Response – Online Portfolio

Response to “National Parks and New Audiences”

Coslett and Chalana incorporate interesting ideas that reflect ways of teaching historical thinking to the general public. After providing a historical background of two historic sites: WM-NHS and SJI-NHP, they point out the elements that best represents them. At the same, they also point out the elements for improvement in order to increase their presence for more visitations and reaching out to a broader audience. They express the need for uncovering the complexities of history by arguing that the NPS should continue to be progressive with improving their parks because “the agency recognizes the need to expand its interpretive approaches to incorporate different cultural groups” (104) and “without straying too far from the founding mandates” (103). For WM-NHS and SJI-NHP, the authors argue that the physical and online presence need to be improved in order to uncover some parts of history that need to be acknowledged while adhering to the mandates. Besides the permanent exhibit (physical site) that is divided into sections that present information about the Whitmans and Cayuse, some of the language and outdoor signage need improvement at WM-NHS. For SJI-NHP, Coslett and Chalana advise themes beyond the “Pig War” that should be explored and continue to be uncovered such as the Native people and women’s experience. They also mentioned that both parks used film to engage the audience. Even though Coslett and Chalana point out the steady progress of the parks, they argue that the parks “fall short of directly engaging the park’s more complex and controversial human histories, particularly with regard to the perennially marginalized contributions and experiences of Native peoples” (122). Their argument echoes what most of our readings in this course have mentioned. Uncovering the complexities of history is an ongoing process that includes changes in language, historical studies, humanities, technology, and people. Asking questions about sources is unavoidable even in physical spaces such as the historic sites. Being skeptical about the presented information invites the questions from the audience in order to face the challenges that sometimes changes need to be made in order to uncover the complexities of history.

Fortunately, NPS has begun to make such improvements in the 21^st century by collaborating with people with different experience such as working the design students for “Parks for People.” Another way NPS engaged with the public was “Find Your Park” that uses social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram to bring attention the parks and reach out to a diverse audience. Coslett and Chalana refer to “dark parks” that make visitors think and learn about unpleasant things about the past such as internment camp sites, isolated leprosy community, etc. “These NPS units offer contemplative places for consideration of the less savory aspects of our nation’s struggles with violence and oppression,” and “parks like these may inspire tolerance by revealing and exploring prejudice while contributing to important communal healing processes” (124-125). The uncovering or discovery of complexities of history is part of that learning and healing process.

I would advise the NPS to continue reaching out to a diverse audience for collaborative opportunities. They might meet some innovative individuals who will bring fresh perspectives to the current historic site. Also, I would advise the NPS to work with more individuals from diverse backgrounds to help improve their online presence. I checked out the webpages for WH-NHS and SJI-NHP, and I noticed some elements that could help improve their online presence and traffic. For the WH-NHS, the images in the Photo Gallery section need metadata. Also, it would be nice to zoom in and out of each image. The Education page needs great improvement. I think if the right digital tools and more teaching resources were implemented, then it would be a great way for teachers to refer to this page. Possible voice recordings of some of the transcriptions would be nice for visitors who are visually impaired. SJI-NHP needs some updates on their web page. The last update was in March 2015. The history and culture page displays images with the text. I can actually click on the image to viewer a larger image. The Education page also falls short; it desperately needs more information to engage the teachers to view this page with their students. The Photo Gallery is a little confusing because the photos are all on one page of an exhibit and not separated. The visitor is not allowed to zoom in and out of the image. Also, I would advise taking more pictures of the physical site and post them online. Unfortunately, I did not see any questions to help the audience to think about the historical evidence and uncover the complexities online. Posting 1 or 2 questions to capture to the audience’s attention would help them to begin thinking historically about the historical evidence. The maps seem out of date or need improvements to engage the audience. An interactive map might would be useful to connect the items from the other sections of the digital site. Maybe in the future, NPS might consider adding 1 or 2 languages to increase international audience. After viewing these two sites online, my final advice would be for the NPS to reach out to individuals who are interested in improving the online presence for certain parks. Both the physical and digital spaces are significant to uncovering historical complexities, so NPS might consider working with GMU students who are in the Digital Humanities Graduate Certificate Program to help them improve their digital space and presence.

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.

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.

A Reading Response and Reflection

For my project, I plan to use my Omeka items to engage my audience in different ways. One of the activities will include tagging. I did not tag the items because I want to see the how the audience varies in their opinions about each item. Will it be objective or subjective? So far, I have developed three personas for my project; and I would like to see how each of them tags the Omeka items. The first persona is someone is familiar with Koreatown. He or she may have grew up visiting Koreatown with family and/or friends. Also, in the first persona, this person could have contributed to the development of Koreatown. The second persona is someone who has an interest in Korean culture and/or history, and he or she likes to visit Koreatown. The third persona is someone who is not familiar with Koreatown. He or she probably does not think it exists in Texas.

Similar to the Hurricane Digital Memory Book and Baltimore Uprising projects, I plan to include a section that will ask the audience to add their memories of the Koreatowns and the events. For each item, I would like to include a plug-in that allows the audience to add a comment. Also, there will be a mapping tool that allows the audience to input their location in comparison to the locations of both Koreatowns in North Texas. Another activity will include a redesign or remapping of both Koreatowns. How will it fit into your neighborhood? Or, I can ask the audience to engage in building a Koreatown near their neighborhood. Furthermore, Koreatowns Dallas and Carrollton hold festivals pertaining to Korean culture and history, so I would like to include a section that allows the audience to upload their pics and add comments to build a story based on their personal experience during one of the past festivals. This activity will be build a community of festival goers or lovers to communicate with each other.

A Response for the Comparative Review of the Digital Public History Projects

With advancing technology and globalization, digital public history projects have progressed over time. A comparative review of the digital public history projects in three different phases reveals noticeable changes from the projects that began as content focused to projects that are content and audience focused. At the same time, the creators of the projects had to consider the digital space. For example, the digital public history work during phase 1 is more content driven. The technology might be outdated, but the historical content plays an important role in all three projects in this phase. In the first example, “Blackout History Project,” some of the hyperlinks were no longer working. Also, phase 1 includes minimal audience engagement; however, there is more audience engagement in the last two projects of this phase. The images, videos, and audio recordings provide different ways of viewing the historical content; and they allow the audience to think about history differently. “Blackout History Project” and “The Progress of a People” seem to centralize the historical content as if it was presented in an academic manner (e.g. lecture); however, I can see that all three projects were reflecting a shift or change in making public history available to a broader audience. A basic mapping tool appears in the third project: “The Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory.” The digital tools used in phase 1 projects convey the importance of beginning to engage the audience with the historical content through a digital space for the contextualizing strategy, which Sam Wineburg defines it as situating “the document and its events in time and place” in order to be “Thinking Like a Historian.”

For phase 2, the digital public history projects include more digital tools, audience engagement, and recognition of collaboration. In addition to educational resources, a project’s site presents other ways of engaging with a general audience. Phase 2 includes less hyperlinks and more embedded links and images that can be clicked on for more information. Also, phase 2 includes more galleries or exhibits for the scanned images of documents and other artifacts. Phase 2 projects invite the audience to think like a historian in the intermediate stages of contextualizing, close reading, and reading silence. “Jasenovac: Holocaust Era in Croatia” introduces the audience to public history that might have been hidden or rarely exposed. “A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the U.S…” is another project that presents historical content that most U.S. history books only provide a snippet of information. “Raid on Deerfield” introduces the audience to view the history of English settlers and their conflict with the French and native allies. The phase 2 projects represent social injustice in different countries, and they convey the importance of global perspectives in order to share public history in a digital space.

In phase 3, the digital public history projects include updated digital tools, collaboration, and more audience engagement. The projects that collaborate with a museum and local historical society or library are “Lincoln at 200” and “Bracero History Archive.” Some of the project sites such as “Bracero History Archive” and “Operation War Diary” encourage the audience to contribute to the project. Also, some of the projects use social media to collaborate with the audience and spread the word about the project. There is also a search option in two of the projects. The digital tools in phase 3 are more advanced in presenting the historical content and engaging the audience. Some of the projects have both audio recordings with transcriptions for ADA compliance. The “Manifold Greatness…” is a great example. Some of digital public history projects have resources for further reading and for classroom purposes. By including more collaboration, audience engagement, and advanced digital tools in a digital space, phase 3 projects introduce the audience to the strategies of contextualizing, close reading, using background knowledge, reading the silences, and corroborating.

Furthermore, good digital public history work should continue adapting to the changing and advancing technology, updating websites, presenting historical content that challenges the audience to “think like a historian,” adding more scholarship, finding ways to engage the audience to understand the value of researching public history, and acknowledging a diverse audience. With all of these things in mind, it is also best to continue updating the guidelines for reviewing digital public history work.

In the field of digital public history, there are several promising new directions. It will create more grants and fellowships for scholars to think like a historian and bring awareness of missing or rarely known part of public history to a wide audience. Also, this field will steer in the direction of global digital public history projects that will reach out to an even wider audience for cultural and historical understanding. Soon, almost every major institution or organization will begin to hire public historians. This field is unique in the sense that it brings academic and non-academic passions together for a greater purpose. The humanistic approach to digital public history comes into fruition when it becomes an inclusive rather than exclusive way of audience engagement and participation along with collaboration from academic and non-academic institutions or organizations.

A Response to Grele’s “Whose Public? Whose History? What is the Goal of a Public Historian?”

Similar to the broad definition of Digital Humanities, the definition of Public History is also broad because it is constantly debated and changed. From his article, “Whose Public? Whose History? What is the Goal of a Public Historian?” Ronald J. Grele defines public history to be “moving into fields long occupied by practicing non-academic historians. It is debating issues within a long tradition of debate. It is deeply embedded within a series of ongoing tendencies in the profession” (44). Grele’s definition is enlightening because he views public history to be diverse and versatile. According to John Dichtl and Robert B. Townsend’s article, “A Picture of Public History: Preliminary Results from the 2008 Survey of Public Professionals,” the comparison of the survey results from 1980 and 2008 show the changing trends such as how many public historians were employed in academia and non-academic institutions. The 2008 survey also shows that “women comprised two thirds of the respondents (65.5 percent)” compared to the 36 percent from the 1980 survey. Denise Meringolo, author of Museums, Monuments, and National Parks: Toward a New Genealogy of Public History, defines public history to be collaborative, multidisciplinary, and engaging with a focus on communication. In the following statement, Meringolo clearly defines the role of the public historian: “Public historians can produce original interpretations that connect scholarship and everyday life by respecting the ways in which their partners and audiences use history and by balancing authority against community needs” (168).

Dichtl and Townsend argue that “Public history is one of the least understood areas of professional practice in history because the majority of public history jobs are outside of academia.” On the other hand, it can be due to two reasons: “First those of us who currently work in the field have not clearly defined what is we do, why we do it, and why it is an alternative to other forms of historical effort. Second, the debates have taken place in a historical vacuum” (Grele 41). Even though the public is ubiquitous when it comes to history, adding the term “public” to “history” seems to spark some controversy, but “another group of historians emerged to work with a non-college public: local history movement” (Grele 42). As a result, Grele argues that “it was the local history movement which offered the most thoroughgoing alternative to the historical work done in the academy” (43). However, public historians were not seen as equal to the academic historians. Meringolo also mentions two reasons or trends of thought for the debate: “Some scholars emphasize the term “public,” arguing that the environment in which historians apply their craft impacts the questions, methodology, and content of interpretation. Others underscore the term “history,” insisting that credentialed historians perform their work in accordance to the same disciplinary standards regardless of location or audience” (xvi). Both Grele and Meringolo argue that the combination of “public” and “history” sparks a debate for defining public history.

Another reason for the broad definition of public history is the debate on its origin. Grele argues that the job crisis for the academic historians was the reason for the beginning of public history because the proponents of public history “have accused the [academic] profession of ignoring the possibility of opportunities outside of the academy and monopolizing the ideological formulation of the role of the historical by accenting a narrow vision of the historian as researcher or university professor” (41). Thus, it began opening up job opportunities for historians. However, Denise Meringolo contends the origin of public history began with the National Park Service. Meringolo argues that it was Verne Chatelain (first chief historian for the NPS) who should be credited for the beginnings of public history because “it was evident to Chatelain that an advanced degree in history did not necessarily prepare historians for work in the federal government” (xiii). Therefore, in the 1930s, “Chatelain’s new technicians were among the first public historians, and they had a profound impact on the evolution of the field” (Meringolo xiv). Also, Meringolo acknowledges that it was during the 1970s that academic historians were “concerned about the scarcity of jobs for history PhDs” (xiv); but in her book, she “examines the process by which federal workers began to conceptualize the protection of landscapes and artifacts as valuable public work” (xxix) and the importance of collaborating with other professionals (e.g. scientists) and the public audience.

Public history includes both the academic and non-academic historians working together to engage the public. Also, public history is a collaboration of historians and professionals/experts in digital humanities, science, architecture, literature, medicine, textiles, folklore, mental health, media, culinary arts, art, music, religion, etc. In today’s fast-paced and social media driven society, public history plays a significant role in the form of digital public history. It not only engages the audience, it allows the public to take part in the making and preserving history. Despite the debates, a broad definition of public history allows space for more ideas of collaboration and engagement because history is never seen and told in one way. Since “Fledgling public history inherited from its late nineteenth-century origins a pragmatic approach to research and an impulse to change” (Meringolo xxxi), the broad definition of public history allows change and evolves with change.

In agreement with Grele’s statement that “Thus the task of the public historian, broadly defined, should be to help members of the public to do their own history and to aid them in understanding their role in shaping and interpreting events” (48), the types of the practice the field of public history should encourage will change throughout history; and it will include more collaboration and engagement beyond the academic setting. For example, Social media plays a big part in public history. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube probably have their own public historians; and their platforms engage the public on a daily basis. Even their audience contribute to the making of their history through crowdsourcing. Public history projects invite the public to engage with artifacts that were once lost or hidden from the public. Public history is a collaboration of historians, other professionals, public, and technology. Therefore, digital humanities public history adds another layer to the field of public history and its definition.