Historical thinking–examining primary sources, contextualizing and corroborating them, and forming interpretive narratives–has been a staple of the historical profession since Herodotus and Thucydides debated sources. What has shifted is the concern over how history is taught and how we assess student learning, particularly to young people who will not be historians themselves.  This contest over… Continue reading Elements at the Heart of History Teaching

My project will be a digital collection with teaching tools for my US Women’s History class. I am inspired by the Bracero History Archive, which collects and makes available oral histories and artifacts about the Bracero program. In the early 1980s, Sally Miller, Professor of History at University of the Pacific, and her students interviewed… Continue reading We Also Built Stockton: Experiences of Immigrant Women in Stockton, California

In this blog, I pose three questions that I hope to answer in Teaching and Learning History in the Digital Age. These are questions that I grapple with every year when I teach the U.S. survey to non-history majors, many of whom will never take another history class. Below, I discuss several key concepts about… Continue reading Historical Thinking: Key Concepts

I am a historian of U.S. women and girls with a growing interest in digital humanities. I am a Professor of History at the University of the Pacific (UOP) in Stockton, California. I serve as Chair of the History Department and as a member of UOP’s Gender Studies Board. Over the last two semesters, I… Continue reading Introductory Blog Post for Teaching and Learning History in the Digital Age

In HIST 694: Digital Public History at George Mason University, I have learned more about the work of doing public history online. The course is rooted in understanding the purpose and practice of public history and it explores methods for doing public history in digital spaces. I especially learned about the foundations of the field,… Continue reading Digital Public History: A Reflection

The argument of the final project: Monuments and Memorials: University of the Pacific argues that the University of the Pacific’s hidden histories matter and that they can connect current and past students to the campus. Particular spaces are already well-known; many host monuments and memorials. But these monuments and memorials often tell the stories of… Continue reading Evaluating Digital History Projects

The Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS) was built to empower oral history users to more effectively and efficiently discover information within oral history interviews.  The digital public history creator can link a video or audio file to the OHMS server and then enter searchable data. Searchable data includes metadata, the transcript, and the index.  Indexing… Continue reading Oral History in the Digital Age

My project aims to help alumni and community members connect to the Stockton University of the Pacific campus by telling place-based stories about the university’s monuments and memorials. This week, I conducted an oral history interview with Victor Ornelas (1970), former regent of the University of the Pacific. When Ornelas was a student at UOP,… Continue reading Public Digital History Project: Progress Report 2

Digital technologies open new possibilities for public historians to connect to their audiences. Many rely on mobile devices since ninety percent of adults in the U.S. use such devices. Location-based technologies that are location aware, such as LED/infrared triangulation, radio frequency, Bluetooth Low Energy and Beacons, Node Systems, and WiFi Slam, are being used by… Continue reading New Possibilities in Digital Public History

In February, I visited the Museum of the San Ramon Valley in Danville, California.  I returned again last week to talk to Beverly Lane about possible digital history projects for students and learned more about the digital application that the museum used for the temporary exhibit: “Stir Crazy Quilts: Quilting During the Pandemic,” which runs… Continue reading Digital Applications in a Local History Museum