Doing History is a "fun introduction to local history" where visitors can learn about the letters, diaries, maps, and cemeteries that tell the stories of the people who once lived in towns like yours."
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An initiative of the Massachusetts Studies Project at UMass Boston.
Doing History is a "fun introduction to local history" where visitors can learn about the letters, diaries, maps, and cemeteries that tell the stories of the people who once lived in towns like yours."
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The Flow of History is a history education network for Vermont and New Hampshire communities along the Connecticut River watershed.
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The City of Boston's Historic Burying Grounds Initiative website displays histories of the 16 burying grounds it manages, with ability to search historic headstones and gravestone iconography.
Historic Burying Grounds Initiative
Boston's historic cemeteries are important examples of the City's early landscape, linking contemporary Boston with a rich historical legacy. The City of Boston has sixteen historic burying grounds and three larger garden-style cemeteries under its jurisdiction which date between 1630 and 1892 and are located in thirteen Boston neighborhoods. The burying grounds house a rich collection of historic artifacts that tell many stories about Boston's cultural heritage.
The Historic Burying Grounds Initiative (HBGI) is a public/private cooperative program established within the Boston Parks and Recreation Department with the history of the initiative dating back to the early 1970's. Its mission is the comprehensive restoration, on-going conservation, and heritage interpretation of Boston's sixteen historic burying grounds."
Posted at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Announcing the launch of a new social networking site for "humanities practitioners" in Massachusetts, built on the Ning platform.
The National Endowment for the Humanities has funded this experiment, with additional support from the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston, and Mass. Humanities.
Check out the MAStudies Network at MAStudies.ning.com and join up if this collegial group of Commonwealth collaborators suits you!
Posted at 08:04 PM in Community Social Research, Environmental Studies, Folklore and Heritage Studies, Funding Place-Based Ed, Geography, History, Local Historical Research, Massachusetts Specific, Model Projects, Oral History, Theory and Practice of P-BEd, Video, Audio, and Media Arts Documentary, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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.
Posted at 11:56 AM in Theory and Practice of P-BEd | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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:
Posted at 02:41 PM in Oral History | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
A map mashup tool that lets you combine two maps and fade in and out between them. Great stuff!
See this example of modern Roman streets, with overlay of the Roman Forum, and dream of the local history possibilities:
Posted at 06:23 PM in Geography, History, Local Historical Research, Model Projects | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
| 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. | |
Posted at 09:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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
Posted at 11:09 AM in Model Projects | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
"FOOTNOTE" is organized around primary source historical documents, many (most?) from the U.S. National Archives. The site is well-organized, and offers a number of standard, useful Web 2.0 features:
The service costs $99 / year; there is no information on the site about educational pricing. I wrote and asked them about this, and will let you know if/when I hear back. Visitors to NARA facilities get free access to the site, and supposedly the records will be available for free on NARA's Web site (http://archives.gov) in five years.
Posted at 10:23 AM in Local Historical Research | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)