Notes on what we're doing #InClassToday

US History I:
We wrap up our "road to revolution" sections and segue into the American Revolution itself. I teach the war portion by having the students compare a handful of sources related to the experience of the war and/or hopes and concerns related to the war.

Students chose either the Oneida Declaration of Neutrality, an excerpt from the John and Abigail Adams letters ("remember the ladies..."), or an excerpt from Boston King's experience. They were told to be ready to "teach" their source.

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#Teaching #TeachingHistory

About to teach the recent executive order on history/Smithsonian in my Intro to Public History class.

Because how can I not?

Edit: I shared key components of the session's agenda below, as replies in this thread.

#PublicHistory #Teaching #TeachingHistory

My last few weeks of my US History survey to 1877 get pretty lecture heavy. It's the end of the semester, folks are overloaded with work (myself included), and we're often crunched to make it through the content we need to get through...

That said, I might try and use this article as a basis for finding a new way to tackle the Sectional Crisis and the Civil War. Students love a counterfactual/hypothetical. This article centers on the hypothetical of the Mexican-American War not happening, by Clay winning the election of 1844 (not all that far-fetched!).

It also has some nice notes on the uses of counterfactuals in general.

Gary J. Kornblith, “Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War: A Counterfactual Exercise,” Journal of American History 90, no. 1 (June 1, 2003): 76.

https://www.oah.org/site/assets/files/8710/02_jah_2003_kornblith.pdf

#TeachingHistory #USHistory #Histodons

Manifest Destiny time in my US survey, which means I get to inform my students that in the independent #Texas constitution of 1836:

* citizenship was explicitly limited to "free white persons"

* slavery as an institution was basically made untouchable by Congress

* even as an enslaver, you could not emancipate "your" enslaved persons without special permission from the Texas legislature, or by sending them outside of Texas

* by law, there was no such thing as a free person of color in independent Texas

See the General Provisions, especially section 9.

https://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/constitutions/republic-texas-1836/general-provisions

#USHistory #TeachingHistory #Histodons

#Quotes #History #Boneheads #TeachingHistory #BiographicalHistory #MartinGardner

Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals, the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great creative scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned if at all. -Martin Gardner, mathematician and writer (21 Oct 1914-2010)

This week, my historical research and writing class visits the university #Archives. They get to go on a tour "behind the scenes", then spend some time with an eclectic assortment of archival materials.

I'm not convinced I'm an especially good instructor for this course overall, but this is one of the few things I know I get right. So many students that may otherwise be pretty quiet throughout the rest of the semester come alive during this visit. Teaching this class is a real grind and a bit thankless, but this is one of the highlights, easily.

#Histodons #Teaching #TeachingHistory

Shout out to one of my grad school mentors who, while serving as his GA for the first part of the history survey, leaned into a schtick that presented George Whitfield as the first colonial celebrity.

I shamelessly steal that bit for my session on the Great Awakening and students always eat it up. Just update the celebrity simile: every year or two (right now, I liken him to Taylor Swift, of course).

#TeachingHistory

Some observations on undergrads (History majors) and #AI: a thread

Yesterday, in my Historical Research and Writing class, we spent the day focused on topic development and some basics for using the library catalog and databases (in part to help with initial exploration of a topic). In between those two portions, as a segue, I asked what they thought about using something like ChatGPT for topic development --- which one of them had raised in an earlier class.

What followed was a really interesting conversation that gave me some insight into what students do and don't know about LLMs and related apps. Here are some observations.

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#TeachingHistory #Histodons #HigherEd #Teaching