Presentation fro MEGA Nov 19, 2009

1. What is digital history? Digital History

2. Revision of the history of Battle of Agincourt Story in New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/world/europe/25agincourt.html Online database of soldiers in later Medieval England http://www.icmacentre.ac.uk/soldier/database/

3. Questions How do students engage online historical resources? What are some of the understandings and dispositions needed to work effectively with online historical resources? Why would students want or need to use online historical resources?

4. How do students engage with online historical sources? New ways of thinking historically Reading online Searching and retrieving information questions

5. questions Historical thinking SCIM-C - David Hicks, Peter Doolittle and Tom Ewing http://historicalinquiry.com Work on New Literacies http://newlitcollaborative.ning.com/video/classroom-innovation New Literacies Collaborative http://newlit.org

6. questions What are some of the understandings and dispositions needed to work effectively with online historical resources? Understandingof historical context Critical visualand media literacies Willingness to be creative and playful

7. An approach Looking at the nature of online historical thinking Novice learners in disciplinary contexts A role disciplinary habits of mind Contextualized ways of thinking

8. Some activities

9. Specifics Middle grades students Browsing for interesting images and describing interest in terms of personal experiences or prior knowledge Conducting a visual analysis of one or more of the images from the collection The activities focused on three ways of knowing Discrete or “tested” knowledge Online reading Visual literacy Students’ uses of online historical resources analyzed according to, Browsing engagement Rationale for image selection Quality of description of interests Depth of visual analysis

10. instruction Fact-based questions Where is Roanoke Island? When was the Roanoke Colony founded? Do you know what happened to the “Lost” Roanoke Colony? Have you seen or heard about the John White drawings of people, plants, flora and places on Roanoke? Have you ever heard of the Theodore DeBry engravings that used John White’s drawings? Locate images that are interesting and explain your thinking? Describe what you see in the images given what you already know about the Lost Colony, Native American, European explorations, and North Carolina history

11. what we found Qualitative findings Well informed browsing habits were personalized and reflective of unique ways of understanding. Vignette Lewis first viewed “Arrival of the English” and seemed to be able to navigate the website with no problem. After a few promptings from (the teacher guide), Lewis began to talk aloud as he looked at the pictures. He viewed “Native American Body Paint” next. His initial thoughts when looking at this picture were that the man was at war. Lewis thought the most interesting aspect of the photo was the clothing. Lewis often selected images based on their titles. He also choose the images based on what sounded interesting to him. Another image Lewis viewed was the “Native American Priest.” He inferred that both figures in this image were from the coast due to the setting. He also inferred that the image was most likely set when the sun was going down due to the orange hues seen.

12. what we found Qualitative findings Well informedbrowsing habits were personalized and reflective of unique ways of understanding. Vignette Lewis viewed “Aged Native American Man.” He selected this picture because he noticed that the man was dressed differently. He inferred that rank may be a factor in his dress. He noticed the size difference; the figure was larger in the image than the Native Americans in the background. According to Lewis , this suggested that the man in the image was “better than everyone else in the tribe.” He thought the figure may be praying to as Lewis put it, “who they believe in.”

13. what we found Visual literacy was more important than factual or discrete knowledge (i.e. knowledge measure on most standardized tests) in this measure of online historical thinking. Online historical thinking requires specialized (personalized) ways of knowing that suggest pedagogical tailoring and adaptation Students’ work with online historical resources is a literacy issue.

14. questions Why would students want or need to use online historical resources? History frames the present and shapes the future History helps us understand ourselves History harbors beauty

15. shape of online sources

16. shape of online sources Libraries Millions of resources Hundreds of collections

17. shape of online sources Scholarly groups Thousands of books, manuscripts, and articles

18. shape of online sources Specialized collections

19. shape of online sources Small collections Single documents Narrative

20. shape of online sources Commercial

21. shape of online sources Accessing content across sources http://learndigitalhistory.blogspot.com/2009/09/online-historical-resources-study-in.html

22. About new ways of thinking historically, reading online, and searching and retrieving information

23. what we’re doing http://www.dhpp.org/

24. what we’re doing http://www.plantationletters.com http://plantation.ning.com/

25. where we’re going Lincoln Telegrams

26. where we’re going Reg Murphy photos

27. how can you be involved? Documents in the attic Digital redux

28. how can you be involved? http://teachingdigitalhistory.ning.com/

29. Thank You John Lee john_lee@ncsu.edu http://www4.ncsu.edu/~jklee/