History Harvest Interview
Department of History
Author
06/03/2019
Added
85
Plays
Description
This is an interview with Prof. Patrick D. Jones about the spring 2019 History Harvest, which focused on Lincoln's historic Zoo Bar
Searchable Transcript
Toggle between list and paragraph view.
- [00:00:04.480]Both of us were interested in a variety of questions.
- [00:00:07.709]How is history still relevant
- [00:00:11.370]in a 21st century university context
- [00:00:15.540]and in a context of transformative technology
- [00:00:19.860]with digital scholarship emerging at the time.
- [00:00:23.670]How do we continue to appeal to a 21st century student,
- [00:00:29.150]who is deeply embedded in that kind of digital culture
- [00:00:32.930]that we're a part of and a fast moving culture
- [00:00:36.930]that's very forward looking as well,
- [00:00:38.770]so how do we create new ways of approaching
- [00:00:41.560]historical learning that might appeal to students?
- [00:00:44.800]So, we were both very interested
- [00:00:47.960]in a student led community based approach to learning
- [00:00:52.630]and so we crafted the history harvest project in class,
- [00:00:56.840]that we've been doing for a number of years now
- [00:00:59.420]that brings together a circle of students in the class
- [00:01:03.820]and we focus on a theme or community and their history,
- [00:01:09.290]and so, I've done that class focused on
- [00:01:13.010]the African American community in North Omaha,
- [00:01:15.170]where I live, I've done it on the refugee communities
- [00:01:18.580]here in Lincoln, we've had other professors
- [00:01:21.020]look at other communities Professor Steinocker,
- [00:01:23.620]right now is looking at the Italian American community
- [00:01:26.360]in Omaha, but the idea is to bring students in.
- [00:01:30.710]They gain historical knowledge about these communities
- [00:01:34.460]and learn how those specific histories
- [00:01:37.470]link to the broader history of the United States
- [00:01:40.140]and even globally when it comes to issues
- [00:01:41.930]of immigration or enslavement, etc.
- [00:01:46.490]They learn core historical skills.
- [00:01:49.234]How to analyze resources and artifacts
- [00:01:53.360]that they collect based on this.
- [00:01:55.740]How to put those together to draw meaning out of the past.
- [00:01:58.630]Meaning that might resonate and be useful with today.
- [00:02:01.520]We have lots of issues around immigration,
- [00:02:03.790]for instance today.
- [00:02:05.510]So what does it mean to think about those
- [00:02:07.500]contemporary issues and the context of previous waves
- [00:02:10.439]of immigration to a state like Nebraska,
- [00:02:13.440]where we've had wave after wave of immigration here.
- [00:02:17.920]Or what does that immigration and migration mean
- [00:02:20.460]to indigenous communities that persist
- [00:02:22.910]and remain here as well and we're here preceding
- [00:02:26.130]those other communities as well.
- [00:02:28.480]So they learn content,
- [00:02:30.320]they learn historical analytic skills,
- [00:02:34.040]they also learn digital research skills as well.
- [00:02:37.280]They learn how to use a camera.
- [00:02:38.590]They learn how to outreach to the community,
- [00:02:41.070]connect with the media, they also use the Omeka system,
- [00:02:45.570]which is an online archiving system,
- [00:02:48.410]so they learn how to encode metadata
- [00:02:50.890]and things like that, into archives
- [00:02:54.100]and to create an archive that again,
- [00:02:56.880]like the making invisible histories visible program,
- [00:03:00.160]makes those resources available
- [00:03:02.580]to anybody that has a digital connection.
- [00:03:06.030]So, teachers, other professors, students
- [00:03:09.310]and community members and I think one of the
- [00:03:13.010]interesting things about the history harvest project
- [00:03:15.260]is that it really comes also from a sense
- [00:03:18.300]that most history and most artifacts,
- [00:03:22.250]most archival materials are not in a library
- [00:03:26.370]or a museum or a formal archive,
- [00:03:29.100]but they still remain in the hands of everyday people
- [00:03:33.080]in the objects that they keep and maintain
- [00:03:36.400]from over the course of their and their families lives
- [00:03:39.780]and the meanings that they ascribe to those artifacts.
- [00:03:42.860]So, in that regard, we really think of this
- [00:03:44.540]as a people's history project
- [00:03:48.180]and we invite then local people to come out
- [00:03:51.500]and to share those materials
- [00:03:53.240]and we digitize those materials
- [00:03:55.540]and that's the harvesting part of this history,
- [00:03:58.060]so we go into a community, the African American community
- [00:04:01.290]in North Omaha, the Italian American community,
- [00:04:03.970]the refugee communities here and we invite
- [00:04:06.891]members of those communities to bring out
- [00:04:09.090]the objects and materials or their own stories,
- [00:04:11.640]because we collect oral histories as well,
- [00:04:13.860]and to share those materials with us.
- [00:04:16.648]We don't keep the materials, and so we digitize them,
- [00:04:20.560]so we scan or photograph them,
- [00:04:22.390]we record with a camera, their interviews,
- [00:04:26.980]and then we make that material available
- [00:04:29.490]through the website that we have,
- [00:04:31.140]that's an ever expanding web resource as well.
- [00:04:36.010]This model has been really popular,
- [00:04:38.410]not only with our students here at UNL,
- [00:04:40.500]but it's been influential and taken up by teachers,
- [00:04:45.233]professors at other universities around the country.
- [00:04:49.420]Both at the undergrad level, the graduate level,
- [00:04:51.849]in education, in public history,
- [00:04:54.710]as well as K through 12 levels as well.
- [00:04:59.040]That also flows into one of the projects
- [00:05:02.720]that I'm doing currently, which is last year,
- [00:05:05.780]we got a significant grant from the
- [00:05:08.500]Humanities Without Walls consortium
- [00:05:11.760]and that grant is gonna allow us
- [00:05:15.140]to work with the Lincoln public school system,
- [00:05:18.090]we're in the process of doing this right now,
- [00:05:20.360]to think about and think through
- [00:05:22.610]what would it mean to do the history harvest program
- [00:05:26.530]and project at the upper elementary,
- [00:05:28.986]the middle school and the high school level.
- [00:05:32.540]So, this is a partnership with my colleague,
- [00:05:35.034]Aaron Johnson is over in the school of education here,
- [00:05:39.167]where we've got some graduate assistants,
- [00:05:41.330]we're working with local teachers
- [00:05:42.820]and the social studies expert in the Lincoln public school,
- [00:05:47.200]to think about what would this mean
- [00:05:48.830]to view this at the fifth grade level,
- [00:05:50.390]the eighth grade level and the 11th grade level,
- [00:05:54.380]and to have a succession, a curricular perspective
- [00:05:59.810]that would think about how students could use
- [00:06:02.350]the history harvest to grow their understanding of history
- [00:06:06.150]and the skills that you can get from doing
- [00:06:08.880]historical educational work, so we're really excited
- [00:06:13.290]about that and hope that ultimately
- [00:06:15.430]after this kind of Lincoln model
- [00:06:16.933]gets up and running that this could be a model
- [00:06:19.300]that then school systems, K through 12 school systems
- [00:06:22.790]across the state of Nebraska could adopt
- [00:06:25.680]and buy into, it's really exciting in that regard.
The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!
You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.
Log in to post comments
Comments
0 Comments