Place-Based Education

Engaging students in their own communities through local history, local culture and the local environment. An initiative of the Massachusetts Studies Project at UMass Boston.

January 8, 2008
by Joanne Riley
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Mapping Out a New Methodology to Study History

Placing History, a Book and CD-ROM from ESRI Press, Shows How Geospatial Technology Helps Historians Analyze the Past 

Redlands, California—Did poor farming practices cause the Dust Bowl in the 1930s? Was yeoman farming in colonial Concord, Massachusetts, environmentally unsound? What could Confederate general Robert E. Lee see at Gettysburg from where he stood? 

Historians and history students can consider these intriguing questions and others using geographic information system (GIS) technology, said Anne Kelly Knowles, editor of Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship. 

[…]

See more: "Directions Magazine: The WorldWide Source for Geospatial Technology:" Press Releases – Directions Magazine.

October 9, 2007
by Joanne Riley
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Digital Storytelling: Using Technology to Tell Stories

Oral history projects are a dime a dozen.  It seems so easy: find a few local folks with good stories to tell,  and stick a microphone in front of them.  Many of us have learned the hard way that oral history projects – that is, those that result in interesting, usable primary source material – need to be carefully planned and executed.  Fortunately there are materials at hand like this website housed at our sister campus, UMass Amherst:

Digital Storytelling: Using Technology to Tell Stories

Created and Maintained by Kevin Hodgson, technology liaison for the Western Massachusetts Writing Project, the site is aimed towards Windows users, but contains info that will be useful for oral history projects at all levels, and on all platforms.  Sections include:

June 16, 2007
by Joanne Riley
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Primary Research Documentary (Local History by High School Students in Beverly, MA)

This documentary introduces primaryresearch.org, a non-profit website dedicated to promoting local historical research at the high school level. Primaryresearch.org went online in 1999, then funded by a Documentary Heritage Grant from the Massachusetts Historical Records Advisory Board. Originally the website for Project Apprentice to History (PATH), it has grown to include online projects on Public School History, Landscape History, Women’s Suffrage, Nathan Dane, New England Stonewalls, Architecture, Archaeology, African Americans in Antebellum Boston, Puritan Gravestone Studies, and more.

February 15, 2007
by Joanne Riley
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Students Trace Ancestry Through DNA

Approx. 1,000 students from Chicago, England, Jordan, France, South Africa and China are adding their DNA samples to the National Geographic’s Genographic Project.

""When their results are ready, each student will discover how his or her ancestors journeyed from the cradle of humankind in Africa to populate the world," said Dr. Spencer Wells, a population geneticist and director of the project, which has collected more than 200,000 DNA samples in less than two years."

Interesting

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