Comments on: Teaching Digital History

By: Liste non exhaustive des thématiques abordées lors des THATCamp | ThatCamp Paris 2010

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:07:53 +0000

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By: Matthew MacArthur

Matthew MacArthur — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:33:12 +0000

I will be teaching a new online course and would be interested in this topic.

By: Paula Petrik

Paula Petrik — Wed, 21 May 2008 19:44:03 +0000

(At last a working password.) I’d like to join up with those who are teaching a digital humanities or digital history course. I teach the tech half of the PhD digital history sequence here at GMU.

By: margie

margie — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:40:21 +0000

Correction — I should have written at the urging of the WSU Center for Teaching and Learning staff–they gave a lot of support to this course.

By: margie

margie — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:16:53 +0000

I would like to see something like this as well.

I have taught a course in history and new media a few times but not in recent years. The last time, we focused on the early 20th century in Dayton and they presented proposals for designing an online exhibit. In the history and new media course, students learned basic html and then worked with Dreamweaver to build Web sites and with various applications to produce digital storytelling projects; the last time I taught, I had just – at the urging of our Center for History and New Media staff – begun to think about games. I found there was a need for more than one course — one to focus on using and assessing the history resources on the Web and tools like Zotero for undergraduates, another for producing digital history, and a third for the implications and new directions in regards to public history. However, ocusing on a specific historical exploration and working with a partner like Monticello, seems like it lets students learn about these areas in a selective, motivated way.

I’ve been working on redesigning history courses to give students more choices, promote more active learning opportunities, and to introduce students to more digital resources and tools. While I’ve done this a great deal in the past, I feel like the landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. I want to learn more about making effective use of these resources particularly in introductory courses serving social studies education students.

Is there such a thing as an “uncourse”?

– Margie

By: Bill Ferster

Bill Ferster — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:21:58 +0000

Last year, Scot French and I taught a similar course at UVA, called Jefferson’s Travels (www.JeffersonsTravels.org). We did this with Monticello, and chose a 6-week trip Jefferson took in 1786 to England to study.

We had a dozen fourth-year history majors research the journey and create visualizations using primary source documents and a tool we’re developing at VCDH called the HistoryBrowser. You can see the work they did here: www.JeffersonsTravels.org/broswser.php?base=jt and a link to the syllabus here: www.vcdh.virginia.edu/courses/fall07/hius401-f.

We’re doing the course again this fall, focusing on Poplar Forest, and the time he spent in Bordeaux around the same time as the English trip.

I’d be interested in connecting with you and anyone else interested in student-generated digital history work. I think there is great potential in this kind of course, as it offers student a chance to engage in authentic digital scholarship.

Perhaps an “unpanel?”

-Bill