History Day in the valley....Buckeye Valley

I spent a Happy Halloween with 52 of Buckeye Valley Middle School's finest this morning. The students asked me a really great questions. What individuals do I think will be done over and over again with this year's theme.

Truth be told, every year there are certain topics that get repeated a lot. This doesn't mean you can't do them, it just means that will pop up a lot. Two years ago with Triumph and Tragedy in History, there were A LOT of projects about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

My guesses for this year include:
George Washington
Abraham Lincoln
Martin Luther King Jr
Rosa Parks
Jackie Robinson
Jesse Owens
Harriett Tubman
almost any president

This list could go on. Now if you are interested in one of these peoples, think about a different way to look at the individual. Instead of George Washington, maybe you could look at one of his slaves. Instead of Abraham Lincoln, you could examine someone else in his administration.

All of these "big names" worked closely with other people that may be just as important, but not as well known.

Thanks to the students at Buckeye Valley. They were really enthusiastic and I look forward to seeing some of their projects.

Last Day in Cleveland

Yesterday I had the chance to visit John Adams High School and Watterson Lake Elementary School.

Something I've noticed about students across our state, you're interested, even riveted by this election and I think that's great! This excitement can be translated into your History Day projects. What other historic elections have happened in our nations history? What have people in our nation's past (and other countries) done to gain the right to vote? What individuals have suffered or profited from elections in the past?

Thanks for a great three days Cleveland!

Cleveland Rocks!

This History Day Expert is spending some time in Cleveland, working with students and teachers.

Today I visited East Technical High School where famous Clevelanders like Jesse Owens went to school. The students at East Tech also asked creating web sites and had questions about the types of individuals to pick for this years theme.

As always, I caution you to make sure your individual is a part of HISTORY, not CURRENT EVENTS. There is no hard and fast rule about how old something has to be before it is history, but to be safe, go back AT LEAST 20 years. While Barack Obama or Oprah Winfrey are people in our lives that might seem appealing to research for History Day; look towards their predecessors in history. Who was the first African American senator? (Obama is only the fifth African American Senator in U.S. history) From whom did Oprah find inspiration?

I also had the privilege to visit the Willow School. Even though it was the end of the day, I was excited to hear the political debates going on and had a great time talking about History Day with the 8th graders. One student asked if he could focus on a group of people. The answer is yes, but there's a but. If you're interested in a group of people, find an individual in that group to focus on in order to better understand the group. This is what we call a case study.

Thanks to the students and teachers at East Tech and Willow! One more day in Cleveland before I head back to our glorious capital.

Live from Delphos...this is History Day!

Yesterday students from Delphos St. Johns visited with the History Day Expert. They had some great questions about narrowing their topics, writing thesis statements, and creating web sites.

Here are some things to think about:

1. While this theme (The Individual in History: Actions and Legacies) may make choosing a topic simple, it can be more difficult than meets the eye. Once you choose a person, you still need to decide what about that person you are going to focus on. I know I've said this before, but thinking about one accomplishment of the individual will make for a better (and really easier to research) project.

2. Your thesis statement will essentially be answering this question

How did (fill in the blank with your individual) impact/effect/change/influence (fill in the blank with that specific accomplishment)?

Your thesis statement should include three key parts: key facts (who your person is, when he or she was important), relationship to the theme, and why that person was important.

3. Creating a web site can be done in a number of ways. You can create a web site using Word or by using web authoring software like Front Page, IWeb, or Dreamweaver. If you're interested in learning more about creating a web site, email us at historyday@ohiohistory.org. Your web site does not have to be posted online and will be turned in as a series of files.

Thanks to the students at Delphos St. John's. Good luck with your research!

Jackie Robinson: Without the Stats

Today I was talking with a few Cleveland teachers about their students' projects. A group of boys are working on a Jackie Robinson project and warned the students that they didn't want to hear all his stats. That's great advice for this year's theme. When you pick your individual, your focusing on that historical impact, not the stats. While you may learn things along your research journey: date of birth, parents names, siblings occupations, favorite color, first pet; those pieces of information probably aren't critical to creating a project. Your exhibit, paper, performance, documentary or web site should really focus on the impact, influence, effect or change that your individual had on the world.

Sound difficult? It might seem that way, but editing out the "stats" will give you more space, time, and words to get to the meat of your project.

Ancient History and History Day

In 7th grade Ohio classrooms, students study ancient history. 7th grade teachers often wonder how their students will find primary sources. I remind them that the History Day evaluation form asks for use of available primary sources. So ancient topics may only have one or two sources for student analysis. They may also have some interesting secondary sources written hundreds of years ago about those ancient topics.

Today at Mount Vernon Middle School I spoke with the 7-2 team (OH!). I heard lots of great topic ideas like Alexander the Great, Achilles, Theseus, Herodotus and many others. Someone mentioned an archaeologists who uncovered ancient history; that's a great way to approach this theme! Someone else asked about the Trojan Horse and I asked him if there was an individual that gave us that legacy? This is great creative thinking! I would encourage all students looking at ancient topics to check out the Internet Ancient History Sourcebook from Fordham University.

While I didn't get the memo about slipper day at Mt. Vernon M.S., I did enjoy my time there. I especially liked the suggestions that after National History Day, students across the world battle in World History Day. The Olympics of History! Very appropriate for students of ancient history.

Thanks Mt. Vernon and enjoy your dance tonight.

Homeschools and History Day

Yesterday, six homeschool families joined us at the Ohio Historical Center for a workshop. History Day works really well in the homeschool environment because of the flexibility of instruction and the ability to do field trips and research trips.

The Bolyard family shared their experiences over the last two years working with History Day through their co-op. I was really pleased to see what the program has done for their students knowledge and skills. It was great to see the web site presentation that two students created and how intelligently they could instruct others on the process. Thanks to Ryan, Paula, Kyle, and Alex! I found your stories and ideas very informative and inspiring!

We also spent some time learning to find information on newspapers in our microfilm collection. Check out our video for more info.

The Individual as a Person or People

Today I had the pleasure of visiting Rutherford B. Hayes Middle School in Youngstown. I met with 7th and 8th graders and I was really impressed with some of their ideas for topics. One student inquired about the unknown soldier from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. That's a great topic! The legacy of the unknown soldier is important to this country and our remembrance of armed conflicts in history. I look forward to seeing that project one day.

I was also asked if a person had to choose a person or if it could be a group of people. If you or a student is interested in researching a group of people, like the Little Rock Nine, you need to look at it through the lens of one person. What does that mean? You can illuminate the experience of a group of people by really looking at one person's experience. It is called a case study. That can also make a really great History Day project.

A few students were looking at a local architect. That's a great local project, the problem is you won't be able to find an entire book one that person. You will need to look at city or county histories, talk to librarians, and have an understanding about when that person worked and pull together pieces of information from many sources. In the end, this can be a really rewarding project.

Thanks to the gang at Hayes Middle School! Tomorrow I'm staying put and having a program for homeschool families at the Ohio Historical Center.

Working from the Individual to the specific topic

Today I had the pleasure of working with the 4th-5th and then the 6th-12th grade students at Natural Learning Montessori in Shawnee Hills.

The students were quick to challenge me, but it was great and made me think about the way we present History Day.

For fourth and fifth graders new to the project, the question are more like: what is this? What exactly do I have to do? My answer:

• Choose a group or decide to work alone
• Choose a topic related to the theme
• Research your topic (with primary and secondary sources)
• Create a project

This is a very simplified version of the process, but that's the very basics. With the 6th-12th grade students we were able to talk a little bit about thesis statements and historical context.

I often get asked about how judges evaluate the projects. It's no secret, you can see the evaluation forms the judges use and the instructions they receive prior to the contest.

Here are the basics:

60% is historical quality
20% is relationship to the theme
20% is clarity of presentation.

What does that mean? It means research is KEY! It also means, stop reading this blog and go research!!

Next time....travelling to Youngstown in the AM.

Tools for Sharing Files

The History Day Expert spends a lot of time traveling the state and visiting students and teachers around Ohio. In order to become a greener History Day Expert, I'm posting my presentations online. Through my Slideshare site, you can see the teacher intro to History Day, an exhibit sampler and some other goodies. So if you're browsing the web on a Saturday night, looking for some good History Day material, check it out. You can also see our video on researching newspapers with microfilm.

Thinking Visually With History

Yesterday almost 40 teachers converged on the Ohio Historical Center for a day long History Day workshop. Dr. David Staley from the Harvey Goldberg Program for Teaching Excellence at The Ohio State University spoke about visual literacy. Dr. Staley has served as a History Day judge for years and has done a lot of work to help college students and teachers understand what makes a visual composition. Dr. Staley had a five step guide for visual composition for history which can really apply to almost all of our categories.

1. Have a "Big Idea" otherwise known as a conclusion or thesis. Whatever images you select need to help move your audience (or judges) toward this big idea.

2. Quality of Visual Object: choose images that answer the 5 W's: who, what, when, where, and why. Images can convey who people or events are, but also show what and where they take place. One image may not do all five of these things, but your collection of images in an exhibit, web site or documentary can accomplish this. Also, choose images that tell a story.

This image is American Progress by John Nast. This images tells a very complex story about
the American ideals of Manifest Destiny.

With many topics students have a myriad of images to choose from. The images that end up in their final products should be thoughtfully selected.

3. Relationship between objects: The way the pictures or images or arranged can tell different stories. If I showed you this image by itself:

It has completely different meaning when you also see both of these images alongside it:

Now you see more of a story about Japanese internment and provides more context to the original image. Size matters: the bigger the image, the more important the bigger image appears. Position also matters, images more centrally or higher also appear more prominent.

4. Words: Use words to help to establish a context for the image, and to help the viewer make associations with other images. Don't leave images hanging without tying them to the big idea.

5. Visual Style and Composition: Elements like font, image resolution and background color also effect the overall quality of a visual composition. Choose fonts that are appropriate for your topic. A Vietnam War topic doesn't visually make sense with a gothic font. There is a lot of information about time appropriate or decade appropriate fonts. If an image is fuzzy, don't use it or find a better image unless you want the image to be fuzzy for effect. Also make sure background color is appropriate. Don't choose colors because they're your favorites, choose something that enhances the images and makes sense with the topic.

Thanks to Dr. Staley for sharing his expertise and get in touch with us at historyday@ohiohistory.org if you'd like to see his PowerPoint or want to get in touch.

On the road to Hartville

Early this morning the History Day expert hit the road to visit Lake Center Christian school in Hartville. Despite the foggy roads, it was a nice drive.

I visited with 3 classes of 8th graders and we talked about topics, bibliographies and historical context. The discussions that the students had about a women's suffrage political cartoon were really interesting. I use the cartoon to discuss historical context. First through observation, the students pick out details they can find. With a little more digging, we find out that the cartoon was created before women had the right the vote, and indeed the artist was AGAINST women earning this right. Without knowing when the cartoon was created, or the CONTEXT, it would be hard to find this meaning.

Someone asked me today if they could do Chuck Norris for his History Day topic. While I applaud his creativity, I encourage students to look about at least 20 years to make sure the topic is history and not current events.

Another topic came up, Wikipedia. While this source can help you gain some background information, I'd urge you NOT to use it in bibliographies or as a real research tool. Why not? It may be true that 95% of their information is accurate, but do you really want to chance being in the 5%. Also, check out their entry for primary sources, do you agree that you need to have an advanced degree to evaluate primary sources? Sometimes a subject isn't populated with information and that can be misleading. Wikipedia does have some good foot notes. So scroll to the bottom and see what other resources you can find.

Thanks to Lake Center Christian for a nice Friday!

Adventures in Distance Learning

Today, for the first time, the History Day Expert used video conferencing to present to a class. Johnstown High School students were kind enough to act as a guinea pig audience. This technology isn't new, but it is a cool way to connect over the miles. On our end, I sit in front of a blue screen looking into a camera. I can see the students via a web cam on one side and on the other, I can see myself as the students see me. In my ear, I can hear the distance learning wizard, Matt can talk to me, tell me what's coming up, and I can also hear the students. Matt's created graphics and video that he magically moves on and off the screen.

Today we talked about the program in general, topic selection, research, and project samples. Someone asked a great question about whether or not she could research Jesus. Definitely. That topic just needs to be narrowed down. What specifically about Jesus? A student could look at Jesus' impact on another person, even someone more recent like Martin Luther King Jr. Or how did Jesus influence the social movements of the early 20th century like temperance?

Tomorrow takes me on the road to Hartville. The adventure continues....

Workshop in Oberlin with the Oberlin Heritage Center

Yesterday the NHD-OH staff worked with the staff at the Oberlin Heritage Center to put on a great Educator's Conference at the Oberlin Depot. Thanks to Liz, Pat, Donna (for becoming an on-the-spot helper) and Brittany the intern for your help yesterday!

We had some great discussion about topic selection. One great idea was taking a well-known individual like John Locke, and researching an aspect of that person that is what he or she is not traditionally known for. A teacher from Cleveland discussed how her students were surprised to learn about Locke's pro-slavery arguments.

The day unfolded with teaching strategies, hands-on activities and a tour and reception at the Oberlin Heritage Center. We're holding a similar conference on October 15th at the Ohio Historical Center. The deadline was technically yesterday, but we still have some spots!

One of the best parts of our teacher workshops is the ability for teachers to meet with and network with other teachers. I saw some great connections happening yesterday. We've also created a section of our website for Master Teachers. This section is intended to help teachers that are newer to the program find veteran History Day teachers and be able to ask questions or seek advice.

This month takes the History Day expert out to classrooms, both physically and virtually. We're testing a video-conferencing program that could be coming soon to a classroom near you!

History Day Explorations for 5th and 6th Graders

So far this week, the History Day Expert has been able to hang out with sixth graders from Worthington Park Elementary School in Westerville and fifth graders at Wilder Intermediate School in Piqua. These students had some great ideas for projects spanning from Anne Frank to Abraham Lincoln and looking at interesting areas of interest like female spies and shopping.

My biggest pieces of advice to all these students was to narrow their topics. It is OK that right now you've got a broad idea, it is early in the school year. You may even want to put together timeline about the person or topic, write a short biography, or read some online sources or biographies; eventually you'll want to come to something more narrow. A History Day project should not be a biography, it should examine an individuals role in an event.

Think about this question:

How did _________ (your individual) effect/change/influence/create/explain _________ (an event, idea, invention, etc)?

You won't be able to tell us everything about your individual; but do tell us one thing, why should we care? What's so important about this person? How does this person help us understand this period of time?

This may take some time and you may have to leave out stuff you really like about the person, but that's where the annotated bibliography can come in handy (more on bibliographies later).

Thanks to the students at Worthington Park and Wilder Intermediate. Some of you are going to be famous one day!

History Day Expert at the OAHSM Conference

This past weekend I attended the annual meeting and conference of the Ohio Association of Historical Societies and Museums. This is a group of local historians, archivists, public historians, educators and others that share the love of history at the state and local level.

Dr. Andrew Cayton from Miami University in Oxford, started the conference with a great conversation about how stories in history converge. He was asked by the McGuffey House in Miami to select an object. Dr. Cayton choose a clock because it reminded him of his grandparents.

The story that Dr. Cayton unfolds really speaks to historical context and how we at the NHD-OH office and teachers, try to help students understand context. The clock was made in Bristol, Connecticut, circa 1850. While the clock is a belonging of William McGuffey, who penned the famous McGuffey Readers, it tells a bigger story. Before the mid 19Th century, only the very rich owned clocks. The world did not run by time in the strict way it does now. That changed rapidly as the western world industrialized.

Think about context as waves rippling away from a pebble you dropped into the water. e have our main topic, the McGuffey clock in Ohio in the center; the next ring is the national context- the wide availability of time pieces in middle class homes across the country; to the outer ring which is the world context- rapid industrialization made the U.S. and Ohio an economic center and this changed caused the world to revolve around time.

When you're developing a project based on this year's theme, think about those rings of context. What surrounds your person that is part of his or her story?

PHEW! Questions anyone?

Field Trips and Workshops

This has been a busy week for the NHD-OH office: we've met with teachers in Columbus, students from Worthington, OH, and a new coordinator in Toledo.

St. Michael's School from Worthington came to the Ohio Historical Center with 70 seventh graders, ready to learn about research and topic selection. The students got to meet with our research services staff in the reading room of our Archives/Library and examined primary sources related to football in Ohio, Victoria Woodhull and others. The students heard more about selecting a topic and narrowing a topic and got to spend some time in our exhibits, using guided questions to pick out individuals in Ohio's history.

The St. Michael's kids were on the right path. Each one had an area of interest (like music, medicine, entertainment) or a person of interest (Marilyn Monroe, Lucille Ball, Jim Brown, Charles Pemberton) and are getting ready to narrow those topics to look at one of the contributions of their individual. We enjoyed having them back for the fourth (maybe fifth?) year in a row!

Yesterday, the Columbus Historical Society graciously hosted us in the gallery space on Jefferson. Their website has a great timeline that should inspire History Day students looking to create a web site project! We got to meet with several Columbus area teachers and talk about using History Day to enrich the classroom experience. Thanks Columbus Historical Society!

For those of you in our District 1 in the Toledo area, our new coordinator is Amber Frisch, who is a graduate student at the University of Toledo. Make her feel welcome to the History Day family!

Next week brings a workshop in Oberlin, more classroom outreach, and more thinking for you: what individual do you want to research and what about his or her life is important.