Proposals for Web Review and for Digital Proposal Project:

Web Review Proposal:

My web review will be focused topically on Alexander Hamilton and his role as Founding Father and influential Federalist. Hamilton’s emphasis upon centralization of government, banking issues, and his British sympathies have placed him in a negative light in much modern historiography. I am interested to see if this attitude prevails on the web. I hope to explore, among other issues, who has created the majority of Hamilton websites, what format most of the material is presented in, how the history of Hamilton may be affected as more people create his history on-line, etc.

Two sites I plan to explore in-depth are ”Alexander Hamilton on the Web" and “The Rise and Fall of Alexander Hamilton.” PBS also did a short series on Hamilton, focusing upon his duel with Aaron Burr. I plan to utilize this site as an example of how “popular” history has dealt with him on the web. In order to contrast “digital” Hamilton with “traditional” Hamilton, I plan to compare two books: Richard Brookhiser’s Alexander Hamilton, American, and Stephen F. Knott’s Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth, with the websites I evaluate.

In the end, will Hamilton’s myth be further perpetuated through web media or will he become a more complete historical figure?

Digital Proposal:

American history, specifically the founding era and the creation of the Constitution, is a required high school course. Yet, what type of digital resources exist for teachers to utilize nside and outside of the classroom when covering these topics?

In my perusal of the web, there are few that skillfully engage this time period. I propose to create a website devoted to teachers who teach secondary and undergraduate early American/ government classes. This site would take the First Amendment of the Constitution as its specific focus and would provide access to primary and secondary sources, timelines, graphs and maps, and contextualizing essays, as well as annotated booklists and website links.

It’s uniqueness would lie in the fact that it would exist with a two-fold focus: First, it would exist as a teacher reference, where teachers could come and gain the basics of material they are required to teach. As well it would give them access to primary documents, familiarize them with the historiography of the period, and present them with ideas for interactive classroom/ digital exercises. Second, the site would house teacher-overseen modules that students could log into and complete for their class. These modules would exist in an archive that a teacher could go into and “program” for class use. This “programming” could be extensive, in that the teacher would be able to create the exercises (including questions and answers, research direction, pick audio and/ or videos clips, etc.) or utilize one already established but customize it for their class by clicking on the specific pre-made questions/ activities they wanted. (This part of the site would be password protected so that the teacher could control his or her program and receive feedback as to which students have signed in and completed their assignments.)

The goal of the site is as follows: 1)To harness the extra space afforded by the web to present teachers with an array of documentation; 2) To enable teachers to introduce their students to the craft of history in an engaging medium that is multisensory and can be organized in non-familiar formats that require more of the students, 3) To present students with an interactive and in-depth exercise in historical practice (by examining original documents, listening to audio clips of quotes, and visually watching a re-enactment or interviews of prominent modern scholars) and requiring them to think through (in age appropriate exercises) the interpretations and conflicting ideas that fill the First Amendment.

October 2002