After reading the selections this week, I found a common link between most of them. One of the main elements of historical thinking that have remained at the heart of history teaching for decades is using textbooks in the classroom. In Lindamen, Dana, and Ward’s introduction to History Lessons, they state, “One of the few constants in history courses both in the U.S. and abroad is the use of textbooks to teach national history. These national histories are typically written by national authors with a national audience in mind, leading to a sort of insularity on any given historical topic.” Those textbooks are also seen as never-changing and contain set-in-stone facts, leading to problems with students retaining information or learning critical historical thinking skills. Ward in History in the Making states, “Young people . . . look at the subject of history as boring, mundane, and unnecessary. Part of the problem, I believe, is that many young people do not understand how history is researched and written about, nor do they see or understand the impact past decisions have on their lives today . . . All too often, I meet people who believe that history is written in stone and that it never changes.” Since textbooks are the primary tool used to teach history, students take what is said in those textbooks as set-in-stone facts. However, there are ways to change how these students think and learn about history, and this starts with the teachers themselves. Sam Wineburg, in his article Crazy for History,states, “Change will occur only by intervening at the policy level to ensure that those who teach history know it themselves.” Teachers cannot correctly teach history and historical thinking to their students because, according to Wineburg, “they lack adequate subject matter knowledge.” If the teachers have the proper knowledge and skills in historical thinking, their students will be able to build those skills for themselves. The digital realm has already provided opportunities for teachers to give their students those skills. Allison Robinson used digital tools to allow her students to develop and use their historical thinking skills. When redesigning her undergraduate course, she decided instead of a research paper to allow her students to work with digital tools and create a project using them. She “taught them to conduct original historical research using material culture with readings, class discussions, museum visits, object-handling experience, and office hour appointments. It was up to them to use primary and secondary source research to determine the historical significance of their objects.” The digital realm allowed these students to practice using historical thinking skills. Robinson believes the project helped her students develop and use their historical thinking skills. She states, “The class encouraged students to experiment with unfamiliar methodologies and new sources, challenging their historical thinking. They learned that critically engaging with their peers, historians, and the general public required creativity, careful research, and confidence in the final product.”

My initial ideas for the final project are something that I began working on last semester. In my Museum Studies class, I created a mock exhibit displaying World War II comic books depicting propaganda and its themes. One of the elements I wanted to include was an interactive game that visitors could play towards the end of the exhibit. It would be a top-down screen showing different pictures ranging from comic book scenes, movie stills, posters, etc. They would have to figure out the propaganda element in that picture and pick from a multiple choice. It would be a fun game for people and a way to test what they learned from the exhibit. However, not everyone can play the game on a hectic day at the museum. This is why I also want to make a digital version of the game on a website for those people who did not get a chance to play to have access. It is also an educational resource for teachers who might want to use it for their lessons. For that, I will include background historical information to prepare students before they play the game. Given the nature and controversy surrounding the topic, I think high schoolers would be the age range appropriate for the project. What I hope students and museum visitors gain from the game is an understanding of the history of propaganda in the United States within its popular culture.

After reading the selections and watching the videos, I realized that how I conducted historical research and analysis is the core of studying history. However, while it is a core part of history, it is not an easy concept to grasp. In his article, “Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts,” Sam Wineburg states, “Historical thinking, in its deepest forms, is neither a natural process nor something that springs automatically from psychological development . . . This is one of the reasons why it is much easier to learn names, dates, and stories than it is to change the fundamental structures that we use to grasp the meaning of the past.” This quote made me realize how important it is to teach historical thinking. It is not something that is innate. It is something that takes practice and skill to use critical thinking, analysis, and how to use and read historical sources. This realization made me wonder how I could apply these concepts to exhibits and resources for visitors. My thought process led me to three questions that I hope the future readings and assignments help me answer.

How can I effectively transfer the concepts and ideas from classroom teaching to the context of museum exhibits?

The readings and videos mainly focused on classroom settings rather than other areas, so I wonder how to apply and adapt those concepts in ways that would benefit museum visitors. I think that there would be a way to take lessons that can be used in a classroom setting and apply those to the exhibits that I would create, though I am not sure how to go about it. Based on the readings, I feel like there is not that much difference between the two settings. In the History Classrooms article from Sam Wineburg, studies on different classroom settings did not show much difference in students’ struggles in historical thinking. This makes me think there would be no difference when translated to museum settings and the ideas that I will learn in future readings will work in exhibits.

Can museum visitors gain historical thinking skills from exhibits alone?

From what I gathered from the readings and videos, historical thinking is something that is taught and learned. I wonder if this learning would be possible in a museum setting. How will visitors analyze, question, and interpret historical material in exhibits? I cannot assume every visitor already has those skills when walking into an exhibit. Based on the readings and videos, I believe the exhibit would have to apply the necessary materials to help visitors gain or increase those skills. Maybe it involves the labels included, different visual markers, interactive components, or a combination of all three.

How can museum visitors critically analyze historical information present in an exhibit?

Similar to the last question, I am not sure if visitors would necessarily be able to critically analyze historical information by just being told facts. Again, I feel that extra material, like interactive components, has to be provided to help spur that skill so visitors have an impactful visit.

Hi, my name is Audrey Schroeder. I am a graduate student at GMU working towards a degree in history with an applied concentration. As of right now, I am going into my third full semester this coming fall. My overall goal for my degree is to pursue a museum career. I have loved museums since I was a kid, and it would be my dream to create exhibits as a career. This past semester, I took Museum Studies and learned a lot about creating workable exhibits for visitors. However, I want to learn more from this class about better incorporating educational elements into future physical and digital exhibits. In the last course, I worked with Omeka to create a contributory website with educational elements. I want to expand on the educational aspects and become more proficient in that skill, and I hope this class will help me achieve that.

This course and project have been an eye-opening experience for me. Going into the course this semester, I felt confident. What I learned the previous semester in Intro to Digital Humanities made me think that I was ready to create different digital projects. However, I soon discovered that I still had much to learn. One of the significant aspects of this course was learning about the importance of audiences. I was ready to dive head-first into creating my project.

Nevertheless, learning about different audiences made me step back and think. The audience I want to create a project for will influence how I design it. Thinking about the project I created, if I had gone in without thinking about the audience, it would not have been a successful project. I knew that I wanted to create a collaborative project to start a conversation on the memory of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Arizona Memorial. I could have just created a simple website that allowed users to do that. However, learning about audiences this semester changed my thinking and planning. I realized that just making that website as I had initially planned would not be successful. Some of that audience might have yet to go to the memorial and want to learn more about it before giving their story. It also made me realize that other audiences might use this website. Other people might want to keep their stories private and will strictly visit the site to learn about the history. Thinking about this audience helped me understand that I needed to add more, and that created a more well-rounded and more prosperous project. In the future, I will always think about that before I start creating a project. Last semester, I did not even think about who the audience might be, and now I wonder if I had if it would have created a better project. It might have changed what I would include or even added more to what is already there. Learning about the importance of audiences changed how I approach digital projects and how to make them successful.

On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese Empire attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. They destroyed naval ships and airplanes, killed hundreds of sailors and personnel, and forced the United States into the Second World War. That day would always be, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated, “a date which will live in infamy.” The attack will forever live in the memories of the country and its citizens. However, these memories differ for various reasons, which is my project’s argument. People who have visited the memorial might have different memories of the event compared to people who only learned about it in school or had a family member serve in the war. This project hopes to show that people have different memories of the event and create a conversation around those memories.

I created a contribution element on the website to create this conversation around memories. Users can share their stories or images to contribute to the overall discussion. I have also added a section on both the stories and image contributions that asks users if they know anyone who served during that time or was there during the attack and if they have stories to share about them or if they told stories to them they would like to share. What people remember about their family members’ stories affects their memory of learning about the attack, so I added that feature for those people to share to create a more varied and rich conversation. While the project focuses on the memorial and remembrance of the event, there will be users who have not necessarily visited the memorial or have little knowledge of the event and want to learn more. The project has three exhibits to provide a memorial and historical background for those wishing to learn more before contributing. These exhibits are also there for the secondary audience of people researching the event or memorial. These exhibits hopefully provide an opportunity for people to learn more, and those contributions will discuss their prior or nonexistent memories and what they have learned while exploring the site. For example, one user only has prior knowledge from what they learned in high school. They looked through the exhibits and learned more than they had in school. In the contribution section, they discussed their prior knowledge and how learning more about it changed their views and memories of the attack.

I will look at the contributions themselves to see if these elements are performing as I want them to. If they provide various voices with rich conversations, I know they are performing well. However, there is a chance that the conversation is not varied or rich. At that point, I will see if it is a problem with outreach or if the forms on the contribution page need to be tweaked to allow for more varied conversations. Tweaking the contribution forms could mean changing the wording so users can understand the questions better or adding more elements or questions. When it comes to the exhibits, there are two ways I can see if they are performing well. One way is to look at the contributions and see if some mention the exhibits. Another way is to look at the views that the exhibits receive. If there are a lot of views, not just of the main page but also of the following pages, I know that users are looking at them and are appealing enough to look through the entire exhibit. If there are not that many views or many views on the main page but not on the following pages, they are either not appealing enough and more needs to be added, or more advertising of these exhibits is needed.

So far, with my project, I have completed three of the six pages in my exhibits. I plan on finishing those remaining three pages tomorrow. The next goal for this week is to fine-tune the website. I want to make sure that everything is running smoothly not only on desktop but also on mobile devices. I want the website to be usable on any device. I also want to see if the contribution page is working properly. I will add my contribution to the site so that I can see if the contributions are not only added but also included in the contribution collection. I will also see if family members want to add their contributions on different devices so I can see if it is working properly. The main challenge for this week is my health. I suffer from chronic pain, specifically migraines, and they heavily affected me this past week due to not only the crazy weather in Virginia but, more importantly, my stress levels. I want to ensure I do not stress myself out this week to get my work done.

This week, I was able to make my website more user-friendly. I changed the design to make it more appealing and created drop menus to make navigation easier. I also added a social media bar to the collections and individual items so users can share them with their circle. This could easily promote the site itself and potentially gain more users. One of the most significant changes I made was to add two new pages to the exhibits. I added a subsection to the After the Event page under the Historical Background exhibit to provide films created in a partnership between Hollywood and the United States government. Many of these films influenced the memory of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and they can provide not only historical information for researchers but also give the primary users, the contributors, more ways to think about their memories of the event than what was previously planned for the website. I also created a page under the About the Memorial Site exhibit titled Memorial Films. While finishing my research about the memorial, there was an emphasis on the films made for the site. For the same reasons as the previous page, I felt that creating a page dedicated to those films would benefit users.

One of the challenges for this week is to put in the information gathered for the exhibits. Now that the exhibit’s design and layout are complete, I can put the information I have gathered from my research on these pages. Another challenge is finding the items for the website. I still want to find a few items, especially when creating two new pages. Fortunately, I have already begun this process, so the hunt will not be extensive. This week’s last challenge is setting up the terms and conditions for the contribution page so users know what is expected and what they can expect from contributing to the project.