Hybrid Journalism Article

 

Jandoli Institute Publishes Payne/Moritz Hybrid Article The second article in Round 2 of the Jandoli Institute's Hybrid Journalism project was published today.  The article, History, Here and Now: The Issue of Presentism and Relevance, is a collaboration between Phillip Payne, Chair of the Department of History, and Brian Moritz, director of the Jandoli School of Communication's online M.A. programs in sports journalism and digital journalism.  In the article, the authors explore two contradictory trends in American society - the decline of history in the nation's educational system and an explosion of popular history across various mediums.

 

Chris Dalton Presented at Cuba Circulating Library

Professor Chris Dalton presented "Early Rail Travel: How National Events Affect Local Life" at the Cuba Circulating Library on March 30. A crowd of 38 attended to hear about the work his students did on the local connection to a national disaster. Professor Dalton and his students enrolled in History 300: Historical Methods and Historiography worked with the Cuba Circulating Library and local historians. According to the Cuba Circulating Library web page: "Over the past few months, the St. Bonaventure University History Department and its students, in coordination with the Cuba Circulating Library and some of the community’s local historians, have pursued a project to understand how historic events on a national scale are able to reflect the life and times of people at more localized level."

The project originated with a tour of the Cuba Cemetery. Again, from the Cuba Circulating Library web page: "In the Cuba Cemetery stands an obelisk which memorializes the life and tragic death of Hiram Chamberlain, who perished in the Ashtabula Railway Disaster on a blizzardy evening on Dec. 29th, 1876. This calamity, now a distant memory of the hazards of early train travel, once occupied the attention of our entire nation. Even now, the collapse of the Ashtabula Bridge and the plummeting of the Lake Shore & Michigan passenger train to the bottom of the gulch remains one of the deadliest train accidents in American history."

The project made use of local historical newspapers that have been digitized, examining the impact of a distant tragedy on the nation but also on Cuba residents. Students could see the increased interconnection created by newspapers and railroads.

The project was funded by a Connections grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

Different Games are a Fun Type of Learning

Andrew Kruszka, adolescent education and history major, has an opinion piece in the opion section of the March 18 of The Bona Venture. Check out Different Games are Fun a Fun Type of Learning In History 206: Introduction to Pubic History we are using games to explore how one designs history for different audiences and, also the Civil War. If you want to explore more of the local history of the Civil War, check out the Friedsam Library Civil War Collection.

Remote Internship at Idaho State Archives

This if from the Idaho State Historial Society's News Letter, on the same page. Thomas Chaddock is doing a remote intership using TheirStory. Thomas played a big role in the archiving the pandemic at SBU project. 

Thomas Chaddock | Intern, Idaho State Archives My name is Thomas Chaddock and I am a junior at St. Bonaventure University in Allegany, New York. I currently work alongside HannaLore as an oral history intern. Even though I have only been an intern for a short time, I have already gained valuable insight into the work of historians, archivists, and the agency. By using the professional skills I gained from HannaLore, I have deepened my critical thinking skills to produce impactful public-facing history. I appreciate this experience and look forward to making a positive contribution at the ISHS.

Working with Games and Archival Materials

Students in History 206 are hard at work in the Friedsam Memorial Library trying to figure out how to build a game that explains the origins of the American Civil War.

 

AR/VR - the future of history?

This week Dr. Gabriel Swarts meet with students in History 419: Digital History and Archival practices to talk about the changing field of history and the role that augmented reality and virtual realy will play in it. Then the students got to break out some VR headsets to play.
 

Intro to Public History offered in the spring

 

This is a great class for students interested in careers in education or the culturals (i.e. museums and similar institutions). We focus on how to turn historical content into public history. Our major project is doing research in the St. Bonaventure Archives and turning it into an educational game. Specifically, we work on the Civil War special collections, the core of which is the Mark H. Dunkelman and Michael J. Winey 154th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

Who should take this class?  

-- students interested in the Civil War

-- students interested in designing educational games and exhibits for the public

-- students who enjoy doing hands-on projects 

Archiving the Pandemic Experience at St. Bonaventure University

 The St. Bonaventure University Archives is pleased to announce the launch of their new website St. Bonaventure during COVID-19. The project was created by archival interns Josie Barcley, Thomas Chaddock, Alex Jodush, Kurt Stitzel, and Jackson West.

The site offers users insight into what life has been like for students, faculty, and staff during the COVID-19 Pandemic. It provides an opportunity to learn about the numerous challenges present on and off campus, looking at changes in the classrooms, at various dining facilities, and in the residence halls.

The website includes the recollections of members of the Bona community relating their thoughts about and experiences during the pandemic. It also includes graphs, charts, and images as further evidence describing this unusual time.

The project is still active and we encourage members of the St. Bonaventure community to participate by filling out the survey available on the home page of the site. Your answers are completely voluntary and made anonymous once posted to the site. You can share with us as much or little information as possible.

If you would like to learn more about this project, or wish to share your pandemic experience, please contact us @pandemic2020[pa1] .

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@pandemic2020 [pa1]

Documenting the Pandemic at SBU Update

Homemade Face Mask with Instructions

We now have a Google Doc explaining three ways you can share your experience with the archives, and thus the future.  (1) You can email the document to pandemic2020@sbu.edu.  You can do it as a Google Doc (which it is), download it as a MS Word doc, or cut and past it into MS Word.  (2) You can complete this Google Form.  If you want to send us audio, video or pictures use WeTransfer to send them to pandemic2020@sbu.edu.  WeTransfer is easy to use.  Just enter your email, the destination email of pandemic2020@sbu.edu, select the file and let it send the file.  It works on most devices.

If you work or study at St. Bonaventure University, we hope you take a few minutes to reflect and document this experience.

History classes work together

Students in History 106: Art of Historical Detection helped out the students in History 206:  Introduction to Public History by playtesting the Civil War games they built. It's all part of the design process.

Dr. Roth discusses history podcasting with students

On November 4, Dr. Andrew Roth, former interim president of St. Bonaventure and current Scholar in Residence at the Jefferson Educational Society, discussed his new venture with students in History 206.  Dr. Roth is starting a podcast series The American Tapestry.  He has been working on this for some time, including lectures at the Chautauqua Institute.

You can listen to him explain the project on Tom Pysz’s “WeQuestion We Understand.”   Dr. Roth starts at minute 30.

Design thinking in a history class

 You can't tell from the picture but if you could read the whiteboard you would see that in History 206 we reversed engineered a game to look at the way information is organized.  Lots of diagrams and such. We want to think about how to take content (our research) and organize it into something folks can use and understand.

History 206: Introduction to Public History

MWF 11:30 to 12:20 -- Dr. Phillip Payne

Like the Civil War?  Like to get your hands dirty?  Thinking about a career in museums, archives, or an education-related field?  History 206 is the class for you!

What is public history?  It’s history all around us.  It’s about how people create, experience, and use history.  It’s on the web, in museums, in archives, in parks and all sort of places.

How will we do it?  Students in the Public History class actively create.  You will convert research into games, among other things.  Along the way, students learn:

• Original Research
• Presentation for the public
• Gamification
• Design Principles   

Minecraft, History, and the Industrial Revolution

The Harvard Business Review Podcast has an interview with Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft that has two interesting points for SBU history.  He notes that people love Minecraft and students in the public history class are working in Minecraft.  When asked about coping with the current technological disruption, he correctly notes that we've seen this before.  We should study the history of the industrial revolution for insight into the digital revolution.

Public History does Design

Students enrolled in the Intro to Public History course are taking their first crack at designing a game.  Having looked at some design and organizational techniques and played some games to see those ideas in practice, they get to break into teams and create.  To see how history (theme) and games (design) could merge, they played Tesla v. Edison, The Grizzled, and Freedom: The Underground Railroad.  Thier first task is to create a simple card game.  Later, we'll add some history content from the archives.

Connecting the dots between liberal arts and careers

It may be to the outsider that some of the things on appearing on the blog don't add up - what's up with a history department and GIS, THATCamp, Escape Rooms, Game Design, and other stuff.  Yes, we still teach history. Students read books and write papers.  That's not going away.  In fact, the bulk of what we do falls into those categories.  The ability to deeply read a text, write a clear paper, and use content knowledge to place events in context has never been more important.

However, we're also adding some spice to how things have been done in a history class.  Some of it, frankly, is experimentation with the goal of having fun.  Why not?  Fun is a powerful thing when it comes to learning.

 But as you can tell from other postings, we're giving serious thought to the relationship between the liberal arts and careers.  For starters, reading, writing, and content are important for life and work, but we also live in an age when things are changing rapidly and much of that change is driven by technology and data.  For those of you who graduated pre-internet, think about how much our work, entertainment, and lives have changed.  Frankly, there are now many careers that didn't exist 20 years ago and who knows what will exist 20 years from now.

There is a lot being written about this topic.  We're urged to "adapt and survive" and to "race with the machine."

Fair enough.  How?

This brings us back to the innovations we've been introducing to history classes.  There is one word you need on your resume today, and that is digital and so you see our work in digital history.  This is why we're working in GIS, website creation, podcast, and such.  Students should have digital on their resumes in a concrete and professional way.

We're also giving some serious thought to how design fits into this - hence the game design and gamification.

We've been working with Bill Bechdel of XPhobia and Jennifer Pulver of SBU's events office to create an escape room summer camp.  Don't know what an escape room is?  Check out the Olean Times Herald story on Bill's room.  According to Bill, “It’s like stepping into a movie — you’re a part of the action,” he said. “My idea is to bring as much immersion to this as possible.”  For participants, it is an authentic, immersive experience.  

For educators, it's a chance to blend content with design in the curriculum.  It's a chance for educators and students alike to learn.  The next step is to take the ideas we develop with the escape room camp and bring them into classes.  That, it seems, is the key to adapting - and having fun.

Careers and the History Major

Paul Sturtevant's article for the American Historical Association, "History is Not a Useless Major:  Fighting Myths with Data," offers up some data from the American Community Survey on the fate of history majors as they pursue careers.  We've long known that most history majors don't go on to become professional historians, but that doesn't mean they don't pursue careers.

Check out one of my favorite points from the article, screenshot ⇩ Turns out history majors get jobs.

However, we're not oblivious to the concerns who fear that studying history.  We're incorporating digital and design projects into our classes, especially the digital and public history classes, to help students learn 21st-century skills and articulate the skills and knowledge they develop in our classes.

Turns out nearly half of history majors go on to graduate school ⟱ and many go on to work in education, law, and business.

Public History Game Design is back for the Fall

Is it fun?  Are games fun?  What is fun?  Should we play?  Here are some thoughts...

Next fall we will be doing the game design assignment again in History 206:  Introduction to Public History.  Prepping for that Dennis Frank send us a link to a collection of Ted Talks on Board Game Geek about board games.

While we're at it, let's check out video games in the classroom with Classroom Game Design.

Liberal Arts and Jobs...

This piece, "Liberal Arts Majors Have Plenty of Job Prospects, if They have some Specific Skills, Too," in the Chronicle of Higher Education points out the value of a liberal arts education when combined with managerial and technical skills.  This is certainly a message we've been preaching in the digital and public history courses.

From the article:

"Employers really value soft skills that are the bedrock of a liberal-arts education," he says. But many employers are also looking for applicants with additional, specific skills, such as knowledge of Java or other programming languages, or proficiency with graphic-design tools like InDesign or Adobe Creative Cloud. "It’s not a matter of shutting down the classics department and turning it into a business degree," he says.
...
The company identified skills in eight fields, and then found an additional 863,000 entry-level jobs for graduates with skills in one or more of those fields. For example, the analysis found an additional 137,000 entry-level jobs for liberal-arts graduates who had data-analysis or management skills. It also found that such data-analysis jobs paid an average of $12,700 above the average salary for jobs traditionally open to liberal-arts graduates without such skills.

Teaching Bonas History

There is a nice article in today's Chronicle, Why a College Should Teach Its Own History, that is worth reading.  We don't teach a class on St. Bonaventure's history, but students in students who take public history, digital history and history internship often spend a lot of time working in our archives telling the history of Bonas.  It's a great way to learn something about their school, do original research, and learn some of the skills of public and digital history.