# Tags --- ## Keyword #### History ## Curator - #### Shawn Graham, Carleton University ## Curatorial Statement History, as a discipline, has several approaches to the teaching and *practice* of history that can often incorporate digital tools and techniques while at the same time not necessarily being considered digital pedagogy. What distinguishes history in terms of digital pedagogy is in its motivations. Stephen Robertson points out that social historians have long used Web-based technologies to reach teachers and schools, motivated by a commitment “to democratizing the creation of the past,” which is also the core of what distinguishes digital history from digital humanities. This also has had the effect of situating digital history in an alliance with practitioners of public history. Robertson notes that public history is not necessarily in the mainstream of historical practice, and so digital history continues to occupy a marginal position (“Differences”). The key idea in terms of a digital pedagogy emerging from the digital historian’s practice derives from the Greek root word for *history*, *ιστορία* (*istoria;* “inquiry”), meaning a (public) questioning or interrogating. *History* then is an active verb. The artifacts collected below speak to the idea of digital pedagogy as a kind of public inquiry into the causes of things, as a kind of [making](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/makerspaces). Thus, they are organized to facilitate both inquiry and assessment. This puts digital pedagogy in history in a transgressive situation, especially when we remember that the status quo signifier for historical seriousness, for scholarship, is essay writing (and its longer cousin, the monograph) (cf. Blevins and Mullen 39). Digital work that transgresses this “compulsory figure” (O’Donnell) is only slowly being recognized. Frederick Gibbs argues that the problem comes down to the fact that there is “virtually no precedent” for what is now possible to do in digital history. Robertson points out that the difficulty centers on the extent to which “traditional, print scholarship and its conventions can be used as a measure in assessing digital history” (“Reviewing”). Many acts of digital history begin with the idea of the online exhibit (often built on the [Omeka](http://omeka.org/) platform). Translating physical materials into their digital simulacra necessitates the idea of paradata. In the field of archaeological visualization and 3-D reconstruction, the [London Charter (item 4.6)](http://www.londoncharter.org/principles/documentation.html) advocates for paradata documents that detail and discuss the transformations of materials into their digital counterparts and the choices made to effect that transformation, because examining that process is necessary to understand the full meaning of the digital work. The creation of such paradata documents (however instantiated) should be an integral part of digital pedagogy in history so that the digital transformations do not become unmoored from the real world. In many respects, the concept of paradata for digital pedagogy ties into other kinds of reflective pedagogical practice such as [e-portfolios](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/eportfolio). Paradata enable novel forms of digital work to fit into the existing patterns and expectations of assessment, even while they subtly shift the goalposts of what becomes “normal” in historical work. The artifacts collected for this keyword represent examples that lay a pathway for us to employ this vision of a digital pedagogy of history, whether that teaching takes place in a classroom or in public, online or off. These artifacts - embody approaches that embrace an open approach to researching and to crafting history (including ideas around failing in public—see also the “ [Failure](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/failure/) ” keyword in this volume), - engage students with other modes of historical “writing” (where *writing* is a synonym for both crafting and communicating the results of historical method), - are explicitly or implicitly are entangled with the concept of paradata, and - provide models for reuse and assessment. The artifacts are arranged in an order that should facilitate the integration of digital pedagogies into one’s teaching and research. They move from general exercises that embed openness in the student’s research practice, to ways of allowing students to engage the wider public in the process of historical research, to more creative examples of student work. This vision of history is very outward facing, and so it helps to turn our teaching inside out; the teaching of history becomes an act of public history in this model. Public history is ever aware of its audiences. As in the discussion for the “ [Public](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/public) ” keyword, the act of making work outward facing is itself transgressive. Other keywords in this collection that are germane to history as envisioned here include “ [Blogging](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/blogging),” “ [ePortfolio](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/eportfolio),” “ [Gaming](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/gaming),” “ [Play](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/play),” “ [Mapping](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/mapping),” and “ [Text Analysis](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/text-analysis).” Digital pedagogy in history changes not just how we teach but how we *do* history—how we work on our own, with colleagues, with students, and with the public. ## Artifacts View  [Shawn Graham](http://electricarchaeology.ca/),*Carleton University* [History](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/History) [Assignment](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/search/type/Assignment) [View original](http://site.craftingdigitalhistory.ca/rubric-and-assessment.html#weekly-work) #### Artifact Name ### Fail Log and Open Notebook Shawn Graham #### Curatorial note This assignment operationalizes [Caleb McDaniel’s arguments](http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/open-notebook-history.html) for why historians should make the historical research process open to inspection, situating the idea within practices familiar to historians (“Open”). The “Fail Log” assignment surfaces the hidden gotchas of doing digital work and permits students a way of showing their work. As students all have different starting points with digital materials, these notebooks and the sharing of materials can be used to help build community and support. Mark Sample called this approach [“flogging,” or fail logging](https://wayback.archive.org/web/20150124022659/http://sites.davidson.edu/hacking/course-guidelines/) (“Course”). The open notebook can also be an effective introduction to open peer review journal and book projects, such as those undertaken by [Michelle Moravec](http://michellemoravec.com/michelle-moravec/). It parallels more familiar forms such as course blogging. —Shawn Graham  Ryan Cordell,*Northeastern University* [History](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/History) [Assignment](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/search/type/Assignment) [View original](http://s18tot.ryancordell.org/assignments/unessay/) #### Artifact Name ### “The Unessay” Ryan Cordell #### Curatorial note How do we assess artifacts in history that don’t look like essays? One answer is to frame them as “unessays,” where the student chooses their own platform, their own expressive medium, to examine a question. Particularly for digital work, the unessay shifts the focus from technical competency to how the medium and the argument intersect, reinforce, or contradict each other. Daniel Paul O’Donnell coined the ideas and rationale behind the [unessay](http://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/Teaching/the-unessay); in this artifact, Ryan Cordell operationalizes the concept and provides examples of student work, from an imaginative “manifesto” by “Ada Lovelace” to highly annotated code to *Tumblr* photo-essays. —Shawn Graham  Jack Dougherty,*Trinity College* [History](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/History) [Assignment](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/search/type/Assignment) [View original](http://commons.trincoll.edu/cssp/seminar/annotate-with-hypothesis/) #### Artifact Name ### Collaborative Annotation Jack Dougherty #### Curatorial note In this assignment, Jack Dougherty shows how to use [the Hypothes.is Web annotation tool](http://web.hypothes.is/) as part of a seminar in history. This work was discussed in a public Webinar hosted by Jeremy Dean of [Hypothes.is](http://web.hypothes.is/) (viewable at [www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWXbF-IDCUY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWXbF-IDCUY)). Collaborative annotation allows the instructor to model close reading in the open and helps the students to learn this disciplinary practice. Dougherty’s materials, and the webinar participants’ discussion, provide multiple examples and advice on building collaborative annotation assessment for history students. For more information on annotation, see the “ [Annotation](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/annotation) ” keyword in this volume. —Shawn Graham  Ian Milligan,*University of Waterloo* [History](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/History) [Syllabus](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/search/type/Syllabus) [View original](https://ianmilli.wordpress.com/teaching/hist-303-syllabus/) #### Artifact Name ### HIST303 History Gone Digital: An Introduction Ian Milligan #### Curatorial note This syllabus provides an example of a course designed explicitly to build digital skills for historians. Ian Milligan’s focus is on hands-on engagement with a wide variety of tools (including *Omeka*, *Sketchup Make*, the *Google N-gram Viewer*, and the tutorials published by [*The Programming Historian* Web site](http://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/) \[“Lesson”\]) that a digital historian might reasonably be expected to use as part of their practice. It is pitched at the undergraduate level and frames that playful exploration of tools in the wider contexts of historiography, methods, and workflows. Its assessment exercises focus on the process of working with the materials. —Shawn Graham  Evan Bissell,*Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, University of California, Berkeley* Ora Wise [History](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/History) [Lesson plan](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/search/type/Lesson%20plan) [View original](http://scalar.usc.edu/anvc/the-knotted-line/curriculum-guide), [PDF version](http://docs.google.com/file/d/0BynaievnTP0pdHozZjQ5LXlFLWM/edit) #### Artifact Name ### The Knotted Line Curriculum Guide Evan Bissell and Ora Wise #### Curatorial note [*The Knotted Line*](http://scalar.usc.edu/anvc/the-knotted-line/index) is a multimedia exploration of the United States’ entangled history of freedom and incarceration. It is built using the [Scalar](http://scalar.usc.edu/scalar/) publishing platform for scholarly born-digital content. This curriculum guide provides a rich set of remixable lesson and workshop plans and prompts for using *The Knotted Line* in one’s class (including some multi-week projects, complete with learning objectives and assessment structures, like “ [Flipping the Script: Making History with Media](http://scalar.usc.edu/anvc/the-knotted-line/flipping-the-script-making-history-with-media) ”). The structure of these plans could be adapted for use with other kinds of born-digital resources. —Shawn Graham  Jeremiah McCall,*Cincinnati Country Day School* [History](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/History) [Rubric](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/search/type/Rubric) [View original](http://historicalsimulations.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/historical-twine-project-rubric-1-0.pdf) #### Artifact Name ### Historical Twine Project Rubric Jeremiah McCall #### Curatorial note This artifact and its associated discussion on the history and gaming group blog [Play the Past](http://www.playthepast.org/?p=5752) provide a clear and lucid model for integrating the creation of simulations into one’s creative engagement with digital pedagogy. Jeremiah McCall provides an example and rationale for integrating *Twine*, “an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories” as part of the historian’s toolkit for crafting engaging history (*Twine*). A chief reason is that this engagement confronts students with what they do not know (or cannot know) about the past from the available materials and forces the students to grapple with the ambiguity. —Shawn Graham  William G. Thomas,*University of Nebraska Lincoln* Patrick D. Jones,*University of Nebraska Lincoln* [additional collaborators](http://historyharvest.unl.edu/acknowledgements) [History](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/History) [Project](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/search/type/Project) [View original](http://historyharvest.unl.edu/) #### Artifact Name ### The History Harvest William G. Thomas, Patrick D. Jones, et al. #### Curatorial note *The History Harvest* is a public crowdsourcing project that brings undergraduate historians into a community where they work with members of that community to curate and then exhibit historical artifacts using the [Omeka](http://omeka.org/) platform. Students plan and implement a day where interested members of the public share their historical materials, according to a theme. The students digitize (scan or photograph) the objects, collect the relevant metadata and story, and discuss with the public the implications of putting the material online. The Web exhibit is the final stage in the project. This process gives students experience in applied public history. (For a summary of the lessons learned and suggestions for running one’s own “history harvest”, see Thomas, William G., et al.) —Shawn Graham  Students in the Fall 2014 semester in the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt class (ANP 455),*Michigan State University* Ethan Watrall,*Michigan State University* Brian Geyer, course support,*Michigan State University* [History](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/History) [Project](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/search/type/Project) [View original](http://msu-anthropology.github.io/daea/), [Source code](http://github.com/msu-anthropology/daea-fs14) #### Artifact Name ### Digital Atlas of Egyptian Archaeology (DAEA) Students in the Fall 2014 semester in the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt class (ANP 455), Ethan Watrall, et al. #### Curatorial note The *Digital Atlas of Egyptian Archaeology* (*DAEA*) as a work of collaborative scholarship exemplifies many of the ideas that the previous artifacts point towards. Writing and researching in public includes not just the text but also the code that enables digital scholarship. The code for the *DAEA* is well commented, and it can be repurposed by swapping out the data contained in the “ [sites/AA-sites-popup.csv](https://github.com/msu-anthropology/daea-fs14/blob/master/sites/AA-sites-popup.csv) ” file. The act of putting the source code online allows this student scholarship to be leveraged by other students, expanded, and transformed. An example of student reuse at another university is the [microhistory of Saint John’s, Newfoundland](http://xtina-r.github.io/daea/) (Ross). —Shawn Graham  Melodee Beals,*Loughborough University* [History](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/History) [Assignment](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/search/type/Assignment) [View original](http://github.com/mhbeals/TEI-Close-Reading) #### Artifact Name ### TEI Close Reading Exercise Melodee Beals #### Curatorial note Marking up text with machine-readable semantic encoding has many pedagogical benefits, including forcing close attention to a historical text. Melodee Beals’s exercise provides a clear example of how one could incorporate TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) standards for the semantic markup of primary sources found online. In its clarity of exposition and in its arrangement of materials and organization, it is a useful model for the new practitioner of digital history pedagogies to emulate. Beyond the narrow concerns of TEI, this exercise demonstrates how exposing our research and teaching materials to the world (in this case, through a repository on *GitHub*) builds teaching capacity for the rest of us. A useful exercise for students can be to try to improve the exercise by expanding on the parts that tripped them up. —Shawn Graham  Zach Whalen,*University of Mary Washington* [History](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/History) [Tool](https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/search/type/Tool) [View original](http://medium.com/the-fake-news-reader/tiny-flashing-thumbs-how-to-bot-your-way-to-fake-news-success-f834bf44c4b4) #### Artifact Name ### “Tiny Flashing Thumbs: How to Bot Your Way to Fake News Success” Zach Whalen #### Curatorial note An important role of the historian is to humanize the past, while confronting the audience with the simultaneous alienness of it. What Mark Sample calls “bots of conviction” can enable that confrontation (“Protest”). This artifact shows how to make a *Twitter* bot (an account that tweets automatically) powered by a variety of different generators. The potential power of a *Twitter* bot for history is demonstrated by Caleb McDaniel’s [“Every Three Minutes” bot](https://twitter.com/every3minutes), which tweets every three minutes with the historical details of a slave sale in the United States. The associated paradata post by McDaniel, “Slave Sales on *Twitter*,” discusses the underlying research and rationale for this particular bot. Students could use Zach Whalen’s templates to tweet a historical event in real time, to adopt the persona of a historical personage, or to follow McDaniel’s example to uncover similar histories. —Shawn Graham ### Works Cited - Beals, Melodee. “TEI Close Reading.” *GitHub.com/mhbeals*, 30 Dec. 2014, [github.com/mhbeals/TEI-Close-Reading](https://github.com/mhbeals/TEI-Close-Reading). Accessed 24 Feb. 2016. - Bissell, Evan and Ora Wise, eds. “The Knotted Line Curriculum Guide.” *The Knotted Line*, 2014, [scalar.usc.edu/anvc/the-knotted-line/curriculum-guide](http://scalar.usc.edu/anvc/the-knotted-line/curriculum-guide). - Bissell, Evan. “The Knotted Line.” *Scalar,* 19 Aug. 2014, [scalar.usc.edu/anvc/the-knotted-line/index](http://scalar.usc.edu/anvc/the-knotted-line/index). - Blevins, Cameron, and Lincoln Mullins. “Jane, John... Leslie? A Historical Method for Algorithmic Gender Prediction.” *DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly*, vol. 9, no. 3, 2015, [www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/9/3/000223/000223.html](http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/9/3/000223/000223.html). - Cordell, Ryan. “The Unessay.” *Technologies of Text, Spring 2018*, [https://s18tot.ryancordell.org/assignments/unessay/](https://s18tot.ryancordell.org/assignments/unessay/). Accessed 17 Apr. 2019. - Dean, Jeremy, et al. “Collaborative Annotation in the History Classroom.” *YouTube*, uploaded by Jeremy Dean, 31 May 2016, [youtu.be/nWXbF-IDCUY](http://youtu.be/nWXbF-IDCUY). - Dougherty, Jack. “How to Annotate with [Hypothes.Is](http://hypothes.is/). – Cities, Suburbs & Schools Project at Trinity College.” *Cities, Suburbs & Schools Project*, 29 Jan. 2016, [commons.trincoll.edu/cssp/seminar/annotate-with-hypothesis/](https://commons.trincoll.edu/cssp/seminar/annotate-with-hypothesis/). - Gibbs, Frederick W. “New Forms of History: Critiquing Data and Its Representations.” *The American Historian*, no. 7, Feb. 2016, [tah.oah.org/february-2016/new-forms-of-history-critiquing-data-and-its-representations/](http://tah.oah.org/february-2016/new-forms-of-history-critiquing-data-and-its-representations/). Accessed 24 Feb. 2016. - Graham, Shawn. “Fail Log and Open Notebook”. *Course Manual for Crafting Digital History*, 2017, [site.craftingdigitalhistory.ca/rubric-and-assessment.html#weekly-work](http://site.craftingdigitalhistory.ca/rubric-and-assessment.html#weekly-work) - “Lesson Directory.” *Programming Historian*, [programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/](https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/). Accessed 17 Apr. 2019. - McCall, Jeremiah. “Creating Interactive Histories in History Class (*Twine* Teacher Diary)” *Play the Past,* 10 Oct. 2016, [www.playthepast.org/?p=5752](http://www.playthepast.org/?p=5752). - McCall, Jeremiah. “Historical Twine Project Rubric 1.0” *Gaming the Past,* 2017, [historicalsimulations.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/historical-twine-project-rubric-1-0.pdf](http://historicalsimulations.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/historical-twine-project-rubric-1-0.pdf). - McDaniel, W. Caleb. “@Every3Minutes.” *Twitter*, 15 Nov. 2014. Web. 24 Feb. 2016. [twitter.com/every3minutes](http://twitter.com/every3minutes). - McDaniel, W. Caleb. “Open Notebook History.” *W. Caleb McDaniel*, 22 May 2013, [wcm1.web.rice.edu/open-notebook-history.html](http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/open-notebook-history.html). Accessed 24 Feb. 2016. - McDaniel, W. Caleb. “Slave Sales on *Twitter*.” *W. Caleb McDaniel*, 15 Nov. 2014, [wcm1.web.rice.edu/slave-sales-on-twitter.html](http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/slave-sales-on-twitter.html). - Milligan, Ian. “HIST 303 Syllabus” *Ian Milligan: Digital History, Web Archives, and Contemporary History, 2017,*[ianmilli.wordpress.com/teaching/hist-303-syllabus/](https://ianmilli.wordpress.com/teaching/hist-303-syllabus/). - Moravec, Michelle. “Writing in Public.” *Michelle Moravec*, 11 Jan. 2013, [michellemoravec.com/michelle-moravec/](http://michellemoravec.com/michelle-moravec/). Accessed 24 Feb. 2016. - O’Donnell, Daniel Paul. “The Unessay.” *Daniel Paul O’Donnell*, 4 Sept. 2012, [people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/Teaching/the-unessay](http://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/Teaching/the-unessay). Accessed 24 Feb. 2016. - “Principle 4 - Documentation.” *The London Charter for the Computer-Based Visualisation of Cultural Heritage*, 2009, [www.londoncharter.org/principles/documentation.html](http://www.londoncharter.org/principles/documentation.html). - Robertson, Stephen. “Reviewing Digital History: An Exchange on Digital Harlem in the *American Historical Review*.” *Dr Stephen Robertson*, 11 Feb. 2016, [drstephenrobertson.com/article/reviewing-digital-history-digital-harlem-in-the-american-historical-review/](http://drstephenrobertson.com/article/reviewing-digital-history-digital-harlem-in-the-american-historical-review/). Accessed 24 Feb. 2016. - Robertson, Stephen. “The Differences between Digital Humanities and Digital History.” *Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016*, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein, U of Minnesota P, 2016, [dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/76](http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/76). - Ross, Christina. “St. John’s Micro-History Mapping Project” *Github, [xtina-r.github.io/daea/](http://xtina-r.github.io/daea/).* Accessed 8 Apr. 2015. - Sample, Mark. “A Protest Bot is a Bot So Specific You Can't Mistake It for Bullshit: A Call for Bots of Conviction". *Medium*, 30 May 2014, [medium.com/@samplereality/a-protest-bot-is-a-bot-so-specific-you-cant-mistake-it-for-bullshit-90fe10b7fbaa#.k7zhd3p6e](http://medium.com/@samplereality/a-protest-bot-is-a-bot-so-specific-you-cant-mistake-it-for-bullshit-90fe10b7fbaa#.k7zhd3p6e). - Sample, Mark. “Course Guidelines.” *Hacking Remixing Design*, 2015 [web.archive.org/web/20150124022659/http:/sites.davidson.edu/hacking/course-guidelines/](http://web.archive.org/web/20150124022659/http:/sites.davidson.edu/hacking/course-guidelines/). - Thomas, William G., and Patrick D. Jones. “The History Harvest.” [historyharvest.unl.edu](http://historyharvest.unl.edu/). - Thomas, William G., et al. “History Harvest: What Happens When Students Collect and Digitize the People’s History?” *Perspectives on History*, Jan 2013, [www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/january-2013/history-harvests](http://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/january-2013/history-harvests). - *Twine*. [twinery.org/](http://twinery.org/). Accessed 5 Oct. 2017. - Watrall, Ethan, et al. “The Digital Atlas of Egyptian Archaeology.” *Github,* 14 Aug. 2016, [github.com/msu-anthropology/daea-fs14](http://github.com/msu-anthropology/daea-fs14). - Whalen, Zach. “Tiny Flashing Thumbs: How to Bot your way to Fake News Success.” *Medium*. 3 Feb. 2017, [medium.com/the-fake-news-reader/tiny-flashing-thumbs-how-to-bot-your-way-to-fake-news-success-f834bf44c4b4](http://medium.com/the-fake-news-reader/tiny-flashing-thumbs-how-to-bot-your-way-to-fake-news-success-f834bf44c4b4). --- ### Citation --- ### Related Links [[]]