How to Read a Historical Document

Study Helps for Exam #2

Using this space

While Dr Hooper is out of pocket following surgery, students are welcome to use this space to study together, conduct conversations, etc.

mh

Morning!

  Uploaded my first presentation.  Going to experiment with turning it into a digital draft. Let me know what you think.

Blakeley

Digital Drive Slideshow

Here is the PowerPoint presentation.

Exploring Possibilities

Hello All!

This is our blog space, where you can view and post your digital history projects, videos, trial runs, requests for feedback, etc..

Possible resources abound: here's what I just sent out (slightly modified).

http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/chap1a.html# - too detailed for a 1000 level class, but shows how you can create text documents for online repositories.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO28lnjtsQc&feature=share&list=PLE2179BA645EB4FC1&index=1 – this is all video of re-enactors, with no text or links; very passive and relies on too many modern videos and people. Voice over is good; well paced, accurate history.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjOO1slOkRQ&feature=share&list=PL92A66F1DF719AF17&index=1  the typical enhanced podcast, with poor images as they are using a video camera to capture lecture hall images. A better presentation would be to have the video of the professor (perhaps, although he’s not particularly interesting to watch) doing the audio and splicing in the high quality images, showing the interactions as his GIS talk shows how it can be done.

http://youtu.be/FYoX8CuJDus  on what it is as well as how it might be done. Again, it’s simply a recording of an interview, so not particularly ‘digital history’ as it can be practiced.

Download your free MovieMaker program here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/movie-maker#t1=overview  This can be anybody – it’s from Microsoft, so it is designed for Pcs, but they apparently have a Mac version as well. Macs come with GarageBand and iMovie fully integrated into the OS, so no additional program is needed. You can also pull in still/video images straight from iPhoto on Macs; the advantage here is that it is all on your machine from day one, and fully integrated (that’s what that lower case “I" in the name means). There are also tutorials there that can help you explore the options. Remember – with this you have what you need to create an ‘enhanced’ podcast – images, slides, text. What you won’t have is the kind of repository for links that a good digital history project might include.

What a digital history project can be:

A digital project can be any of these things – in this class, what I’d prefer to see is a mash-up of audio, video and text, with perhaps a web-page entry/interface. Here’s an example: http://www.techsmith.com/tutorial-camtasia-embed-video-on-webpage.html  Note that the video fills the first screen – not particularly interesting for a truly digital history site, but this has the virtue of also showing you HOW to do it.

Were we all experts, we could use GIS etc – but we’re all beginners. So try for a mix of elements in your DDs – audio/sound files, image (both still and moving) files, text – we’ll most likely end up with mostly slides. If you can then embed that podcast within a simple webpage with additional links and text –that would be level 2 – and while it’s not much more difficult than creating a podcast, it does take additional steps. 

Image, embedded:

Here's a video, embedded from YouTube:

Here's a podcast (bad history podcast, but whatever...), embedded:

There are free hosts for web pages – you can go into our YouTube account with google and use our blogger set up. Or you can create your own - just be sure to link it on the class blogger page!

Make sure that anything you add to the class stuff gets your name on it! The account is in my name, but you need to identify your work. I’m going to use the site for other classes as well (your choice of name is so good).

mh