digital tools – Online Portfolio

May 15, 2018 (Final Self-Reflection)

The best way to learn more about Digital Humanities is working with people who have the knowledge and expertise in the field. After learning from the best professors selected by the GMU program, I had the pleasure of working with Dr. Pamela (Pam) Henson, Historian for Smithsonian Institution Archives, and her research assistant, Lisa. During my internship with the Smithsonian for two semesters, I have gained new skills to help me complete my digital public humanities site and to teach my undergraduate students about digital humanities as an introductory course. For this Spring semester, I used what I have learned in my graduate courses as well as from my own teaching experience to design an oral history collection. Pam selected Lucile Quarry Mann to be the first from the many collections (150 and counting) for my internship project.

Before I worked with Pam, I had minimal knowledge about oral history. After reading and researching more about oral history, I realized how it is a crucial component of digital humanities and the preservation of living history. Listening to the recorded interviews, which were originally recorded with tape recorders in the 1970s, has helped me to appreciate the unique discourse of oral history interviews between an interviewer and interviewee. The concept of digitizing audio recordings of interviews is fascinating because it allows the current audience to have access to living history in different formats. I also learned the importance of keeping track of everything such as documenting each interview with detailed information by viewing the transcripts and notes that were documented by Pam.

Designing a digital platform for an oral history collection comes with several challenges. One of the challenges was to present the material in a way that would engage a broad audience. In the designing stages of the digital platform, I used the skills that I have learned from the DH courses and my teaching experience. I have been teaching online since 2007, and one of my courses introduces students to think and analyze visual content from a rhetorical perspective for a writing course. Another challenge was selecting a segment of a full interview to introduce to the audience. The interview segment had to be short (5 minutes or less). There were a couple of interesting segments that lasted 10 minutes, but they were too long. The next challenge was to select images from the archives to correspond with the interview. In addition to posting images and text with the interview segment (e.g. image carousel), I came up with an idea of creating videos that combined the audio recording of the selected interview segment with images. I enjoyed the creative process of making a video because I was able to improve my video making skills while incorporating some of the techniques and skills that I have learned from my DH courses. The other challenge was making sure that there was enough memory or space for posting images and videos on the selected web page. These challenges provided a pathway for designing a digital platform for an oral history collection.

Working with Pam and Lisa has helped me to re-envision my design for Lucile Q. Mann’s oral history collection. From our weekly teleconferences and feedbacks, we collaborated to make the oral history and video history collections website possible for future launching. The progress is steady. Their helpful feedbacks were encouraging. I also provided feedback for the introductory pages of the oral history and video history collections website. Pam created a template that was modeled after my web page designs for Lucile Q. Mann’s oral history collection for future interns who will be working to put together oral history collections for the Smithsonian Institution. I am very excited that my work helped with designing the template for future oral history collections. I am very proud to be part of their project. I enjoyed working with a supportive and intelligent group, and I look forward to viewing the oral history collection on the Smithsonian Institution website when it is completed.

This semester’s internship has given me a new perspective on how oral history plays a significant role as a component of Digital Humanities. Presenting information from the past to an audience of the present and future is less challenging when certain digital tools, theories, and skills are used. How do we keep the changing audience interested in the people of the past? What digital tools are useful for creating and designing a new digital platform to present the past? How do we try to preserve the past without losing sight of our focus? Even though the past will remain constant in a form of a recorded interview in the case of Lucile Quarry Mann’s oral history collection, it is up to the digital humanities scholar/specialist to work with others to keep it visible and interesting in the present and for the future. It is also up to a collaborative group of people with various skill sets to help preserve the past and curate it as part of living history. Therefore, I plan to continue networking with people to encourage collaboration for my own digital public humanities project on Korean American history and culture while working on honing my oral history interviewing skills for future interviews.

February 9, 2018

I enjoyed the selected readings that were recommended by my Smithsonian mentor, Pam Henson. She encouraged me to read Oral History and Digital Humanities edited by Douglas A. Boyd and Mary A. Larson before I start my internship work. The essays in the book helped me to see a different perspective of Digital Humanities, and it gave me enough background information of how oral history became integrated into the digital world. Also, oral history is a component of Digital Humanities, and it has some interesting roots. Each of the authors described their challenges and recommendations of presenting oral history on a digital platform. The methods described in the book were insightful and informative. With advancing technology, they had to constantly tweak a few things to present oral history interviews online. The concept of the audience from each author reminded me of my GMU Digital Humanities course lesson on audience or user. I thought about the type of persona they had to imagine when making adjustments to their work. In addition to budget concerns and having enough manpower, collaboration was a key factor. This book provided good resources, past and present, that revealed the changes and importance of keeping the content significant with advancing technology. I reviewed some of the older oral history websites and noticed how they much they have changed due to change in technology, budget, manpower, collaboration, and audience. Therefore, these changes are no different from creating and maintaining a digital public humanities site.

Also, Pam introduced me to 8 different Oral History websites for evaluation. Pam, Lisa (Pam’s research assistant), and I are in the process of evaluating them in order to design Smithsonian’s Oral History Archive online. So far, I have reviewed 3 oral history websites. Carefully evaluating each site helped me to come up with ideas to improve my own public humanities website. There are themes and trends that seem to be outdated on a few sites, but the content is very useful if certain things were changed. Even though I am evaluating each site from my own perspective, I am constantly reminded in the back of my mind that the user is also looking for something else. During my coursework, I learned about the importance of designing a digital platform with several personae in mind. The digital tools and presentation of the oral history interviews are very important. The description or metadata comes back to haunt me in a good way. Learning about Dublin Core at the beginning of the GMU DH program helped me to look for the basic elements for each interview. Also, I am learning to see differences on how transcripts are displayed on each site.

The work that I have completed for the past few weeks have encouraged me to use my learned knowledge during my GMU coursework and experience with designing my own digital public humanities and teaching history and literature sites. I am excited about working with Pam and Lisa. Pam has been very helpful, and I appreciate the knowledge she has shared with me. I look forward to working on their oral history archive site.

December 2017

From November through December 12th, I worked on project summaries for the Smithsonian Transcription Center. My mentor, Ricc Ferranter, introduced me to Trello (web-based project management board) and walked me through the process of drafting and launching project summaries for crowdsourcing. Each slideshow required research, and I enjoyed researching various topics. The more I read each one, the more I wanted to know about certain things. The biggest challenge was trying to select one of the items in the documents that will capture the audience and lead them to transcribe them. There was so much interesting information that the selection process was challenging and fun. The Smithsonian Transcription Center relies on crowdsourcing for their transcriptions, so my goal was to draft short and engaging summaries with a good hook. In addition to writing summaries, I researched information about the selected topic and selected online sources that will provide additional information about it.

Crowdsourcing is challenging, but it has its benefits. By drafting and revising the project summaries, I learned to tweak my words to capture a broad audience. Keeping the summaries short (3-4 sentences) was a great challenge. To make the summaries a little more interesting, Ricc suggested that I add web links for specific information; so the transcribers can have access to additional information via the web. Working with Ricc was awesome. He provided helpful feedback for each of my summaries. Ricc taught me to see things from a different perspective.

Working as a virtual intern is an amazing experience. Ricc and I communicated on a weekly basis by phone, email, and Trello. He was very patient and informative. He provided useful and informative feedback. Using Trello helped me to organize my assignments and to communicate any changes or updates with my Smithsonian mentor. Working on a digital platform was convenient for both of us. Also, waiting to see how the transcribing process from the digital volunteers was coming along was exciting. Ricc would provide an update, and I would take a peek at the transcriptions.

For my internship, I used some of the skills I learned about crowdsourcing from my GMU Digital Public Humanities coursework. I had to constantly think about my audience, which meant shortening my sentences and being selective with my words to engage the audience. I recalled the persona exercise I had to do for one of my courses, and I put that into practice when drafting the summaries. Researching and adding the links to the summaries reinforced the concept of what is appropriate for a broad audience. Also, I had to think about copyright issues and be selective with web content when linking the websites to the project summaries. By using what I have learned from my coursework, I was able to draft project summaries for a broad audience.

My internship work with Ricc and the Smithsonian Transcription Center connected me to a digital world of communication. Even though I did not know the digital transcribers, I had a virtual connection with them by writing the project summaries. After my project summaries were launched on the STC website, I was able to see how the audience responded to each one of them. The virtual communication between different audiences to meet a certain goal via the web is truly amazing. The concept of digital humanities is reflected in this internship project. History comes alive when digital volunteers partake in the crowdsourcing efforts with Smithsonian Transcription Center.

What I enjoyed most about the internship is being introduced to different historical documents for review and research. Also, I enjoyed communicating with Ricc about my process and what things I need to revise/edit. Ricc is a very supportive mentor. I admire Ricc’s work and dedication. He does his best to keep the digital volunteers interested in the transcribing. I also had a chance to see how the public responds to my project summaries. My internship assignment with the Smithsonian Transcription Center opened my mind to thinking about my audience throughout the entire process, and it helped me to understand and appreciate crowdsourcing. Therefore, I have gained a new perspective on how digital humanities keeps history alive through digital communications.

Essay: “Advantages of Teaching in a Digital World”

Teaching students in the 21^st century comes with several challenges, and the challenges allow educators to tweak their lesson plans to adjust to the ever-changing environment. In general, people are inundated by the digital world; there is so much information overload that most people can get overwhelmed. Consumers of the digital world are less than 2 or 3 clicks (with reliable internet service) away from discovering and learning about the past instantaneously. For more than a decade, people have been programmed to search online for convenience without thinking about the complexities of what is happening to the way they search online and how information is displayed and received by the consumers. There is no fine print to read when it comes to encountering the search engine. If there is such a thing, then most of the consumers of the digital world have missed it. The most popular search engine is Google, and my students and I are consumers of it. Unfortunately, people are not taught how to search properly and be skeptical of search results and websites. The massive amounts of information in the form of text, images, and videos are on the web; but people must be aware of how, what, why, and who they search online. Since students rely on the web for recreational and academic purposes, they can learn from teachers to be smart consumers of the digital world. Educators can use the web for providing credible information and show their students how to examine, evaluate, and analyze information on the web. The malleability of the past in the digital world has made it easier to teach about and help our audience to engage with the past.

Even though the web has made it easier to teach about the past, there are some unsettling challenges that complicate the work of teachers. The mass reliance on Google to conduct research is one of them. “Since search engines are becoming a preferred method for discovering, retrieving, and organizing scholarly information, it is critical that we understand the emerging trends” (Rieger). College undergraduate students tend to search for topics in Google rather than the suggested library databases because it is very popular, convenient, user-friendly, visually appealing, and most used search engine. Most of the time, Google displays the results on several pages, but most students usually view the first page of results. In the first page, they select the first 3 links to view. Sometimes, students will view the remaining links and quite possibly the 2^ndor 3^rd page of the results. Most people have been programmed to just click and view without carefully considering what they selected. That is when the educator comes in to help the students. In addition to all the lesson plans they are required to teach students about a subject, teachers might have to consider teaching students how to use search engines, evaluate the web sources, and analyze them for academic purposes. Unfortunately, most of the search is completed away from the campus when students leave. So, the educator just has to hope his or her students will be cautious and aware of how and what they search on the web.

On the flip side, the digital world has provided several great ways for teaching students about the past. One great way to teach about the past without being inundated with links of historical information from a simple search is teach the students how to evaluate the search results. Educators can teach the students about key terms for search results such as SEO and explain how search engine results are displayed on the screen. An educator might consider asking the students to conduct a Google search of a historical term from an electronic device in different settings, or they can conduct a Google search with the same laptop, tablet, or smartphone from two different settings (e.g. coffee shop, campus, home, etc). They can compare their results and discuss the differences and similarities with the entire class. Then, the educator can teach students how to examine and evaluate links. For instance, “the goal is to encourage searchers [students] to integrate information effectively and efficiently by evaluating credibility of a source, and using and citing information ethically and legally” (Rieger). Students will learn to question search engine results and begin to evaluate which websites are credible or not. This lesson will teach them to be smart consumers of the web.

The digital world provides excellent resources on the web that students are unable to see in person. Historic sites with valuable and interesting information are crucial to foster historical thinking. Educators who would like to teach students about history with primary sources can have access to them on the web. Educators can introduce credible, historical websites and provide a short lesson for students to examine a primary source without leaving the classroom. In “Why Historical Thinking is Not About History,” Sam Wineburg makes a good point by stating, “Reliable information is to civic intelligence what clean  air and clean water are to public health” (16). Educators can propose two questions to help their students learn to evaluate sources for reliable information: “Who owns a site? Who links to it?” (Wineburg 16). By answering these two questions, students can begin to evaluate the website. Also, a digitized primary source with text can be compared with a transcription of it. The educator may ask 1 or 2 questions to help students to examine both sources. Sometimes, when the physical site is too far away for students and educators to visit in person, the website of the physical site provides digital resources for helping the educator to provide an engaging history lesson for his or her students.

Another teaching method that teachers can do is to incorporate a lesson that helps students learn how information is posted on the web. Educators can use Wikipedia as part of a lesson to teach students how information is posted in a digital space. They can uncover complexities in history by conducting research on certain Wikipedia entries with historical information. For example, Brown and Olsen assigned their students to revise a Wikipedia entry on Tianamen Square after learning about it for a several weeks. They conclude that “one of the principal tasks of historians is to not let the complexities of history go unnoticed. Wikipedia’s ubiquity has made it a useful forum to communicate such complexities to the public, as well as an effective tool for future historians to improve their academic abilities” (Brown & Olsen). Also, students can learn to compare the information between Wikipedia and a historical website. They will learn to ask questions and begin to think historically about the information on the web. Also, they will inquire more about the past. Providing a lesson for students to engage with history by examining, evaluating, researching, analyzing, and editing information on the web, teachers can use the web as means of teaching how information is posted on the web.

Finally, there are free digital tools on the web that educators can introduce to students to work with historical evidence. For data mining, educators can introduce easy and user-friendly digital tools such as Voyant and Wordle to examine the text of a historical document and how the words appear in context. Educators should “make sure your [students’] visualizations expose something new, hidden, non-obvious” (Cohen). The visualizations of the data mining will help students to uncover something different or new. Also, they can use mapping tools as visual reference of key historical places and uncover some complexities of geo-history. Working with digital tools to understand and analyze historical evidence allows students the opportunity to think about history in a different way. It also helps them to uncover interesting things and discover new information to fuel their inquiring minds. There are so many great digital tools that educators can introduce to students to help them work with historical evidence and to help them to foster historical thinking.

Despite the challenges and downfalls of a malleable past in a digital world, it makes it easier for educators to teach about and to help students engage with the past in multiple ways. The digital world has helped educators teach students about search engines and evaluating search links. It also introduced the concept of learning about the past in a digital space, especially when the physical space is out of reach. They learn to examine and evaluate digitized primary sources on the web. Students learn to use digital tools to analyze historical evidence on the web and uncover complexities in history. According to Kelly, “the best way to use digital media to teach them to see history as we see it is to create learning opportunities that make it possible for our students to do history—to practice it as we practice it—to help them make history, using their own creative impulses, rather than simply giving us what they hope is the correct answer to a question we have posed” (“Teaching History”). The malleability of the past in the digital world can have its challenges, but it can help educators find ways to teach students to be smart consumers of the web while learning about the past.

Bibliography

Brown, J. & Olsen, B. M. (2012). Teaching Tiananmen: using Wikipedia in the undergraduate classroom to learn how to write recent History. American Historical Association. Retrieved from https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/april-2012/teaching-tiananmen

Cohen, Dan. (2016). It’s about Russia. Digital Humanities: Theory & Practice. Retrieved from http://edchnm.gmu.edu/dhcert/sites/default/files/pdf/Its_About_Russia.pdf.

Kelly, T.M. (2013). Teaching History in the Digital Age. Digital Humanities. Retrieved from http://edchnm.gmu.edu/dhcert/sites/default/files/pdf/TeachingHistoryintheDigitalAge.pdf.

Rieger, O.Y. (2009). Search engine use behavior of Students and Faculty. First Monday, 14(12). Retrieved from http://www.firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/%20view/2716/2385

Wineburg, S. (2016). “Why History thinking is not about History. History News, 71(2),14-16. Retrieved from http://resource.aaslh.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2016/10/Wineburg-Spring16-a.pdf

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.

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.

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.

Final Reflection

Building a prototype for Koreatowns in North Texas has been a challenging experience. This course has helped me to take a step back from the initial stages of my project and reconsider my audience. While learning about user-centered approaches to designing a digital project site, I encountered other challenges that I did not consider in the beginning. By studying the physical and digital spaces of a history museum, I was able to see things clearer. Also, studying various digital public history sites was very insightful. Learning about the different digital interfaces and digital tools, reading various scholarship on the digital public history, and testing digital public history sites have helped me to build a prototype.

I selected Omeka for the prototype because it was user-friendly and easy to navigate. It also allowed me to design my project site with creative freedom. The storyboarding technique, mentioned in Shawn Medero’s article “Paper Prototyping,” helped me to visualize the interface for Koreatowns in North Texas. In addition to storyboarding, I learned about the importance of testing and evaluating the prototype. I asked several people to visit Koreatowns in North Texas and provide feedback. Their comments helped me to see things that would be helpful for the audience when navigating the site. The comments from Dr. Leon were also helpful. My classmate’s review/feedback was helpful, but I think having more than one classmate to review the site would have been more helpful to gain more than one perspective.

Overall, I learned that building a prototype for a digital public history site is very challenging; yet the process is a great learning experience. This course has allowed to me explore things that I would not have done on my own such as building a prototype, accessing course materials, and learning different techniques to engage the audience. Since there is little information available online about the history and culture of Koreatowns and Korean Americans in North Texas, I was excited to build a prototype for the information to be available to the public. Finding time to take the images was a little bit challenging because I had to find the time to visit the places during the week and before sundown. After taking the images, I carefully selected the images that would be the best fit for the prototype. Before I learned to incorporate oral history into the prototype, I learned how to interview wonderful people who have close connections to the Korean American communities in North Texas. Another challenge that I encountered was the visual display of my images and text. I learned to experiment with different layouts of the images in Omeka. Writing short descriptions and narratives paved the way for me to understand my audience better. I had to consider the language usage and colloquialism, so I would not lose my audience to an abyss of words. Despite the challenges, I received so much support from the Korean American community. Finding the right people to interview was easy, but finding the time to interview them in person was a good challenge. Also, Dr. Sharon Leon has provided supportive and constructive feedback to lead me in the direction of learning something new in order to see the benefits down the road when I further develop my prototype.

Before the end of this semester, I revisited Michael Frisch’s article. In “From A Shared Authority to the Digital Kitchen and Back,” Michael Frisch explains the purpose of exploring: “Exploring, I think, is more interesting than searching, and it suggests a non-linear spatial imagination rather than a linear, tunneled one: one inhabits a space that is being explored rather than simply forging a narrowing path through it” (133). For my prototype, I came to a realization that I want the audience to explore instead of just search for information and images on the site. I want them to come away with some ideas or information that make them think about the reasons why Korean American history is rarely available online. Also, I hope their explorations and curiosities can help me to continue building the prototype. Ultimately, I want Koreatowns in North Texas to be our digital public history project by inviting people from different backgrounds and experiences to share in the building of the site as a community. The key to making the prototype available to the public would be an engaging collaboration with the audience. Echoing Corbett and Miller, “Honest sharing, a willingness to surrender some intellectual control, is the hardest part of public history practice because it is the aspect most alien to academic temperament and training” (36), I am steadily learning to take less control of my project and reconsider my audience. The question of “How do I engage my audience?” changed to “What are some changes that can be made to the prototype for audience engagement while connecting them to the purpose of preserving the history and culture of Koreatowns in North Texas and the Korean American experience?”