NEH Report

Final Report to the NEH
"Oberlin History as American History"

Introduction

Our project's foremost goal was "to enhance the teaching of Oberlin's history in K-12 public school classrooms by facilitating access to primary documents and other resources, in both traditional and electronic formats." We proposed to achieve this goal by recruiting fifteen Oberlin public school teachers to participate in a series of workshops on new educational technology, recent developments in American historiography and history pedagogy, and Oberlin's rich multicultural heritage. The workshops were envisioned as collaborative efforts that would involve personnel from Oberlin College and the Oberlin Historical and Improvement Organization (O.H.I.O.) as well as the Oberlin Public Schools. Our hope was to improve cooperation between these local institutions at the same time we promoted educational innovation in service of the humanities.

We believe we fully accomplished our aims, and we are proud to report that this project has resulted in further initiatives that, together, are changing for the better the way history and related subjects are taught in the Oberlin Public Schools.

Plan of Work and Major Activities

• Recruitment of Participants

At the invitation of Oberlin Public Schools superintendent James Gray, Gary Kornblith made a presentation about the project at the opening staff meeting of the 1997-98 school year on August 25, 1997. We distributed application forms at the same meeting, and by the announced deadline (September 19), we had received fifteen applications. This total conveniently matched the number of stipends we could afford to offer so we accepted all the applicants. When one of the original applicants withdrew for family reasons, we admitted a late applicant. We were pleased that we could meet our goal of involving fifteen public school teachers without turning anybody away. When these teachers joined the project, five taught in the district's two elementary schools: Jan DeMarinis, Christine Marquis, Cindy Moroney, Gail Wood, and Steve Zavodny. Eight taught in the middle school: Rebecca Beal, Gloria Buxton, Marcia Finch, Cheryl Gooch, Sue McDaniel, Walter Thompson, Michaelene Walzer, and Frances Welburn. Two taught at the high school: Helen Dupont and John Randall. We also allowed elementary school teachers Sharon Blecher and Mary Krumreig, who could only attend occasional sessions, to participate as uncompensated auditors.

• Fall Sessions

Our first workshop session took place on Saturday, October 18. It was led by Professor Kornblith and Sarah Nelson. After convening in the library at the Langston Middle School, we spent most of the day at the Biggs Computer Lab on the Oberlin College campus. In preparation for the session, we created a home page for the project at <www.oberlin.edu/~EOG/NEH/Workshop.htm>. During the session we focused mainly on strategies for locating, and criteria for evaluating, educational resources on the Internet. Each participant was responsible for identifying and assessing several sites that appeared relevant to his or her curriculum.

Our second workshop session took place on Saturday, November 15, in the Biggs Computer Lab. This time we focused on the mechanics of creating a Web page and posting material online. At the session we distributed copies of the software package Claris Home Page 2.0 and Web Publishing for Teachers, a book by Bard Williams (Foster City, CA: IDG Books Worldwide, 1997). During the morning, Sarah Nelson taught the basic elements of Web design and the use of Home Page. In the afternoon, each participant created a personal Web page, which we later linked into the home page of the Project Web site. Although we devoted less time on Oberlin history at this session than anticipated in our application, we prepared the participants well for doing Web projects during the summer sessions.

Note: Sarah Nelson, a specialist in web-page design, was not listed among the project personnel in the grant application. The project director reduced his own stipend in order to compensate her for her contribution to the fall workshop sessions.

• Spring Sessions

Roy Rosenzweig, Professor of History at George Mason University and Director of the Center for History and New Media, was the featured presenter at the third and fourth workshop sessions, held on Saturday, January 17, 1998, and Saturday, February 21, 1998. In consultation with the project director, Professor Rosenzweig modified the topics designated in our grant application and carefully tailored his remarks to his audience's interests and experiences. At the third session, held in the library and computer lab of Langston Middle School, he talked about the educational merits and limitations of currently available CD-ROMs. He brought examples of "good" and "bad" products with him, and in the afternoon participants explored a wide range of CD-ROMs on their own. As with the exploration of websites at the first session, each participant was responsible for evaluating a handful of CD-ROMs and reporting back to the group on those that seemed most promising and why.

At the fourth session, held in the Biggs Computer Lab at Oberlin College, Professor Rosenzweig spoke about American attitudes toward history and history teaching, and he highlighted examples of creative pedagogical efforts using the World Wide Web. In the "hands-on" portion of the session, participants began planning the electronic projects they intend to incorporate into their courses beginning in the fall. Ideas ranged from developing a course website with information on influential Oberlin writers to creating an electronic newspaper for a day in Oberlin during the Civil War to using spreadsheet software to analyze data on local buildings and the environment.

• Summer Sessions

The week-long series of summer sessions began on Monday, June 15, with a presentation by Professor Kornblith on the founding of Oberlin (both college and community) in the context of cultural and economic trends in early nineteenth-century America. Project participants then had time to practice their computer skills on newly networked Macintoshes installed in the Langston Middle School library. We had lunch at the Jewett House, a local historic site, as guests of the Oberlin Historical and Improvement Organization (O.H.I.O.). In the afternoon Patricia Murphy, Executive Director of O.H.I.O, introduced participants to the Organization's resources and took us on a special guided tour of the James Monroe house, another historic site.

On Tuesday, June 16, Professor Carol Lasser of Oberlin College gave a morning presentation on the history of women in Oberlin. Participants then had the opportunity to work for two hours on their curriculum development projects. In the afternoon, we went to the Oberlin Public Library, where reference librarian Eva Greenberg discussed the primary and secondary sources on Oberlin history available in the library's Ohio Room. After this presentation, participants had more time to work on their curriculum development projects.

The morning of Wednesday, June 17, included two presentations: the first, by Professor Geoffrey Blodgett, on local architectural history and the second, by Oberlin College Archivist Roland Baumann, on the vast array of materials housed in the College Archives. In the afternoon participants had the choice of either doing research in the archives or returning to Langston Middle School to work on their curriculum projects there.

On Thursday, June 18, Professor A.G. Miller began with a presentation on the African American experience in Oberlin. In the afternoon Carol Lasser spoke on the methods and challenges of doing oral history. She also took some participants on a tour of Oberlin's Civil War monuments. Meanwhile, participants continued to work on their curriculum development projects.

We tried to pull everything together on Friday, June 19. The participants, some collaborating in teams and others presenting individually, offered descriptions and demonstrations of their curriculum projects in progress. Among the projects they presented were:

• "Web Links to Oberlin History" (for third graders)

• "Creating and Publishing an Oberlin Newspaper of the 1860s" (for fifth graders)

• "The History of Oberlin's Scientific Contributions" (a website for middle school students)

• "City Changes" (a series of math exercises using Oberlin buildings as source materials, for sixth graders)

• "The Underground Railroad in Ohio" (a website and other materials for middle school students studying The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton)

• "Ohio History" (for fourth graders)

• "Teaching Tolerance" (a website on twentieth-century race relations in Oberlin for middle school students)

• "Oberlin Architectural History" (for high school students with learning disabilities)

• "Family Heritage and Oberlin History" (for middle school students).

James Gray, Superintendent of the Oberlin Public Schools, attended this session.

Note: We spent less money than we had anticipated on meals for the summer sessions. We applied the savings to the purchase of books, software, and other materials requested by the participants for use in their classrooms.

Evaluation

At the close of the summer sessions, participants completed questionnaires designed to measure how well "Oberlin History as American History" had achieved the goals originally set forth in our proposal to the National Endowment for the Humanities. In response to the question "What is your overall assessment of the workshop?" thirteen participants rated it "5" (highest), one rated it "4," and the other rated it between "4" and "5." The most serious complaint concerned the excessively cold air conditioning of the Langston Middle School library. Nearly everyone praised the intellectual content and technical support provided. Among the comments we received were:

• "I have enjoyed the entire experience. I learned more about Oberlin and its uniqueness… I feel that I am better able to help the students make connections with history and technology."

• "The resources of people, paper and electronic that were presented by the workshop were fantastic…. I have gotten over my initial fear (if not all the frustration yet) of surfing the web and pulling things off the web for my students' use."

• "I've learned more about Oberlin history (and its links to U.S. history) this week than I have during the 30 years that I've lived here…. Thanks for a great workshop."

• "Well-planned, good balance between developing tech. skills, learning about Oberlin history, connecting to resources, and on-line computer time."

• "I thought I knew a lot about Oberlin history but after this workshop I realize the vast knowledge and resources available to extend my knowledge beyond all expectations. I enjoyed all the presentations and feel I have gained much knowledge using new technology…. Feel like I went through a time warp to the future!"

• "Visiting the various places and learning about some of the resources available to us was interesting and quite useful. This was a very intense week. By the end, I was worn out. We covered a huge amount of ground in a short time span."

• "This experience has totally enhanced my curriculum. It wasn't painful at all!"

• "I loved the opportunity to be a history student, especially the history of my town. I also expanded my knowledge of issues and facts that I teach. Getting time to 'play' on the computer, on the web, was luxurious. Most of all, having the support, time, and resources to develop something that enhances what I do with students was wonderful."

Professors Kornblith and Lasser expressed their praise and appreciation for the participants' efforts in a letter to the editor publishcd in the Oberlin News-Tribune, the local newspaper, on June 23, 1998. Everyone closely involved in this project thought it was a huge success.

Outreach

We have endeavored to publicize our project and its impact both locally and nationally. We held a public meeting at Langston Middle School on the evening of Monday, November 16, to demonstrate some of the new curricular materials introduced into Oberlin schools this fall as a result of "Oberlin History as American History." Approximately thirty people attended this meeting, including parents, school board members, and other interested citizens. The comments we received were overwhelmingly positive.

Members of the Electronic Oberlin Group made presentations about the group's website and the NEH-funded project at the annual meeting of the American Association for History and Computing in Cincinnati, Ohio, on April 25, 1998, and at the annual meeting of EDUCOM in Orlando, Florida, on October 15, 1998. On April 24, 1999, we are scheduled to present a "Focus on Teaching Day" session at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Toronto, Canada.

Continuing Impact

The synergy generated by the NEH grant gave rise to two other projects that are currently being implemented. In the fall of 1997 the Ameritech Foundation awarded Oberlin College a $15,000 grant to teach college students how to collaborate with K-12 teachers and students in using electronic resources on Oberlin history. With this support, Professor Lasser introduced History 268, "Oberlin History as American History," at the college in the fall of 1998. Fourteen students took the course, and they developed eight K-12 projects in conjunction with the public school teachers who had participated in the NEH-funded workshops:

• "Oberlin History as Oral Histories"

• "Oberlin Now: Downtown Businesses and Recent Histories"

• "Slaves and Abolitionists in Oberlin History"

• "Oberlin, Science and History"

• "The Lorain County News during the Civil War"

• "Teaching Tolerance Project"

• "Langston Middle School, A History"

• "Fair Housing in Oberlin: The Case of Porter v. Oberlin"

The websites produced for these projects can be found by following the links listed at <www.oberlin.edu/~classer/projects.html>. Professor Lasser will offer History 268 again this coming academic year, and she plans to incorporate it into her curriculum on a permanent basis.

In the spring of 1998, Langston Middle School was awarded a "Raising the Bar in the Middle Grades" grant by Ohio SchoolNet and the Ohio Technological Literacy Challenge Fund. A core component of Langston's application for this grant emerged from discussions among participants in our NEH project: the creation of a corps of "digital docents" comprised of middle school students who would use laptop computers to perform public service in the Oberlin community. The grant provides for the purchase of classroom equipment and for the training of all interested faculty and all sixth and seventh grade students at Langston Middle School. Funding will total $325,000 over three years, and the grant has already generated enormous excitement. A pilot version of the digital docents program is scheduled to begin in April 1999.

We are planning next to focus on Oberlin High School, where faculty interest in educational technology has emerged more slowly than in the elementary and middle schools. Inspired by the results of both our NEH grant and the "Raising the Bar" grant, high school teachers are actively exploring the possibility of employing new media and educational technology to help teach a host of intercultural, global themes throughout the school's humanities curriculum.

Conclusion

By all available measures, "Oberlin History as American History: Enduring Questions, New Approaches" fulfilled its objectives. We believe our project could serve as a model of town-gown collaborations and local history programs elsewhere. We are particularly gratified by the improved level of cooperation between faculty and students at Oberlin College, on the one hand, and faculty and students in the Oberlin Public Schools, on the other hand. The entire community will benefit from the spirit of mutual interest and common concern that has developed among educational institutions, the local historical society, and the public library. We are profoundly grateful to the NEH for funding this initiative.