The State of the Union or A Political Wish List?

Some of my earliest memories as a child were sitting in front of the TV watching Bill Clinton giving his State of the Union message. It was one of the events that sparked my interest in politics. It seemed like such a spectacle. The whole federal government was all in the house chamber, it was on all the major televisions stations (much to my sister’s chagrin), Clinton would pound the podium with his thumb through his fist as he gave every one of his goals for the future or defenses of his past actions, in reaction there would be a standing ovation from half the chamber and aloof stares or even boos from the other half. It just seemed important, but is it?

Article 2 Section 3 of the constitution states “He [the president] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” As the Senate Historian, Donald Ritchie, states, in a great video I have linked to the bottom of the page, George Washington gave the first message to congress and there were congressional subcommittees created based on each one of his paragraphs. I bet President Obama wished congress now would be so compliant. The State of the Union is still supposed to guide the congressional agenda but it does not have to. Congress could take some parts of it or ignore the president’s suggestions entirely. For example, here is a list of objectives President Obama gave in his last State of the Union Message:

Economy
–Most important job is to make the economy better
–Bring more jobs back to America (Tax cuts to manufacturing)
–Increase oversight of trade so less piracy and stealing us ideas
–Train 2 million Americans with skills that will lead directly to a job
–Streamline employment system so people can get jobs easier

Teachers Matter!
–Give teachers flexibility so they are not teaching towards test, reward good teachers fire bad teachers
–States require all students to stay in school until they graduate or turn 18
–Stop doubling of student loan interest rates
–Extend tuition tax credit
–Government funding will decrease if colleges keep charging higher and higher rates

Misc.
–Work on comprehensive immigration reform, stop expelling responsibly illegal immigrants
–Women earn equal pay for equal work
–Tear down regulations that gather money to start businesses
–Keep funding for research and development

Energy
–Open 75% of potential offshore resources of oil and natural gas, require companies to disclose what chemicals they are using to drill, mine for oil or natural gas
–Invest in clean energy, to create new jobs, clean energy tax breaks
–End oil and gas tax subsidies
–Set clean energy standard that creates market for innovation
–Use public lands to power 3 million homes on clean energy
–Incentives for companies to waste less energy

Infrastructure
–Incomplete highs speed broadband network (he wanted to do this last year)
–Use half the money saved from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to pay down the debt and use the other half to fund infrastructure improvement in USA

Homeownership
–Have banks let people refinance at historically low rates to repay bailout to American people
–Smart housing mortgage regulations, financial fraud, oil spill, mercury, healthcare corruption, Wall Street, financial, increase penalties for repeat offenders
–More investigation for mortgage fraud
–Eliminate outdated costly reforms

Taxes
–Pass payroll tax cut, so taxes don’t go up on working Americans
–Reign in Medicare cots
–Have rich pay more taxes if make more than $1 million then should pay at least 30%
–If make less than $250,000 your taxes should not go up

Productivity of Federal Government
–Ban insider trading by members of congress, ban congress from own stock in industries they impact
–All judicial nominations receive up or down vote within 90 days with 50% majority
–Consolidate executive branch bureaucracy
–Politics should be about consensus not being in perpetual party battle
–Government should do what people can’t do themselves and nothing more

–Partnership with Afghanistan
–Stand against terrorism and tyranny, stand for democracy capitalism
–Prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but wants to have peaceful solution
–Save money on military but keep military powerful
–Increase cyber security
–Veterans jobs corp. to help veterans get jobs
–Just like military USA should forget about politics, work as a team, trust each other, have a common resolve.

As I read through this myself I was struck by the similarity between the items mentioned last year and the ones mentioned last night. Why is this? Is it because the president’s major goals cannot be achieved in one year? Is it because Congress refuses to act on Obama’s suggestions? Or could it be because Obama is not effective in implementing all of his policies?
Besides the obligatory “The State of Our Union is Strong” proclamation these also seem like more forward looking statements rather than a comprehensive evaluation of where the country is at that time. More like a wish list than a State of the Union

If the president knows most, if not all, of their policy objectives will not be implemented and the constitution does not mandate a yearly message (just from time to time) then why continue to give a State of the Union every year? As Donald Ritchie says the drama of the SOTU is too good of an opportunity to miss. As the tweets and facebook messages I see today my childhood self is not the only person who watches the SOTU and thinks it is a big deal. Past presidents have also used the media to assist in this process. For example, LBJ pushed back the start time so more people could see it, and now the White House and congress can live tweet as the speech is given. Given all this, I realized the SOTU is less important in showing where the country is at that time or setting the political agenda for the year but it is still important as one of the few times that has enough political drama where the president can reiterate their message directly to the American people.

The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America by Khalil Gibran Muhammad

Khalil Gibran Muhammad’s The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, shows how American sociologists in the late 19th and early 20th century were both affected by and an influence on the racists attitudes of the time. As seen in Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice by David Oshinsky, blacks were imprisoned at far higher rates than whites after the civil war to enforce racial hierarchies and also for the economic benefit of whites. In the Progressive Era there was a call for reform to make their statements more objective by using more data. The sociologist doing this research found blacks were much more likely to be diseased, to die at an early age, and much more likely to go to jail. Muhammad shows that even if these numbers were totally accurate the sociologist’s interpretations of them were flawed. They only distinguished blacks from whites; they did not differentiate between any other immigrant groups. They also did not look at any other social or environmental causes for the increased imprisonment. These researchers assumed this was due to the fact that blacks were inherently inferior so it was useless to help them. This in turn led to less allocation of fund for black neighborhoods, which led to more imprisonment, and the cycle started all over.
The Condemnation of Blackness had many strong points. Muhammad approaches his subject matter from a very unique perspective looking at racist’s attitudes in the fields of sociology and in the North. This shows how pervasive racism was at the time and it is an encouragement for other historians to look beyond just the South when dealing with racism. A good example of this is when Muhammad said Northern whites thought of blacks as distant Southerners so they were uncomfortable with blacks living next door. He also mentioned how sociologists tried to use statistics to bridge the gap between North and South after the civil war even though the interpretation of these numbers was still racist. Another strong point is Muhammad’s discussion of the major theme of Justice. He shows that the justice system is not perfect but socially constructed even if people are using data their interpretations can still be influenced by their attitudes towards race. This should make the reader question the fairness of the justice system in the past as well as in the present. Another interesting point Muhammad brings up is how attitudes change. He does a good job of showing how people, including some African Americans of the time, used social Darwinism to justify their racist attitudes. Muhammad goes on to show how sociologists broadened their explanation for black criminality as more African-American sociologists were being taken seriously in this field.
There were also several weak points to The Condemnation of Blackness. Although Muhammad’s argument is sound his writing style is not as clear as Oshinsky. He, at times, skips around on the topics he is covering and has generalities without giving specific evidence to support his claim. He also focuses on Philadelphia in several of his chapters. His argument is convincing but he does not explain enough how Philadelphia is an accurate representation of all of the North.
Muhammad’s use of sources is impressive but may not be applicable to the attitudes of the broader public. Muhammad used a variety of sociologist’s books such as, W.E.B. Dubois, to a black author with racist’s views, to northern liberals, and southern writers. He does a good job of showing the impact that these works had to the thinking of the time period. However, one hesitation at using these sources is one could as how much do academic writings really affect the general populace? He should have been more clear as to who these writers influenced but he does a good job of explaining their impact on the people who did read these books.

Race, Justice, and Memory in the Criminal Justice System of the American South

I am taking a class entitled Race, Class, and Justice in the American South.  I am required to write a response paper each week, here is my first one:

Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice by David Oshinsky, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice by William Stuntz, and the PBS film entitled Slavery By Another Name dealt with the criminal justice system and race relations in America from Reconstruction until the present through their discussions of the black codes, sharecropping, peonage, the convict lease system, lynching, chain gangs, and attempts to reform the system.

Oshinsky gave an excellent general account of the day-to-day struggles African-Americans prisoners had to endure in the South. By focusing on the infamous Mississippi prison called Parchman Farm, Oshinsky showed that the white leaders of Parchman were motivated by profits and enforcing their superiority over blacks rather than rehabilitating the criminals. The major strength of this book was that it showed the brutality that whites inflicted on the black prisoners. For instance, a white mob put dirt in the mouth of Charley Shepard, a black man, before they lit him on fire so he would burn alive and not die instantly from the fumes. Oshinsky explained that some whites treated blacks worse during the convict lease system compared to slavery because blacks were valuable commodities as slaves but they were expendable during the convict lease period since there was such a huge supply of convict laborers. Another strength of this book was to show the importance of labor history. Worse Than Slavery showed how the lives of black people were ruined when they got convicted on trumped up charges just so whites could force these prisoners to work for no pay on Parchman Farm for the enrichment of the whites. Oshinsky said white southerners were now using the criminal justice system to exert the same control over blacks as they had done previously during slavery. Another strength of this book was to highlight how people’s racial attitudes affected their thinking. For example, white prostitutes were pitied for being in an unfortunate circumstance but black prostitutes were more likely imprisoned.

The major weakness of the book was that it emphasized breadth over depth. Oshinsky talked about many influential incidents, like the Emmitt Till case, over a long time span in only about 250 pages. It was worthwhile to receive a general overview but this book would have benefited from going more in depth on the specifics of these incidents. This would allow for multiple perspectives like an international perspective or from the point of view of the black family who was missing their husband/father. This book also suffered by not emphasizing national politics. In contrast, the Slavery by Another Name film mentioned Theodore Roosevelt’s influence on starting peonage trials in the South even though they were not completely successful. Oshinsky talked about how early 20th century historians said blacks regressed after they were freed but this book would have benefited from including more historiography. This would help the author explain what unique contribution he has made with this book.

The PBS film talked about many of the same issues as Worse Than Slavery and it had many of the same strengths and weaknesses. However, the movie had a unique strength of showing how collective racial memory can overtake the historical accuracy of past events. For example, an ancestor of a prominent white farm owner was interviewed for the film. She explained how the family lore about her ancestor was that he was a good man. However, this woman learned, later on, that her ancestor brutalized and killed a black person working on his farm. This showed the power of collective memory when a person’s recollection of her ancestor was so totally inaccurate in relation to the real man.

Stuntz’s wrote that the criminal justice system is broke because the rule of law has collapsed, discrimination against black people has risen, and the justice system has become harsher since the 1960’s and 1970’s. In addition, Stuntz said America does not have equal protection under the law because police do not enforce the law equally. Thus, the discretion and prejudices of law enforcement officials come into play when deciding to arrest or not arrest a suspect. It is interesting to note that Stuntz said the centralization of the criminal justice system is a problem whereas Oshinsky said almost all of the reforms in Mississippi came from the federal government. The Collapse of American Criminal Justice takes an interesting approach by looking at history to explain the problems of the present criminal justice system. Stuntz admits there is a possibility that he is being presentist but he still takes this approach. As I have only read the first 40 pages it will be interesting to note how successful Stuntz is in using history to help him find solutions for the present issues of the criminal justice system.

Discussion Questions
The Oshinsky book and the PBS film dealt a lot with the brutality that whites inflicted on blacks. What is the best way historians should deal with these issues? Is it harder to stay objective when dealing with such emotional issues?

How much can we use history to help explain and solve current issues? Would it be fair to take lessons from the convict-lease system and apply them to the illegal immigration issue that is currently being debated in congress?

White Paper for Website, “Visualizing Education”

“Our Little Folks”: Typical School Book of the Time Period 1865-1910

What affected American public school books from just after the Civil war until the outbreak of World War I? What impact did these forces have on the actual texts of these books? These are the questions my website, Visualizing Education http://matthewtkeough.omeka.net attempts to answer using close reading, text mining, and visualizations of textbooks published from 1865-1910. This white paper will describe the website and how it could be improved, the audience, how it is innovative, how text mining and visualizations are an appropriate use of technology to explore this subject, the accessibility features, and how this site can be built upon by others. I will also explain the decisions I made in designing Visualizing Education and the lessons I learned through this process.
Visualizing Education has three main sections, the homepage, an archive of 18 full text versions of public school books from 1865-1910, and a visualizations page. The homepage lets the user know what questions the website is trying to answer and gives a brief introduction to America in the time period under consideration, which is Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. The homepage also introduces the user to the major themes of the school books and describes William Holmes McGuffey, the most famous and influential textbook authors of this time. Logistically, the homepage also gives an introduction to the website and explains the purpose of each tab. The homepage turned out well. It is very clean and a good starting point for the user. It does have a lot of text but it introduces the website and the other pages are less text heavy. The “School Books” tab leads the user to an archive of the 18 school books used. The first part has the title and mainly just the publication information. I tried to keep the text out of this section but was not always successful. If one clicks on the title it leads to the Dublin Core metadata with the publication information clearly displayed. It also has the full text of each of the school book. Sometimes the line and paragraph formatting was not ideal but I thought the main goal was to enable users to create visualizations and text mining outputs and this format serves that goal well. In addition the location of each publisher is listed on a map along with the other Duplin Core metadata. I chose to use an archive style format for this part of the website because the texts were the most important aspects and they do not have images to display. This format has buttons to tell the user what page they are on unlike if I just created an exhibit page. This is important to make sure the user knows there are more school books on the next page. The last section of the Visualizing Education is the Visualizations tab. This section is comprised of the visualizations that I created. I used my previous research to come up with some of the ideas for the visualizations but, in addition, I also came up with some new areas of research that this site enabled me to conduct. I chose to layout this part of the website as an exhibit because this format allowed me to display both images and text. The ability to display images was vital to this section since it dealt with visualizations, maps, and text mining results.
Even though this website does a lot well there is also a tremendous amount of room for improvement. The website does an excellent job of making these texts available in a format that is easy to use for the user to create their own visualizations. It also displays the visualizations that I created in an effective manner, which confirm previous scholarship and, in some cases, create new areas of research. The main area for improvement that I just did not know how to do is to create a plugin for Voyant directly into the archive of textbooks on my website. Ideally, there would be a section of the websit where you could just check off the texts you want to research, click a button, and it would take the user directly to the Voyant text mining page. An even better choice would be to use the R programming language to be able to do the text mining and visualizations all within Visualizing Education. Having this plugin would make the user experience better and eliminate the need for the long instructions on the homepage. In addition, I had hoped to format the website so there would be a small picture of the visualization on the main Visualization tab website as an introduction. However, I could not figure out how to do that within the given amount of time. Finally, I would have also liked to include more text to get a better appreciation of how the content changed over time. However, I was limited by the amount of texts that were already available online through the internet archive or Project Gutenberg. There is enough text to get a general picture of the time period but not enough to see changes over time within this period. In addition, I would have liked to have a section where people could upload their own textbooks from this time period. I do have a small “Contribute an Item” at the bottom of the site but I would like to make this more prominent and easier to use.
The target audience for the website is high school students who would like to get an introduction in digital history as well as school books during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. The subject matter would appeal to them since school children can relate to textbooks even if they have different content in them. This would hopefully be helpful in having the students think what are the differences between their textbooks and the school books on Visualizing Education. The site is set up to be easy to use. The visualizations that are already produced give the students an introduction as to what is possible. My instructions tell the student users how to create their own inquiries using Voyant. This will hopefully make them more involved in the project.
Visualizing Education fits in with previous scholarship but also has an innovative approach. Other books like Ward McAfee’s Religion, Race, and Reconustruction: The Public School in the Politics of the 1870’s and Dolores Sullivan “William Holmes Mcguffey: Schoolmater to the Nation” and other books talk about similar issues how the textbooks deal with race, gender, and issues of morality, industry, and patriotism. However, these studies use as evidence just one or two of the selected readings to prove their point. They do not look at the entire text of all of these school books to look at general trends. Visualizing Education is innovative because it looks at the same content but in new ways using text mining and visualizations to confirm old claims and to investigate new areas in an easy to use format. This also shows how the website is a good use of the technology. It is not just a PDF version of these texts. It enables users to use new technology to explore this content in a new way. The user gets a broader sense of the content and is not limited to close reading of a limited number of school books.
The archive portion of the website makes Visualizing Education a perfect tool to be built upon. In the future, users will be able to not only submit their own content but, right now, they can create their own visualizations. They can easily browse to the book or books they are interested from the “School Books” tab and copy and paste that URL into Voyant to obtain their text mining results. The visualizations will give users ideas on the things they can do with these tools. In addition, the texts are all past their copyright dates so there is no additional steps or regulations people will need to take into consideration in order to use the books on their own.
My website will be accessible to everyone with an internet connection and comply with the American with Disabilities Act. The site is free to use with no membership fees. I have attached a PDF copy of all the texts where this was available. This will enable people who are partially blind to input this into screen readers so they can at least read the contents of these textbooks. I have also placed my contact information on the website so people can email me if they have any issues with using this website.
There were many decisions that I made in order to improve the usability and historical scholarly level of this website. I placed an introduction on the homepage of the website to give the reader an overview of the major themes of the time period. I also included all of the text so people could do close reading of the text themselves and not just rely on my visualizations. The texts were already online but they were not in the best format and there were many errors included in the texts. Thus, I had to make a lot of decisions about how to clean them up. I found Project Gutenberg’s HTML file was the best quality so I used this website whenever possible. When that was not available I used the Daisy file in the Internet Archive. I then used the HTML file, which still included many errors. I decided to do paste the contents my notepad on my computer, remove all the formatting, and do a universal search for any extra spaces, erroneous text like that referring to Google, “-“ symbols where a word was broken up by a line, and any symbols that were mistakenly outputted by the Optical Character Recognition OCR software. I got rid of the formatting because I was experiencing a problem uploading these huge amounts of texts into Omeka unless I got rid of the formatting. I replaced the erroneous symbols and extra spaces with an empty space to help improve the text mining results. I also used the following website http://textfixer.com/tools/remove-line-breaks.php to get rid of the extra spaces that were created in the OCR’ed document. I may have gotten rid of some real line breaks but I thought this would be worth doing because the words were the most important thing for text mining not the paragraph breaks. I also included PDF copies of the text so users could see the contents in their original form. I also made the chose to include just copy and pasting the URL into voyant and not the text. I realized this included some of the text from my website but I thought this would be worth it for ease of use.
There are several lessons that I learned from producing this website that I will use in the future. I will always remember to leave extra time to complete online projects. I found Omeka was able to do a lot of things but the process to complete a task was not always straight forward. So it took me longer than I expected to do pretty much everything with regards to the website. I also learned, first hand, that one is restricted in their choice when you are using a pre package software. For example, I would have liked to use the original Omeka home screen but it included the Recent Items that I could not get rid of. So I had to switch to another homepage. That being said I would not have been able to do the majority of the things that I was able to accomplish without using Omeka. So I do appreciate the benefits of using pre package software as well.

The Essence of History

 

 

 

 

 

 

I remember my undergraduate philosophy teacher explaining the definition of essence. He (hypothetically) put a green Granny Smith and a more reddish McIntosh Apple on the table and he asked the students are these both apples? The class said yes even though they had different colors, shapes, sizes, and tastes. The teacher explained that an essence is what makes a thing what it is. This idea also applies to digital history. Digital History is History! Even though for hundreds of years historians have been focused on the book length monogram that does not mean that that is the only form that history can take. I especially liked the teaching and learning class because it talked about the skills historians use like analyzing sources, looking at multiply perspectives, and the bigger picture. These skills can be utilized whether writing a book or creating a website. This means when we used text mining tools to discover anomalies in primary sources, or used maps or other spatial history tools to explore historical topics in a new way we were not just doing digital history we were doing history.

Clio I also taught me new ways to gather sources, analyzing information, and disseminating my findings. We spent one week learning about the benefits and weaknesses of using crowdsourcing to gather information or metadata. We learned about publishing historical articles or books online where they can receive a lot more peer review and a lot less cost. In addition, we wrote and responded to blogs based on each week’s assignments. This was a good way to reflect on what you had learned each week and get a sense of what other students were thinking, which I think benefited our class discussion. Even though these tools are new they should still be judged by the same standards as a book and not all of this new technology is the same. For example, we found text mining and visualizations can help historians analyze their work in a new way. However, it is more of a stretch to call gaming “history,” since most of the games we looked at did not enhance the historical thinking skills I mentioned earlier.

I liked the practicums but I also found them the most challenging. In my other graduate classes I am doing new things, like book reviews and term papers, but I am using skills I learned from my past school experience to accomplish them. These practicums involve some historical skills but also involve some technical skills that I have never used before. So they usually took a lot longer than I would have anticipated. However, as others have pointed out, they also taught me to be experimental and try new things.

Looking at history in a new way has showed me a truer sense of the essence of history. This class has taught me new tools to gather, sources, analyze information, and disseminate my research. It has also helped me improve my skill at trying new things and asking new questions. These are all valuable lessons that I can apply not just to my future with digital history but my whole academic future and beyond.

Playing History: A Good Addition

Pox and the City: Challenges in Writing a Digital History Games talks about the benefits of games.   The authors show that games are more interactive and students have to be more independent while exploring (an learning) through the game than a lecture or a book that does not talk back.   They make a good point that games are better at placing someone in a historic environment rather than trying to reenact a specific historical event.   Like previous weeks lessons this show how the design and form of the website effects the content of the material. 

Good Video Games and Good Learning by Gee shows how games can help the teaching and learning of history.  Things such as risk taking, agency, and well ordered problems that build off one another are all lessons games can have on learning history.  Like last week’s discussion, games get away from the textbook brand of history where everything is laid out for the students.  Even though games still have some direction it involves the player making decisions with consequences that are not always clear.

Mark Sample’s “The Crowd, History, and Video Games” led me to believe that games are a good addition too but not replacement of regular history textbooks.  Sample’s article talks about how videogames do not do a very good job of representing crowds.  They usually stick to an individual player dealing with levels with no other people or very few.   This shows that videogames may have a harder time expressing bigger theoretical concepts that history includes.  I think a video game would have a harder time explaining concepts such as migration, industrialization, and the changing nature of freedom compared to textbooks. 

Screen shot from The Oregon Trail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OregonTrailScreenshot.png)

Although after playing a game for myself I realized the benefit of games to teaching history.  I had a flashback to my elementary school days and played the Oregon Trail for the practicum for this week.  When going through the game I actually felt anxious every time there was low water, one of my riders got typhoid, or my wagon axel broke.  I could get a feeling of the anxiety that real people setting off on this journey must have felt.  After going through the game I  thought about what I actually learned from the game.  I got a general sense of the west with trading posts, forts, and Native American guides but, overall, I did not get too much in depth knowledge.  This is why I think games can be a good tool to engage students in material that they are already learning about in school but it cannot be the only tool.

Practicum

In an effort to try to focus games on broader concepts I decided to create a game about the ambiguous freedom that African Americans held after slavery was ended by the 13^th Amendment.  African Americans were no longer property but they still faced discrimination and had far less education and political power compared to whites at the time.    The player would be a recently freed slave.  There would be multiple objects of the game.  One could either try to establish your own farm or reconnect with family members that were sold away from you.  The player would have to go through challenges like finding housing and food while dealing with the racism, black laws, and intimidation of the time period. The score would be how fast one accomplishes their tasks.  There would be historical information embedded within the game such as real examples of how African Americans survived during this time.  The lessons in these vignettes would help the player accomplish the tasks in the game.  The game would also be a world within itself where multiple players could interact with each other inside the game like half-life.  Players could explore the environment without always having to get to the next level.  They could also interact and learn from other players in the game.  

Personal Preservation: Practicum Reflection

Reading through the Preservation in a Box resources made me consider my document preservation in a broader perspectives.  It is good to think about how you store your documents not just for next month or next year but for the next 20 or 30 years.  I believe I am in a pretty good place for the time being based on the factors that were considered in the reading, including usability, cost, transferability, reliability, etc.  I use Google Drive to back up all my documents in the cloud.  Google is a major company with many customers so there is little risk that is will go out of business in the near term.  It has very reliable storage capabilities.  It also helps me organize my documents into folders for easy access.  These files are stored in the cloud and on my hard drive so if my computer breaks I will not lose all my documents.  The information was geared more towards institutions but I did find a couple practical improvements that I can make to better preserve my documents.  First, I have word documents in both Google Docs and Microsoft Word formats.  With Google Drive you can open and edit Word documents.  So there is no reason I should keep my Google Docs file types since it has less funcationality.  I plan to convert all my Google Docs to Word documents to normalize my files.  The key problem for Word documents is if Microsoft updates their file formats. For instance, when Microsoft switch from .doc to docx.  From what I read I think using an odf open document would be the best solution but Google Drive does not support this and I definitely do not want to take the time to convert all my documents to this format.  So, I think I will just be on the look out for a Microsoft update and convert my documents to the latest Microsoft file type as soon as I can.  In addition, even though I back up my documents to the cloud I should also buy an external hard drive to have an additional back up option.  This will be more manual but I will also not be tied to Google for all my document preservation if something goes wrong with my cloud storage.  Please let me know if you have any additional ideas or tips for preserving personal files.

Teaching and Learning Historical Thinking Skills: Ideal vs. Reality

Sam Wineburg’s “Thinking Like a Historian,” and “Seeing Thinking on the Web,” by Daisy Martin and Sam Wineburg both showed important historical skills that should be taught to high school and undergraduate students. These include sourcing, contextualizing, using background knowledge, close reading, reading the silences, and corroborating. They show that students should realize that history is really asking interesting questions and trying to answer those questions using credible primary sources. This makes history more complex than just reading a predefined interpretation of events in a history textbook. An unmentioned struggle in all of these readings is the reality vs. the ideal. Yes it would be great to teach all these things but do teachers actually have the time and the willing students to accomplish this? Or do undergraduate history teachers have a hard time just to teach the basic historical events to students who may not even be history majors? The Michael Coventry, et. al., article “Ways of Seeing: Evidence and Learning in the History Classroom,” has an interesting solution. They give a case study where students use these skills on a history project that is related to their own lives. For example, a girl did a project on a protest her father was involved in. This enables students to use historical thinking skills on events that they already have a basic understanding about. On the other hand, after completing the practicum, I think students also need to learn how to pick out primary source material. Choosing the best primary source material for your paper, project, or website is probably one of the most difficult parts of the whole exercise. So teachers should find creative ways to incorporate this exercise into their classrooms.  These articles made great arguments for teaching and learning history in new ways but I don’t think they made as convincing a case that digital tools should be involved.  It seemed like all the skills could be taught without the use of digital tools.  The only benefit was the ease of access to primary source material compared to the past.

Mills Kelly’s blog posts (edwired.org) related to historical hoaxes show that students can learn historical thinking skills even when they are not studying historical events. Kelly’s students started a historical hoax online and watched how it spread through social media, blogs, Wikipedia, etc. I disagree that they should have actually spread these hoaxes because it is basically lying. However, I do see the value in showing students that they have to think critically about the text that they read online and off.

Historical Thinking Matters: Gulf of Tonkin Incident

Practicum Reflection

Working through history instead of just reading secondary sources and thinking about it was truly rewarding and probably one of the most enjoyable things historians do.  This exercise was extremely helpful about thinking through the controversy over the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.  As the readings mentioned it is completely different when one is working with primary source documents rather than just reading the preinterpreted story line in a history textbook.  One realizes the complexity of history because one can see people have different perspectives and access to different information.  It was also fascinating to see how much primary source material is available online with almost instantaneous access .  This does support the notion that teachers should be using this type of learning style more because it is so much easier and quicker to get access to primary source material compared to the past.  I do realize that high school and undergraduate history teachers probably have a hard enough time teaching the basic events of history.  However, I do think this exercise is worthwhile.  In addition, an improvement I might make to this exercise is to have the students look for primary source material themselves instead of giving them a preset group of documents.  I found choosing the documents was one of the hardest parts of this exercise.  Students will definitely need to be skilled at not only analyzing documents but finding the most relevant sources if they advance in their history careers.

 

Historical Thinking Matters: Module

Gulf of Tonkin Resolutions passed on August 7, 1964 in response to naval battle between Vietnamese armed forces and the American Naval Shipp the USS Maddox on August 2-4. The attack on the USS Maddox gave President LBJ authorization to install regular forces in Vietnam escalating US involvement in the war. Who was to blame for these hostilities?

Document 1: Tonking Gulf Resolution

Joint Resolution

To promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia.

-Whereas naval units of the Communist regime in Vietnam, in violation of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations and of international law, have deliberately and repeatedly attacked United States naval vessels lawfully present in international waters, and have thereby created a serious threat to international peace; and

-Whereas theses attacks are part of a deliberate and systematic campaign of aggression that the Communist regime in North Vietnam has been waging against its neighbors and the nations joined with them in the collective defense of their freedom; and

-Whereas the United States is assisting the peoples of southeast Asia to protect their freedom and has no territorial, military or political ambitions in that area, but desires only that these peoples should be left in peace to work out their own destinies in their own way: Now, therefore, be it

-Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. That the Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.

Section 2 The United States regards as vital to its national interest and to world peace the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. Consonant with the Constitution of the United States and the Charter of the United Nations and in accordance with its obligations under the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, the United States is, therefore, prepared, as the President determines, to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom

Section 3 this resolution shall expire when the President shall determine that the peace and security of the area is reasonably assured by international conditions created by action of the United Nations or otherwise, except that it may be terminated earlier by concurrent resolution of the Congress.

Approved August 10, 1964 Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Resolution , assessed 11-26-2012

Contextualizing:

• What else was going on during this time period? How does this relate to the United States tension with Communist North Vietnam?
• What is the date of this message compared to the Tonkin gulf incident? Is this enough time to fully understand the event?

Sourcing:

• Who made this document?
• What is the motivation for creating this document?

Audience:

• Can you tell who the audience is for this message?
• Does the references to the United Nations resolutions give you a clue

 

Document #2: Col Ralph Steakley, USAF; Chronology of Events Relating to DESOTO Patrol Incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin on 2 and 4 August 1964; 10 Aug 1964, Assessed 11-26-2012, http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/gulf_of_tonkin/index.shtml

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Source: Is this a reliable source?
• Close reading: does this say that the North Vietnamese actually attacked the US ships on august 4?

 

Document #3 REDS DRIVEN OFF: Two Torpedo Vessels Believed Sunk in Gulf of Tonkin …By ARNOLD H. LUBASCH Special to The New York Times New York Times (1923-Current file); Aug 5, 1964;

NYT article

Chronology: What date was this story compared to the actual events?

Close Reading? What is the general tone of this article with words like “Red Driven Off”?

 

Document #4:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/34439771/US-Senate-Releases-Vietnam-Gulf-Of-Tonkin-Testimony-From-1968#page=285

Sourcing

• Who is questioning Robert McNamara’s chronology of events? What motivations might they have for attacking McNamra?
• What setting is this dialogue taking place?

Context

• What year is this?
• What is the signifigance of having a investigation years after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.

 

Conclusion

Based on the primary sources above, who do you think is responsible for the Tonkin Gulf incidents?  Are the events clearcut or are there ambiguity between the texts?  Is one group clearly totally to blame or does each side deserve at least some of the blame? What effect did these incidence have on other events including US involvement in the Vietnam War?  Do these have any impact on how the Tonkin Gulf Incidents were investigated and reported on?

My Creative Commons License

I chose to use the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.  My main goal is to ensure my work is able to spread as much as possible.  This will help me advance in my career, enable me to get feedback from a wide variety of people, and contribute in my own small way to society’s knowledge.  With this in mind I chose not to enforce a “share alike” agreement of my work that says everybody that uses my work has to make it as open access as I am.  I don’t want to dissuade people from using my work just because they don’t want to share their work openly and I don’t think I have the stature to force people to take an open access stance.  I think they would just use something else that was more suited to their needs.  I also chose to allow my work to be used for commercial purposes.  It irritates me a little that other people are getting paid for work that I contributed to without receiving any of the monetary benefits.  However, hopefully spreading my work to the broadest possible audiences will help me in other ways and make up for the lost revenue I would have received.  I am also realistic that the amount of money I would receive if I did require payment would be little or nothing.