This weekend I was part of a panel for the OAH in Atlanta with the zippy title “The Future of Teaching History: Using Technology to Make Teaching More Fun and Effective.” Fellow panelists David Trowbridge (Marshall University), Russell Jones (Eastern…
How to Succeed with Digital History for Undergrads (#aha2014)
I had the chance to be part of a lively panel at the American Historical Association in Washington DC on January 4th, 2014, on the subject of doing digital history with undergraduates. Since it was a roundtable, the presentations from…
Why History Students Need to Use Technology
At the AHA 2014 meeting this week, I was part of a panel on doing digital history with undergraduates (more on that later) and read the statement I stick into the methods and capstone syllabi to help explain why I…
The Books I Didn’t Buy
A broken iPhone took my graduating HS son and me to Harvard Square today, one of my favorite places on earth. And darn, we had a whole hour and a half to wait, what will we do? After lunch at…
Musing on the Past and Future of Books and Libraries
Last week, the Worcester Art Museum held a forum on the future of libraries. It is a lovely medium-sized urban art museum with a visionary new director who has been hiring, acquiring, and innovating ever since he arrived about a…
WordPress 101 Workshop
[ cross-posted to Teaching United States History 2/11/13 ] It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I really like WordPress. I use it for my own ePortfolio, for a variety of blogging endeavors both personal and professional, and…
Groundhog Day One, 2013 Version
[ cross-posted to TUSH.0 on 1/18/13 ] Starting the US history survey feels a little like poor Phil Connor’s life, since I teach it every single semester. Except I’m never quite getting it right, so I try it again a…
History Now
[ crossposted to TUSH.0 on 12/27/12 ] The second half of the US survey, at least in our course catalog, goes “to the present.” How many of us actually get there in a typical semester? Be real. My last unit…
On Ending a Course
[cross-posted to Juvenile Instructor on 12/20/12] I’ve just finished teaching my fall course on American religious pluralism—in fact, I was supposed to post about this yesterday but I’m still grading their final exams and submitting grades. It’s that time of…
Survey Course at Mid-Term: The Primary Source Project
[ cross-posted to TUSH.0 on 10/18/12 ] I have previously written about the little SkillBuilder papers I use in my survey course. In addition to exams and quizzes, I also have students create two projects. One, a paper, falls about…