AHA Teaching Demonstration

Using Omeka Neatline to Teach Historical Thinking

1. Faculty Learning Objectives:

1. Review a world history assignment and the tools, skills, knowledge necessary to build it.
2. Consider how capability theory might inform your pedagogy.
3. Demonstrate you know the percentage of Pell-eligible students at your college or university.

2. Student Learning Objectives:

1. Find an artifact at a museum
2. Create an “Item” of that object in Omeka, including uploading or linking a picture and entering all Dublin Core Data.
3. Create a “New Record” in Neatline that locates your object in a region.
4. Find and post a credible statistic about the period and region of the object.
5. Write a thesis explaining the historical significance of your object and statistic.

3. Working with Dublin Core – Omeka

Before beginning this assignment, please consider how we (historians) organize information on the web.

When presenting information about the past, scholars needed to agree on what are the key information items, or metadata, that should be attached to historical objects. In 1985 a group created the Dublin Core (named for Dublin, Ohio, not Ireland) . The Dublin Core is 15 key pieces of information we try to attach to all objects. Not all objects have all 15 metadata. Important: Please review the Dublin Core here before looking for an image. *

You need to familiarize yourself with the Dublin Core before looking for historical objects.

4. Searching for Historical Objects

Please search either the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the British Museum for a pre–1000 BCE object.. Both museum have robust search engines on their web pages. Both have two search spaces that return slightly different results. Screen shots of both landing pages are below.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The British Museum

5. British Museum

The British Museum is notoriously fussy. And by fussy, I mean it has one of the largest online collections of artifacts in the world that displays only when the British can be bothered (yes, I’m throwing shade). There are a variety of search tools, some of which are powered by google.

6. Object located

Once you’ve located an object, you’ll want to do a bit of sideways research on your objects. For example, the sandals below are dated (1) as coming from the “New Kingdom.” A short bit of searching will lead you to find that the New Kingdom was from the 16th - the 11th centuries BCE in Egypt.

7. Add an item

After logging in to our website, click on “Items” and then “Add an Item.”

8. Using the original museum website, add metadata to your item.

You need to fill out all of the fields. If there is no information, for example many objects will have no writing on them and therefor no “language,” write “none.”

Include any words from the original website in quotations marks, even if the words seem simple.

9. To add a picture file, click on the “Files” tab.

You will need to have downloaded a picture to your computer in order to add it here.

10. To save an image.

To save an image from a website, you need to right click, or cmd click on Mac, an image, and “Save Image As” a jpg or png file on your computer. Be sure to copy the URL or the image as well to put in the “Rights” section of the Dublin Core metadata.

11. After saving your item, go to our Neatline Exhibit “Poverty in World History”

1. You will have to click on the words “Poverty in World History” to get in to the editor.

12. Create a New Record

13. Please put your name in the slug and at the top of the title of the record.

Doing so allows me to easily grade your item.

Once you have entered information into the text box, your can link your “item” to the “record” with the “Item” tab.

14. Item tab.

15. Drop a point, draw a line, or create a shape around the area in which you object was found.

To draw a shape, click on a point, then click on another point. When you are done with your shape, double click.

16. Style tab

1. Under Widgets, click on SIMILE Timeline and Waypoints to turn on those features. Doing so will give you the running time line at the bottom of the map and the right-hand side topic bar.

17. Set dates.

To set dates for the object, input the start and end dates.

For an explanation of how to set dates, click on the blue question mark. In short, all BCE dates must be created with a “-” sign and using zeros for place holders. For example, 1550 BCE is –001550.

If you object only has a single date, enter that in the “Start Date” field.

18. Find a credible historical statistic.

You may use JSTOR, Project Muse, or one of our other College Library websites.

Place your statistic in the "Body.’

Write a thesis for what is the historical significance of your object and historical statistic.

19. Grading Criteria

1. Student located a historical object from the British Museum or Metropolitan Museum.
2. Student created an item in Omeka.
3. Student correctly added all Dublin Core Data to Item.
4. Student created a “New Record” of the item in the Neatline map.
5. Student placed the item on the map.
6. Student dated the item.
7. Student included a credible statistic related to the item.
8. Student wrote a thesis explaining why the object and historical statistic are historically significant.

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