Below are representative assignments I have taught in the last three years.
Podcasting Assignment
For six years I taught my students how to research, write, edit, record and publish podcasts. I found the project helped familiarize students with journalistic standards, which paralleled those in the history discipline. Podcasts also provided a students an opportunity to work in public history, writing history for non-academic purposes. I created the assignment to fit into four parts, including prewriting, drafting, peer reviewing, and recording/publishing. As part of the assignment students engaged in primary source research and learned how to use industry-standard voice recording software. This assignment is currently not part of my classes as I reconsider how best to use it with other digital humanities tools.
- Introduction to Podcasting – a what-you-need-to-know-before-you-start document.
- World History Podcast Form – a prewriting document
- Podcast Assignment– the full assignment
- Podcast Peer Reviews – a guided peer review
Omeka Assignments
Omeka is a content management system created by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Omeka allows students to learn the standards for creating, recording, archiving, and publishing historical material to the web, along with how to create historical Global Information System (GIS) maps and timelines. I self-host a version of Omeka for my students. Omeka.net allows students to create their own web exhibits.
World History
An introduction to the timeline feature in Omeka: Time Lesson I
Advanced use of the timeline feature in Omeka: Time Lesson II
How to create an image in the Omeka database
Minnesota History Assignment
An introduction to Omeka for Minnesota history students
Digital Humanities Assignments
Digital humanities is the application of computing technologies to traditional humanities subjects. I use a variety of digital humanities tools to teach knowledge of the past as well as to impart skills I think valuable for employment.
Using Historical GIS to understand ancient Rome
Historical statistics: an introduction to numbers
Formative Assessment Assignments
Public History Response Assignment
Exploring the US Dakota War Response Assignment
Information Literacy and Library Research Assignment
Digital Citizens : A version of the digital zombies library research assignment for my Minnesota history students.
