Presenters Gail Greenberg and Nadine Grimm discussed their digital exhibits project for encouraging students to higher-order thinking. Utilizing the free and open source Omeka, they built a virtual “primary source exhibit.”

Digitized history exhibits? What?

Drawing on maps, photos, documents and other primary sources and packaging them into interactive online learning using Web 2.0 tools.

George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media strives to “use digital media to preserve and present history online, transform scholarship across the humanities, and advance historical education and understanding.” They are in year 2 of a 3 year project partnership.

The project:

They built an interactive website to collect various digital media relating to history and to organize it into teaching modules that students can move through. The presenters showed us various images they had gathered from Schwebel (the bread company).

The presenters wanted to emphasize that their presentation was about a process and not just a product. They weren’t just sharing a useful Web 2.0 tool, but were exploring a strategy for teaching history online.

Mike’s take:

I felt they could have done a much better job explaining what advantages they found in creating/using Omeka versus other site-building products. Additionally, I would have liked more of a description of the project from the student perspective. How did they go through the course? What did their activity consist of? What were the results?

Omeka?

Omeka is open source software that makes it easy to share or layout goods in a collection. As such is was ideal for the creation of online exhibits. The project involved over 50 teachers and required orientation and training sessions to acclimate them to using Omeka.

Learn more:

http://chnm.gmu.edu/omeka/