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=** HIST 4485/5485 **= =** DIGITAL HISTORY AND NEW MEDIA **= =** Spring Semester 2010 **= =** Dr. Keith S. Hebert **= =Welcome Students!=

This semester you will embark upon a unique learning experience. You will learn how to use free and inexpensive media technologies to serve a variety of purposes. For those of you who are either teaching or plan to teach in Georgia's public school system, tools such as Omeka, Wikispaces, Wordpress, Audacity, YouTube, Picassa, Windows Movie Maker, and others will allow you to develop a student's historical understanding using technology. Future public historians will benefit equally from these tools because of their versatility. These tools can be used to share historical research; promote humanities organizations, interact with your audience/patrons, and provide a web-presence for even the smallest of humanities organizations.

A Good Digital Historian Must First Be A Good Historian
Digital historians have to use the skills of an experienced historian to create high-quality products. A good digital project must convey the best practices shared among professional historians. Projects might have all of the bells and whistles that might attract a crowd, but if the information shared does not meet basic standards then the project will not be successful. The goal of every digital history project is to share the best information possible to the public in a manner that is accessible and engaging.

Project Based Learning Groups
Students will learn how to create exceptional digital history projects by applying their new skills toward a project that will be completed as part of a group. All exceptional works of digital history are the result of collaborative efforts. I will divide the class into groups, provide each group with a specific assignment, and allow each group to distribute the workload across its members. During the first class period, I will survey the class to identify potential strengths and weaknesses of each class member. I will use my findings to divide the class into groups.