Once upon a time, I worked at the Hawaii Council for the Huamnities, which runs the Hawaii History Day Project. Think of it like district and state level Science Fair competition, but with history. Even before I worked at the Council, I was involved in History Day as a judge and resource for students. And for many years after I continued to judge and serves a consultant. Seven years ago, the National History Day office introduced a new medium: Web Site. When I first heard about this, I was really excited. The 4 traditional mediums are: Essay, Display Board, Media Presentation, and Performance. I thought it would like combining the best elments of the Essay and Media presentation mediums. Sadly, my expectations were a bit dashed.
The first year we tested out the Web Site Medium, it was a complete disaster. I know because the Council had me as a judge the web sites for every district run-off. Instead of seeing the best of the Essay and Media formats, the Web Site was the new Display Board. The problem with the display board is that it attracts the students who usually want to the do the bare minimum. What I saw that first year was largely students who realized that this was even easier than Display Board because they did not have to purchase a poster board. And for the next 3 years, I continued to judge web sites. Things did get a little better once the teacher got more comfortable with medium.
I realize now, though, part of the problem was me. The term “digital humanities” was not even on my radar. I really did not have a solid idea about what reallly made a good history web project. I had seen many good web sites with informative text and links to primary resources, but really major difference was accessibility to information, and not how the medium itself could enhance the our understanding. It was only at towards the end of ICS 111, when I became aware of the growing “digital humanities” movement.
Here is a sample History Day Web Site Project about Tinker vs. Des Moines.
Here is a sample History Day Web Site Project about Alice Paul and the struggle for Women’s Rights.
Here is a link to the National Archive’s Educators Resource page