or politics (e.g. state’s rights). Other historians argued that the Civil War was inevitable or unavoidable. More recently, historians have begun to more seriously and consistently consider slavery and the fight over continuing and even extending slavery into new U. S. territories as the prime cause of the Civil War. This story of how we have understood the history of the Civil War is an important part of the big picture of the history of the Civil War.
Another very important consideration regarding historiography is the means by which we develop historical knowledge. There are formal structures for conducting historical inquiry and there are informal means and avenues for developing knowledge about the past. We will be working with more formal methods, while also recognizing that we are always constructing informal knowledge about the past and these procedures must be taken into account when thinking about how we come to understand the past.
Our formal approach to learning about the past is a research-based heuristic called SCIM-C. The SCIM-C method involves students systematically interrogating historical resources as they seek to construct an historical interpretation given a focused area of interest. To begin the process, students need the following,
1. An historical question, area of interest, or focus
2. Authentic historical resources (e.g. letters, records, photos)
3. A desire or reason to write about or otherwise construct an historical interpretation
The SCIM-C methods involves five overlapping processes including,
• Summarizing
• Contextualizing
• Inferring
• Monitoring
• Corroborating
By attending to each of these processes, students will likely construct more rigorous and meaningful historical interpretations. More information about the SCIM-C method is available online at www.historicalinquiry.com.
Digitization
The process of digitizing historical resources, of course, implies that we have something to digitize. Decisions about what historical resources you would like to digitize and how much to digitize should be driven in part by the interest of students and teachers and the historiography of the subject. However, convenience will sometimes dictate what resources are available to digitize. Some may argue that historical resources are of little use unless a question is driving the consideration of these resources. By extension, a project to digitize historical resources and conduct related inquiries might be thought of as disingenuous if the only reason for the work is because the resources are available. But, the reality is that many of the local historical resources we come across are know to us because they are convenient. In order to make best use of the historical resources around us, we need to understand the delicate relationship between historical interests, historical questions, and access to historical resources. For example, let’s say you unexpectedly come across a collection of historical documents, maybe a box of letters or photos that you or someone you know has in their house. These letters may deal with a topic that is not of immediate interest to you, but you become intrigued anyway. This makes sense given that personal interests often emerge through experiences. The experience of finding the letters and the personal connection to the content (maybe they were written by someone you know or deals with a place you are familiar with) could very well draw you into an inquiry.
Local resources (personal collections, documents, physical artifacts, interviews, records, miscellanea) are often resources of convenience as are related historical inquiries. Such inquiry by convenience is in some ways contrary to the question-driven process of historical inquiry. In our work, we will walk a line that zigzags its way through convenience and question-driven inquiry. If we find resources that are convenient, we may decide to use them and look for interesting questions. We might also deliberately look for resources given a particular question or given some curricular need.
Once historical resources have been located, our next task is to make them available to others. This process can actually take two forms. We might find resources that are in print form. We will need to digitize these resources using selected technologies (more on this later). Another possibility is that we might find some resource that is already in digital form (see the multitudes of resources already online at NC ECHO http://www.ncecho.org). When historical resources we are interested in using are already online, students can use the resources to conduct an historical investigation and then highlighting the resources when reporting the results of their inquiries.
To digitize historical resources that are in print form we can use several approaches.
1. Scanning is the traditional approach for digitizing historical resources. The process involves scanning resources as high-resolution images and then making lower resolution images that can be displayed for browsing purposes. This approach is widely used, but time intensive.
2. Photographing materials is a newer method that is quicker and more mobile than scanning. You can take you digital camera with you to the place where historical resources are located (even most archives) and take pictures right on the spot, then upload the images into any imaginable collection format.
3. A third approach involves the use of video. As with photographs, the video recording historical resources is easy and can be done in almost any location. Unlike photographs, video adds extra dimensions that can come from simply moving the camera to pan across the resource or adding voice over the video.
Interpretation
The ultimate goal of this project is for students to learn about the past. Evidence of their understanding can take form through historical interpretations. Historical interpretations are traditionally completed in written form, but new technologies enable a wide array of possibilities for constructing historical stories. Before we look at some of these technologies and alternative approaches to writing, let’s consider what an historical interpretation actually is.
An historical interpretation is a version of a story about the past. We construct historical interpretations, in a formal sense, using evidence and should always avoid making claims about the past without some evidence to support our claims. The use of evidence should emerge from a deliberate effort to infer from historical resources (see the SCIM-C process), but evidence of claims alone will not make a good historical interpretation. All accounts of the past need some form that helps readers understand the arguments and ideas being put forth. Storytelling is probably the best form. With their beginning, middle, and end, stories mimic the structure of life. Just as a story moves from event to event, we live our lives in motion with events cascading ahead connected in story-like structure. Sometimes we are not even aware of the stories that unfold around us. Historians help us make sense of these events by using the structure of human life to tell their stories.
The following are guidelines for using stories as the structure of an historical interpretations.
1. Clearly state a question or area of interest being investigated
2. Include a review or description of what others have said about this historical topic (historiography)
3. Structure the story with a beginning, middle, and end
4. Provide some element of suspense or even drama in unfolding the story – give the reader something to look forward to
5. Make use of evidence from historical resources to support whatever claims you are making
6. Clearly state a position on your question and differentiate your position from others who have also studied this topic
Student’s historical interpretations can take many forms. As mentioned earlier the most traditional form is a written paper. However, there are numerous resources available for producing creative interpretations. Three of the most exciting creative options are video, multigenre work, and multimedia.
As video production software has become more accessible, video narratives have emerged as a form for historical interpretations. Most computers include video production software (or it can be freely downloaded) – Movie Maker for PCs and iMovie for Macs. More complex resources are available (e.g. Final Cut), but the simple-to-use tools such as Movie Maker can allow students to create video using all sorts of media. Beyond video software applications, web-based resources such as Voice Thread and JumpCut allow students to create videos on the Web by uploading media and recording sound using a built-in computer microphone.
Multi-genre historical narratives make use of various literary forms for communicate ideas or in our case an historical interpretation. A multi-genre historical narrative might include text, images, drawings, poetry, music, illustrations, displays, graphs, and more. Multi-genre work is often more focused on creativity than academic content, but the form is malleable enough to meet the needs of historical interpretation.
Multimedia historical interpretations can include the best of all the options we have discussed for constructing historical inquires. Multimedia can include any form of media that will best communicate the story emerging from an historical inquiry. What is particular useful about multimedia approaches are that the can be effectively published and shared on the Web.
The following technology tools can be used to support the development of historical interpretations.
• Movie Maker
• iMovie
• Photo Story
• VoiceThread.com
• Flickr.com
• PrimaryAccess.org
• Fizz reel
• Ourmedia.org
• Google Earth
0 comments:
Post a Comment