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Response to Wineburg’s “Why Historical Thinking is Not About History”

From an academic perspective, educators have the potential to teach students, who are also consumers of information, to be cautious of the information that is posted on the web and to examine the sources in order to avoid being programmed to just click and accept information on the web. As long as educators are able to practice what they preach, students can learn to be wise consumers of the web. Being skeptical is not necessarily a bad thing because it allows the student and consumers to ask questions and see things differently. According to Wineburg, “What once fell on the shoulders of editors, fact-checkers, and subject matter experts now falls on the shoulders of each and every one of us” (16). The question is “Who will teach them?” Educators should help their students understand the various points of learning to examine and evaluate their sources as a beginning stage of the historical thinking process. Wineburg provides a great suggestion and that is the digital toolbox. He proposes 2 questions for students to think about when examining and evaluating an online source: “Who owns a site? Who links to it?” because “we teach students how to evaluate sources by asking questions about the author and the context, and by asking questions about their supporting evidence” ( Wineburg 16). Instead of just clicking away at the links that appear at the top of a Google search (or other search engines), students should learn to examine the links by asking questions.

Teachers may consider providing a lesson with at least 2 or 3 activities on how to examine search engine results. To begin the lesson, students can learn key terms such as SEO, Search Engine Optimization, and read articles by Nicholas Carr and Sam Wineburg. The teacher might even consider having the students read about Eszter Hargittai’s Northwestern University study on college searches in Google, which is mentioned in Wineburg’s article. The other lesson will include activities on how to examine, evaluate, analyze, and edit Wikipedia entries. Since “the internet has obliterated authority” (Wineburg 14), “search engines should play a role in building ‘digital literacy’ in order to help searchers more effectively find, analyze, and use information. The goal is to encourage searchers to integrate information effectively and efficiently by evaluating the credibility of a source, and using and citing information ethically and legally” (Rieger). Teachers can provide credible and reliable websites with historical evidence to help students begin examining primary sources. It will help students have an idea of what a reliable, historical website with primary sources would look like. The next lesson is to teach students to work with primary sources by asking questions, analyzing them, and learning to appreciate them as part of history. Eventually, the students will learn to create their own history projects for a historical topic that is hidden or partially-hidden on the web. The students will learn to be wise consumers as long as teachers provide the educational platform that allows them to ask questions, investigate questions, and analyze historical evidence.

Fifth Piece of the Puzzle

I would like to include the Executive Order 9066 for my final project. I will propose an assignment or lesson in which the students will conduct a search for the Executive Order 9066 on the web and examine the differences in the search results for the first page. They will evaluate at least 2 or 3 links that they observe to be credible. They will take notes of their observations and write down 1 or 2 questions about the search activity.

Then, I would direct my students to conduct a visualization activity for the Executive Order 9066, by copying it from ourdocuments.org and pasting it into Concordle. I chose Concordle because it is less distracting than Voyant, and it is simple. It will result in a low-key word cloud. The students can observe which words were bigger and smaller in the word cloud. Also, they will view the number of frequencies of the 3 biggest words and 3 smallest words in the word cloud. By having a visualization of the Executive Order 9066, the students can reference it in Concordle while trying to make sense of the Executive Order. They will begin to ask questions about certain words and what is missing or hidden. Also, they will begin to make connections between the Executive Order 9066 and what was happening during that time period in history. These connections will foster their historical thinking by developing historical questions.

Fourth Piece of the Puzzle

For the 4^th Piece of the Puzzle, I would like to design a lesson that includes an image from Densho Digital Repository. In one of the collections, there is an image titled, “Funeral Service for a Nisei Soldier.” The link to this image will be posted in Blackboard with credits to Densho Digital Repository and the designated collection. I will post at least 2 questions for students to think about while they are examining the image. This image might be difficult for some students to make sense of after learning about how many of the Japanese Americans were treated during WWII. Some of the students might think: “Why would a person join the U.S. military after he and his family had to give up their home and be shipped off to an internment camp?” Also, they will see the contradictions in the image in relation to the social injustice of Executive Order 9066 and the Loyalty Questionnaire. They will begin to develop questions that they want answers for. They begin to think what else in history needs to be uncovered in the 21^st century.

A Plan to Use Image and/or Film for Teaching History

For a face-to-face class, I plan to use a historical film such as Alan Parker’s Come See the Paradise (1990), so I can teach students about key historical moments presented in the film. Prior to viewing the film, I would post 2 questions prior to class discussion that the students will begin to think about while they view the film. After viewing the film, the students will begin to discuss at least 2 prominent issues and themes depicted in the historical moments in the film. After the discussion activity, I would point out at least 2 historical moments key moments in the film. Then, I would direct them to Densho Digital Repository to view at least 2 images from the collections that might be connected to each historical moment and examine them together as a class. Then, the students will be asked to come up with 3 or 4 more historical moments in the film. They will conduct research for each key historical moment by working in groups of 3 or 4 students. Also, they will analyze contradictions and look for what is missing in the selected historical moment of the film. Eventually, they should come up with their own questions when making connections between the film and the research (e.g. primary and secondary sources).

For an online class, I would post some images of Japanese American families before and after WWII. I would add a link to certain images from the Densho Digital Repository in Blackboard. I would post at least 2 questions for them to think about for the posted images that depicts at least 1 or more themes. Students will examine the 2 images and develop questions about them. As a class, we would come up with a list of at least 2-3 major themes. I would teach them how to access and use two media resources. Then, I would ask the students to research Densho or Hirasaki National Resource Center’s online collections to find at least 2 images that depict one or more of the themes. The students will work in groups of 3-4 to further examine and analyze the selected images. They will describe the 2 images with objective and subjective descriptions. Then, they will examine the visual components of the images and look for arguments. Their examination will lead to an analysis of the photographer’s ethos. They will begin to connect the images to the historical event by developing their own questions during the analysis.

Third Piece of the Puzzle

The audience for my final project would be college students who are enrolled in Asian American Literature. Most of my students are Texas residents, and they rarely have exposure to Asian American literature at a two-year college; and a few universities offer the course. I chose them as my audience because they are assigned to read John Okada’s No-No Boy, 1 of 5 novels for the course. To help them learn about the treatment of many Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, I would like to create a lesson for the 2 or 2.5 weeks they spend with the novel and historical evidence. In the past, when my students were assigned to read Okada’s novel and research history during that time period, they were shocked to find out such information was withheld from them until college. Some students explained to me that most history classes in middle and high schools spend little or no time on the topic of the treatment of Japanese Americans during WWII. Some were shocked to find out that families were forced to leave their houses and businesses, not knowing that they will be able to return to them. To add to their shock or discomfort, they didn’t understand how the U.S. government forced able bodied Japanese American men to separate from their families even after they were removed from their homes and serve in the war. But, the part that they couldn’t understand are the loyalty questions because it was confusing and contradicting, and the questions divided Japanese American families, friends, and communities. Due to this part of discomfort and contradiction, I wanted to include a lesson to help my students grapple with the historical evidence and how literature helps them see something that is still hidden or partially hidden in American history.

By incorporating a lesson that helps students examine and analyze historical evidence in connection to the novel, I am also learning to teach digital history with digital resources. The 21^st century student is usually inundated with media and advancing technology, while some students are disenfranchised. Despite the differences, most educators take the leap forward and try to their best to provide a learning environment that adapts to the advancing technology and access to various media. In order to proceed, educators are constantly learning new methods and techniques to engage their students. The 21^st century student faces different challenges than the past students, but it’s up to educators to foster a learning environment (e.g. face-to-face, online, or hybrid) that helps the student to think historically and critically in a world of endless information that can be accessed with a few key strokes or just speaking into a mobile device and asking Siri.

Second Piece of the Puzzle

According to McClymer, “We can think of the web as the untextbook,” and the abundance of digital resources allows educators to teach history because “the web enables students to become more active learners.” I would like for my students to understand the importance of filial piety and family values for Japanese Americans living in the U.S. and how WWII and the Executive Order 9066 played a key role in testing those values. First, I will ask my students to do a closed textual reading and analysis of the loyalty questions mentioned in John Okada’s No-No Boy. They will access Densho Encylopedia online because it includes information about the loyalty questionnaire that many Japanese American men were required to answer in 1943. This information plays a key role in helping the students understand the main character’s struggle as a young college student who had to choose between his family or the country he was born in. They will write a reflection that includes questions about the loyalty questionnaire and how it might affect the family.

Then, I will provide at least 2 or 3 primary sources such as photos of Japanese American families before and during WWII for the students to examine. They will be asked to find at least 1 primary source from 2 websites: Densho and the Hirasaki National Resource Center. I will invite my students to visit the Densho website to view photo collections of Japanese American families during WWII. The Densho Digital Repository holds extensive collections of digitized primary sources. They will be assigned to select an image from one of the photo collections of a Japanese American family for analysis and class discussion. Then, the students will select a film from the home-movie collection from the Hirasaki National Resource Center, which is part of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. There are several film collections that feature home-movie footage of Japanese Americans from 1920s to 1960s. My students will select at least 1 home-movie of a Japanese American family before or during the war. The students should be able to make a connection with the selected photo and home-movie and the stories of the families in the novel during an almost forgotten or hidden part of American history. The next lesson plan will include a synthesis of their findings.

I would like to encourage my students to ask questions and dig deeper into the social injustice and how what happened in the past still haunts many Asian Americans who are aware of it. For their final project, their findings and research along with questions can be mashed into a video, or they can create a digital map of family’s journey from home to a camp/camps and to the new home after camp along with some images from the family’s photo collection online.

The digital environment influences the way I teach and learn. I can teach the same objectives for my courses while I change the way I teach my students to think about history. Even though I teach composition and literature, I also place emphasis on history because it is the story of the people. There is so much information that needs to be “uncovered” to show students that history is not just about the past. Learning history goes beyond learning dates, places, people, and events because there are so many stories to discover and uncover. As problem solvers, teachers can learn to foster a learning environment that encourages students to think, to question, to discover, to solve problems, and to learn new ways of approaching history. Educators like me can learn so much from the digital environment. There is an abundance of digital resources that help me to conduct research and compose lesson plans. Also, learning about digital humanities and teaching history in the digital age in the GMU graduate certificate program has encouraged me to view teaching with digital tools and digital media from a progressive perspective. It has reinforced my longtime desire to teach my students the importance of learning with technology to be prepared in a globally competitive world.

Response to Readings

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

The technological changes in the 20^th and 21^st centuries have encouraged history teachers to think differently about teaching history. To remedy the traditional method of teaching students to memorize content or factual information such as dates, people, places, and events, history teachers have responded with different ideas and approaches to teaching history in engaging and interesting ways. Most of the history teachers agree that the textbook should not be the only resource for teaching history. In early 21^st century, Wineburg responded by informing history teachers to be aware of the “large-scale testing that was introduced to American classrooms in the 1930s” that “ran counter to teachers’ notions of what constituted average, below average, and exemplary performance” (“Crazy for History” 4). The students were generating answers that were taught to them from a textbook that probably eliminated “metadiscourse” and citations of primary sources (Wineburg 493). In late 20^th century, Wineburg argued that people need to stretch their understanding of the past because they have a tendency to “contort the past to fit the predetermined meaning we have already assigned to it” (“Historical Thinking and Other Natural Acts” 490). By encouraging students to look beyond their own experience or what they already know is challenging, but it will lead them to discovering something different about the historical evidence. Levesque responded by proposing an approach to finding a bridge between content/substantive and procedural knowledge. In Thinking Historically, Levesque argues that “the narrative should not be considered the only possible or affordable tool to present their interpretations” (137). His approach is quite structured and logical, but it makes sense as a teaching method.

Calder and Kelly responded to teaching history by incorporating procedural knowledge. They embrace the concept that teachers are able to foster historical thinking by engaging the students. Calder’s teaching method of uncovering history encourages his students to engage with both types of sources and to come up with historical questions in a collaborative, learning environment. Calder encourages his students to view a documentary film, examine primary documents, ask questions, write about their questions as an essay assignment, and collaborate with fellow classmates to share and inquire about their findings. Calder’s approach is based on routines because “routines are essential for learning,” and they “provide students with necessary scaffolding of instructional and social support as they struggle to learn the unnatural act of historical thinking” (1369). Kelly and McClymer argue the importance of digital media and technology for teaching history. McClymer’s contends that the scarcity to abundance of sources allows “students to engage with new sources” and “enables students to become more active learners” while learning history. In “The History Curriculum in 2023,” Kelly makes an excellent argument for his response to approaching history in the 21^st century: “If we want to be true to ourselves as educators and true to our students’ needs and expectations, we need to admit that the skills we have been teaching them since the late 1890s are no longer sufficient preparation for the world those students will live in once they graduate” (Kelly). Kelly provides 4 different skills (making, mining, marking, and mashing) to engage students and foster historical thinking. In each skill, Kelly mentions the importance of collaboration with other disciplines interiisuch as art, computer science, library science, graphics design, etc. Also, Kelly takes it to another level by emphasizing the possible results for students to compete in a globally competitive world if they learn to work with technology and/or hone their skills with learning how to code and to utilize different digital tools.

Then, there are historians who argue that a certain organization might be able to lead the way for history teachers and revise the curriculum of teaching history. Historians Orrill and Shapiro argue that the AHA should organize a committee or center, so “the AHA can again lead the profession in a quest for a unified educational vision” (751). With or without a unified educational vision led by AHA, history teachers have taken control by devising new approaches and methods to teaching history in the digital age.

First Piece of the Puzzle

For my final project, my initial ideas include several questions that focus on teaching about the incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans during WWII and how the historical evidence provides an insight into what happened before the war ended. One of the novels that they are assigned to read is John Okada’s No-No Boy. Okada’s novel focuses on more about what happens to Japanese Americans after WWII, but he does begin the novel referencing what had happened to many Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The following questions might help my students to begin thinking about the historical issues surrounding an unforgotten and partially hidden period in American history:

What have American history courses revealed about the treatment of Japanese Americans during WWII? Why study this part of American history? Are you able to make the connections between the primary and secondary sources? What inquires or historical questions can be derived from viewing, examining, and analyzing the historical evidence? What arguments can be constructed by viewing the primary and secondary sources? Based on your research and reading, what do you think is missing or hidden?

The above questions are challenging for students to make sense of because they were taught from an omniscient narrative that did not include any humanistic approach to learning about the selected historical content. It is a topic that most students have had little exposure to because it is another ugly part of American history. Also, students may have had no exposure to this part of American history, which makes me very sad because I was one of those students. During my freshmen year in high school, my Honors History teacher scanned over a small paragraph in a textbook about the internment camps during WWII and told us that it was not important and it was not on the exam. Fast forward many years later, I have been delving into the unimportant historical content to learn more about it; and I began to “uncover” more interesting sources to investigate and analyze. The historical issues pertaining to the treatment of Japanese Americans during WWII make my students feel at unease about what happened, and some of them hesitate at first to learn more about it because it places them in an uncomfortable position. At this point, some of the students begin to ask more developed questions and have a sympathetic or empathic understanding. As a result, they either have to choose “to learn about the rhinoceroses or to learn about unicorns” (Wineburg 498).

(Postscript for Responding to “The History Curriculum in 2013”)

The ideas expressed in Dr. Kelly’s “The History Curriculum in 2013” present a different approach to teaching history. Instead of focusing only on historical content knowledge, he provides 4 different concepts/skills (making, mining, marking, and mashing) with the use of technology to help educators teach history in a new and interesting way. He provides examples for each concept and how each concept can be incorporated into the history curriculum. Kelly knows the importance of digital resources and how they can be used to teach history in a different way. Echoing the move to teach history with a different approach such as Wineburg, Levesque, Calder, and McClymer, Kelly’s ideas are another approach to teaching history and fostering historical thinking. However, Kelly goes a step further with his approach to teaching history by emphasizing that undergraduate students will be better equipped for graduate programs, employment, and research opportunities because they have gained additional skills while studying history.

Thinking: Questions for Teaching History in Asian American Literature Course

Teaching history in a literature course is challenging because students are already required to read and analyze a literary texts such as novels, short stories, and poems. At the same time, they are encouraged to make connections to selective information in the novel by conducting research to further understand the political, social, and cultural aspects that are mentioned in the novels. By doing the research and cross-referencing the sources, they are also learning history. In my Asian American Literature course, students are asked to view primary sources and secondary sources to make personal and academic connections to the novel. Here are my questions for teaching history in an Asian American Literature course that focuses on a section about Japanese Americans during WWII:

Q 1: Are my students capable of asking questions to inquire about the historical evidence?

A 1: They are capable of asking questions that allow them to conduct research to help them understand the historical evidence. The historical evidence is usually new for them, and they begin to engage with it by asking various questions.

Q 2: Will they be able to recognize the connections between the various sources in order to reconcile the two contradictory positions between what they already know and what they need to put aside to begin historical thinking?

A 2: They should be able to make connections between the novel, primary sources, and secondary sources and realize that what they have been taught about the historical content is not enough; and they will begin to ask questions to begin their own construction of the historical knowledge. They will begin to see what was hidden or partially hidden from them as students when they were learning about the treatment of Japanese Americans during and after WWII in high school and/or college history courses.

Q 3: Will providing digital forms of the primary sources or digital resources for my students hinder their ability to investigate them to foster their historical thinking?

A 3: The digital sources will not hinder them from investigating them. It will provide another way for students to view and analyze primary and secondary sources that can be out of reach or inaccessible if they were only available in print and/or in a physical museum. Also, it will adhere to the different ways of learning or learning styles.

Introduction for HIST 689

This is my third semester in the Digital Public Humanities Graduate Certificate Program. I plan to learn more about Digital Humanities from each course. I enjoy learning new methodologies and digital tools for engaging different audiences. While completing my coursework, I teach full-time for a two-year college. I teach First-Year Composition and American Literature courses. I hold a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology, a Master’s Degree in English, and a Ph.D. in Rhetoric. I have not taught a full history course in a classroom; however, I do incorporate history into my First-Year Composition and American Literature courses because their reading assignments are centered on historical events, people, and places.

In addition to teaching, I am also responsible for coordinating events and workshops for Asian American and Middle Eastern American heritage programs. One of my ongoing research interests is folklore and how it helps us to understand the past and present. In studying and researching various aspects of folklore, I have learned the importance of preserving history and cultural heritage for American minority groups that tend to be forgotten or rarely shared with the rest of the American public. Although I do not have a strong academic background in history and/or library sciences, I would like to continue developing my skills as a digital humanities historian in order to research historical and cultural information about minority groups that needs to be shared with the audience in a digital space.

For HIST 689, I hope to learn something new and apply it to what I have already learned in the previous two courses by understanding how to teach history in my classes by using certain digital tools and learning how to be a better digital humanities historian. I hope to learn new theories about technology and teaching history and teaching methods on using digital tools/technology when presenting historical information online to a broader audience. Also, I would like to learn digital tools and teaching methods on how to teach my students to think like historians when it comes to conducting research for certain writing and multimodal projects.

For HIST 680, I created a project on Asian American History and Culture in the South. For HIST 694, I created a project on Koreatowns in North Texas. I used Omeka for both projects. Also, I collected majority of the sources for the both projects. In HIST 680, I learned to add items, create collections and exhibits, and add metadata. In HIST694, I learned more about persona and how it affects my perspective of audience engagement for future collaboration. I also learned to incorporate Oral History into my project. Evaluation is something on a working on for further development of my project site.

For both of my projects, conducting historical research with primary sources was an interesting challenge because I had difficulty finding available primary sources that pertain to my selected topics. However, creating and gathering the primary sources led me to a new path of understanding historical research because I had minimal knowledge or experience with historical research, especially pertaining to public history. Adding the metadata, narrative, and short descriptions challenged me to reconsider my broad audience in a very positive way. Working on my projects and learning new theories and methods have helped me to see how the graduate certificate program teaches us to apply historical thinking as an approach to learning and teaching history with technology. Historical thinking includes thinking about the actual primary and secondary sources in different layers of critical thinking, analysis, and evaluation. Furthermore, historical thinking involves more than the historian; instead, it includes a community of thinkers to “think” about the historical information by investigating new approaches and ideas in order to understand certain aspects of humanity and how history invites them to question things or issues. The graduate certificate program teaches the graduate students to understand the importance of becoming a digital humanities historian in order to help the audience think about history from different approaches in a time of advancing technology.