My project’s academic argument is posted in the introductory page of my omeka site for visitors to see and it surrounds the following concept: 

George Washington’s General Orders established the narrative that would forever cast Arnold out of America’s social fraternity, by making Arnold’s treason about a lack of honor and virtue. In doing so, Washington set the parameters for others to be a part of the “imagined community” of the emerging American nation.3 In the early years of nationhood, Arnold’s legacy survived as a constant reminder of its need for virtue and honor to ensure American independence.Moving away from America’s early years, Arnold’s legacy evolved from its original meaning and shifted to more generalized discussions of American loyalty. What has remained constant is that he will always be remembered as America’s greatest traitor. 

That said, the overall purpose of my site is to serve as a prototype  for a public website dedicated to examining how Benedict Arnold’s act of treason played a role in shaping the national identity of the United States. The site’s purpose is educational and the target audience includes k-12 educators and school children. The site will connect to common core standards as well as aspects of the curriculum from Maryland, DC, and Virginia public schools. 

In designing the site, I kept in mind my audience as well as the site’s educational purpose. Three exhibits are used to show support for my academic argument. Within each exhibit, I have used plugins such as PDF embed, Image Annotation, and Text Annotation to show off and differentiate my primary sources and also to provide a deeper analysis  of the sources themselves. Students need assistance in understanding certain types of vocabulary that align with their curriculum standards. In addition, I have embedded YouTube videos on my site to make the content more interactive for my students. 

I will evaluate my work by checking in to see how much of the site can be connected to curriculum standards and how much it aligns with educational Universal Designs for Learning.

Current methods and technologies have enabled public history to reach new audiences. Methods include storyboarding, site based story telling and community outreach while technologies include omeka collections, exhibition mobile exhibits, podcasts, and virtual reality.  A commonality amongst current methods and technologies is a focus on user interactivity, cultural relevance, and entertainment value. As a result, methods and technologies can be combined together in the creation of public history initiatives. 

Personally, I have used storyboarding as a means of paper-prototyping the layout and design of my prototype omeka site and collection. The planning process allowed me to consider the visual interactives I would include in my site for the purpose of user engagement and entertainment. In a similar manner, site based storytelling, the use of a specific location’s history to initiate a historical narrative, has also been helpful for user engagement and entertainment. Projects related to site-based storytelling have emerged onto the public history scene in the last couple of years such as mobile interpretive projects.

A notable mobile interpretative project is the Cleveland Historical project, a mobile application and mobile optimized website. The project’s focus is the city of Cleveland, Ohio and utilizes multimedia, sound, geolocation to share the city’s cultural history. The Cleveland Project has easy to use archival software that allows “interpretative content to be customized for local history events, community endeavors or classroom learning.” (Tebeau, 26). 

Community outreach methods have also been used to engage local communities in their own cultural history. It is a collaborative approach to history that bridges the divide between museums and the communities they reside. Local community members then have the opportunity to contribute to the historical narrative. The Penderlea Homestead Museum has utilized community outreach by encouraging locals to curate their own exhibits. These exhibits are then informed by the personal experiences and perspectives of community members. In doing so, these exhibits are culturally relevant to the surrounding locality. 

Podcasts and virtual reality have an entertainment element that sets them apart from other technologies. These two technologies can use multimedia to engage and educate a wider range of audiences with interpretative content. The interpretative content can be delivered through either audio or visual storytelling that can engage the listener. Podcasts can reach a wider audience through streaming platforms like Spotify, Itunes and YouTube Music while virtual reality can be used on computers and consoles as well as within museum exhibits. Just like radio, podcasts have the ability to expose listeners to history at their own pace whether it’s on a drive to work or cleaning the house. In the same vein, virtual reality can intrigue younger audiences and allow them to interact with history in a more thought provoking manner through visuals. 

Stephanie Mitchell

Quote: “Students have difficulty navigating websites, using links in resources and require a lot of scaffolding. But, they have no problem navigating TikTok because it’s social.”

Demographic: 

• Age: 42
• Gender: Woman
• Occupation: Middle School Social Studies Teacher
• Income: $55,000
• Education: Teacher Certification, Master’s in Education, Endorsements in Social Studies
• Nationality: American

Descriptive Title: Mrs. Mitchell is a Social Studies Teacher at a public Middle School located in the DMV area.

A Day in the Life Narrative: Two days every marking period, Stephanie attends a full day of professional development to learn about new technological strategies and materials she can use in her classroom. It is also an opportunity to share ideas with her colleagues. Ever since Covid, technology is used on a daily basis in the classroom and students’ academic proficiency levels have fallen. Consequently, Stephanie tries to use it to improve student engagement by using social studies related websites and educational multimedia platforms. These sites sometimes also include the gamification of course content well as informative databases/archives. But, in spite of the fact she is already using technology, students struggle to appropriately use the provided technological resources and websites. They have issues navigating websites and finding the necessary resources. They also don’t seem too interested in learning new content. Phones are a frequent issue as they distract students from the content.  Students tend to be using social media in the midst of class by taking photos or videos of what they are doing and posting it to Snapchat or Tiktok. It is also not helped by the fact that students also struggle with their reading and writing skills on a national level. They struggle with reading context clues and engaging with the content. There is a lack of enthusiasm amongst most students.

End Goal: To improve student engagement with social studies by using educational technology to improve interest.

Faith Cooper:

Quote: “I have always struggled with social studies. BCE, Mesopatamia, 1700s…I just don’t get it.”

Demographic:

• Age: 13
• Gender: Girl
• Occupation: Middle School Student
• Income: None
• Education: Kindergarten through Eighth grade
• Nationality: American

Descriptive Title: Faith attends a public middle school in the suburbs of Northern Virginia.

A Day in the Life: Faith attends school on a daily basis. Her school does not have a restrictive cell phone policy so she has her cellphone on her at all times. She checks her socials like TikTok frequently if she is ever bored in class. As a result of Covid-19, the school system issued laptops to every single student in the county and she depends on it to complete digital assignments for most of her classes. She uses the following platforms to complete work: Google Drive, Kami, Lumio, Code.org and Schoology. She is an average student who does her best. She achieves mostly B’s and C’s. Social studies is her least favorite class because there is a lot of reading and writing and she also does not see how it is relevant to her. She prefers to procrastinate by going on YouTube, checking TikTok or playing a game on her phone. Her parents have recently gotten on her case about her grade in social studies as her interim report card reflected a D in Social Studies.

End Goal: To get better grades in social studies and try to like it so she doesn’t get grounded for having a D on her report card.

Nature of the Request: 

The objective of this project is to create a prototype  for a public website dedicated to examining how Benedict Arnold’s act of treason played a role in shaping the national identity of the United States.  Many have forgotten that Benedict Arnold was once an American hero. On several occasions, Arnold took gallant strides as a military general. Notably, Arnold was applauded for his actions at Fort Ticonderoga, Lake Champlain, and the Battle of Saratoga. However, his heroic actions do not compensate for his betrayal of the Revolutionary cause. Arnold betrayed the cause when he entered secret negotiations with Great Britain to hand over West Point, a pivotal American fort. After his attempt to hand over West Point, Arnold defected to the British and became a brigadier general. As brigadier general, he led invasions into the colonies. By defecting to the British, Benedict Arnold made a name for himself as America’s greatest traitor while also playing a role in solidifying the American National identity. The proposed project will serve to demonstrate in what ways Arnold’s image was used to reinvigorate and solidify the success of the American Revolution. Consequently, it will serve as an example as to how members of a nation can be tossed out and exemplified for the sake of a national cause. This type of exemplification has been repeated throughout history with the antagonisms of public political figures as well as the targeting of minorities in times of extreme disarray to preserve the national community. 

Technology:

The current prototype uses the Omeka website platform as the project’s technological foundation. Omeka allows users to exhibit historical content and interpretation. Plug-ins will be utilized to demonstrate and showcase the historical content in a more engaging manner for the target audience. These plug-ins include Docs Viewer, Exhibit Builder, Exhibit Image Annotation, PDF Embed, Text Annotation, Timeline and YouTube Import. 

 A collection of 10 items is currently being used to demonstrate the type of information that will be shared with a public audience. From here, Omeka will continue to exhibit digital artifacts that serve as evidence as to how Benedict Arnold shaped the national identity of the United States. 

Target Audience:The target audience for this site will include K-12 educators and secondary students. The target demographic is expected to have a basic understanding of website functionality. That said, teachers will need to provide scaffolding to students in order to offer them guidance on how to navigate through the site.

Humanities Content: 

Consequently, Arnold’s legacy as a traitor triggered the following inquiries: How did Benedict Arnold become America’s greatest traitor? What is treason? What is nationalism? What was the state of the nation when Arnold defected to the British? How did Arnold’s reputation as a war hero disappear in the public sphere? What and who contributed to blackening Arnold’s name? Who were the important individuals that played a part in spreading anti-Arnold sentiment? What publications spread the news about Arnold’s betrayal? Which publications villainized Arnold? How did perceptions of Arnold change over time from the late eighteenth to twenty-first century ? What moments in time caused images or discussions of Arnold to resurface in popular media? What historical figures has Benedict Arnold been compared to? 

Historical research will be conducted using the following scholarship and primary sources. Biographies and historical accounts from scholars like Charles Royster, Willard Randall, Walter Powell, Joyce Lee Malcolm, James K. Martin, Nathaniel Philbrick , Lori J. Ducharme, Gary A. Fine, and Grenvill Ingalsbe will be used. Articles and scholarship discussing American Treason Law and Nationalism will be consulted. Primary sources will focus on articles, literature, wartime correspondence, political cartoons and periodicals from the end of the eighteenth century to the present. 

Public history projects are wholly dependent upon a shared authority between audience and content. Public history is an endeavor that is a shared process of history making. Although public history’s definition continues to be a work in progress, it can be redefined as a “society in which a broad public participates in the construction of its own history” (Grele, p.48). This shared process implies that public historians must work with communities to develop the content that will manifest into a public history project. In other words, public history projects belong just as much to the community as it does to the historian as they cannot exist without one another.

According to Frisch, shared authority can be offered as “the interaction of scholarly authority and wider public involvement in presentations of history” (p.53) and the process of doing history with the public can be complex but rewarding. Serge Noiret states “ a public historian confronts and integrates one’s own knowledge listening to public memories and incorporating community documents” (p.55). Co-creating history is dependent on dialogue driven approaches like collaborative reflection opportunities and interviews with members of the public. 

Projects like the Chinatown History Museum (CHM) Experiment demonstrate the usefulness of collaborative reflections. The Chinatown History Museum’s mission is to create dialogue-driven exhibitions in order to better explore the “memory and meaning of Chinatown’s past” (p.291). According to John Kuo Wei Tchen,  “target segments of the Chinese American community have been collaborating with the CHM planning group in documenting the history of Chinatown and reflecting upon their memories of it” (p.298). The project also involved scholars, museum professionals, and segments of the non-chinese community. As a result, CHM has created exhibitions that incorporate feedback from site visitors who are willing to discuss the themes and details of the exhibit and provide their own “memories, photographs, documents, and personal memorabilia” (p.308). 

Interviews are also an important part of public history. Oral Histories allow for individuals to share their personal experiences to past events and ownership is shared amongst the interviewer and interviewee” (Corbett and Miller, p.20). Projects like Through the Eyes of the Child utilized oral history interviews to bring to light local African American History. The goal of the project “was to share both inquiry and authority with the black community, beginning with focus group discussions to determine what kind of museum exhibit that community wanted to see” (p.29). From these discussions, community participants “firmly recommended against an exhibit on civil rights, music, or sports, all of which they regarded as stereotypical at best” (p. 29). Consequently, the final exhibit included “a one-act play and curriculum materials for neighborhood oral history projects, celebrated middle-class community values and reflected them from the museum back to the community” (p. 30). 

Without a doubt, public history projects require historians and the community to work together. The collaborations of both parties enable history to become more meaningful and worthwhile to the existing community. Dialogue driven collaborations between historians and the public allow for history to have a shared authority that promotes a shared process of history making.