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Power Point, Technology and the Web: More Than Just an Overhead Projector for the New Century?

Michelle DenBeste
California State University, Fresno

AS UNIVERSITIES AND HISTORY DEPARTMENTS argue over how best to make history "relevant" to students of the twenty-first century, and as professors are increasingly under pressure to integrate technology into their courses, many questions remain unanswered as to the usefulness, reliability, and pedagogical soundness of the new and ever-changing technology confronting them in this century. Is it merely a case of old wine in new bottles? Is it simply window dressing designed to entertain students accustomed to 24/7 infotainment? Or, are there scholarly and pedagogical advantages to be gained by the use of this new technology? Because technology can be mere entertainment, a waste of time for student and professor, or even pedagogically harmful, the real question is how to use it in ways that are beneficial and which promote both teaching and learning. Further studies about the ways students and teachers are using technology would help all of us to assess good practices.1 1
      I find that the new technology has many potential benefits. Whereas I once brought in a CD player to play music, a slide projector to show photos of art and architecture, and various texts to present primary source material, I can now integrate all of that information into one format. If my classroom is equipped with an internet connection or wireless technology I can enhance a lecture on World War II with sound clips of Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt giving their famous speeches.2 While teaching the Russian Revolution I can play clips of the Internationale and show photographs of Lenin.3 While this may seem like mere entertainment, it is an opportunity to present visual sources and material it would otherwise not be possible to use. Furthermore, I can display images easily for the entire class to view. In a teaching-oriented university where students do not have access to a large research library complete with archives of its own, the Internet offers vast opportunities for student exposure to primary source collections, which would otherwise be completely unavailable to them. The internet and technology also offer wonderful opportunities for student-centered learning. Students can design a research project, carry it through and go public by developing their own Website or presentation materials. 2
      However, this new technology is also rife with problems. Putting a course online, creating a website, creating beautiful multi-media lectures, and/or monitoring discussion lists takes an enormous amount of an instructor's time. Some become less demanding with use. When I first began creating power point lectures, I spent several hours on each lecture. Now, I can do a simple power point for class in a matter of minutes. If one has already collected the visuals for the power point, putting the actual lecture together is easy and quick. Others remain demanding. Monitoring a discussion list can take several hours a week. Professors who choose to have students work on projects are also likely to find that their contact time with students increases. For me, this has been a positive change but for professors already overtaxed with too much teaching, administrative work, and student mentoring, it can add an additional burden. 3
      There are also problems of access. On my current campus, we have one "media cart" for each department in social sciences and no "smart" classrooms. We have one full-time and one part-time computer technician for the entire school of social sciences (about eighty full time faculty and many more part-timers). Students have access to computer labs but labs are open odd hours, often crowded and the quality of the assistance and the software available varies. By contrast, some colleges and universities with large endowments or corporate grants are able to offer all students laptops and up to date computer labs and have technologically equipped classrooms.4 In addition, although students are becoming increasingly technology literate, we do not necessarily want to spend class time in a history course explaining how to accomplish basic tasks such as logging onto the web or creating a power point presentation. Student preparation for technology often depends on where they attended high school and how much money the school had to devote to computer systems. It also may depend on the students' own income levels. Students who had access to a computer at home and who now have one in their dormitory room are probably more familiar with the technology than the student who has to trek across campus to a remote computer lab. 4
   

Using Technology to Promote "Active Learning"

 
      "Active learning" or "student centered learning," buzzwords of the education departments of our universities and colleges, can be implemented very effectively using computer technology.5 Whereas before, many of us at teaching oriented schools would have scoffed at the possibility of getting students to do "real" hands-on historical work, it now has become an option. The fact that many archives and sources are now on-line means that even undergraduates in survey courses can experience the world of the professional historian. Students can begin to see that history is not just a parade of static facts and figures which they must memorize and regurgitate. "The use of active learning principles means no longer reserving historiography for history majors, but introducing all students to the pleasures and frustrations of doing historical research. This includes training them to form historical questions, seek answers to their own historical curiosity, explore the limitations of historical materials, and collaborate with each other to extend historical knowledge."6 5
      Perhaps one of the most important changes in our teaching can come from making use of primary sources on-line.7 However, before asking my students to go online I require all students to do a source evaluation project. I believe this is a fundamental and useful project and although it is directed at technological sources, it can serve to remind students to beware of ALL sources. In our increasingly media and information saturated world, students are inundated with television, radio, internet, and advertising every day. It is more important than ever that students learn to assess sources, to separate the good from the bad and to decide what they need to know and what is just taking up "air time." One way to do this, for example, would be to have students check to see if there was any truth to an e-mail I once received warning of a proposed Federal Bill 602p which supposedly would charge e-mail users five cents for every e-mail they sent. The fact that such legislation was never proposed can be verified in any number of ways fairly quickly and easily. For instance, the congressmen who supposedly sponsored the bill did not exist and the bill itself does not exist. One could simply check various United States' Government websites for names of congress people, schedules of upcoming bills, etc. Giving the e-mail to students and asking them to figure out if it has any truth to it might be a good exercise in source verification.8 As Gertrude Himmelfarb has pointed out, "the internet does not distinguish between the true and the false, the important and the trivial, the enduring and the ephemeral. Internet search engines will produce a comic strip or advertising slogan as readily as a quotation from the Bible or Shakespeare. Every source appearing on the screen has the same weight and credibility as every other; no authority is 'privileged' over any other."9 6
      In my classes I begin the discussion of source verification and source authenticity by discussing books. I discuss the long journey a book must make before being selected to reside in our university libraries. Many students have never considered the selection process that has already occurred before they lay their hands on any book. We talk about newspapers and television. They know that there is a difference between PBS and MTV, between the New York Times and the National Enquirer, but may not have considered the types of knowledge being presented or where the "facts" are coming from. Finally, we move to web sites themselves. There are many sites with pre-packaged web-evaluation projects.10 However, the most basic web site evaluation involves teaching students the importance of asking who, what, when, where and why and re-emphasizing the significance of asking these questions. One of the most entertaining evaluation projects I have come across involves asking students to research two towns online. One town really exists and the other town is merely an online edifice. Both towns have extensive websites and the student's job is to try and discern which town really exists and which is merely an online creation.11 7
      I have used a variety of primary sources on the web. Professors can use texts singly or in groups, they can create a web page of their own with links or they can simply ask students to go to certain URL's. The possibilities for this type of student work are endless. My two most successful web projects have been one on creation stories where I have asked students to compare world religions by looking at their creation stories and another on propaganda during the world wars. 8
      The propaganda project has been a favorite of students. It requires them to look at primary source documents, analyze them for meaning, discuss them, and then, having assimilated this information, to create a poster of their own.12 Students working on this project last semester were very creative about their choice of topics. They created posters on terrorism, anti-terrorism, preparations for war, and anti-war movements. One student's slogan was "Homeland Security Begins at Home, American Ethics=Ethnic Tolerance." The poster itself featured a photo of an American flag and a picture of a mixed group of people gathering with peace signs. Another student created a poster with a cloaked Star Wars figure in the center and the slogan "How Can We Fight the War on Terrorism If We Can't See the Enemy?" Yet another, mirroring enlistment posters from World War I and II created a poster with the slogan "Are You Ready?" The photo showed an American flag in the background and a serviceman in the front. In his explanation, the student wrote, "The message is to convey the idea that the man should be courageous as he fights for his country. The land that protects him must also be protected so he needs to step up and do what is right for his country."13 These projects help students to see a connection between the past and the present and to look at visual sources critically. They are also fun, both for the students who create them and for the professor to grade. While the project requires some student mentoring, it is a relatively painless process. I normally give one lecture on different types of propaganda, give students the handout below, and spend a little class time discussing my expectations. 9


PROPAGANDA PROJECT

Objectives
Students will analyze propaganda posters used during WWII. Students will examine the similarities and differences between propaganda coming from different countries. Students will discern the themes of propaganda posters.

Resources
www.nara.gov.education/teaching/teaching.html
http://hci.standford.edu/~mmorton/propaganda/wwii/
http://web.arts.ubc.ca/history/ww2prop/prop.htm

Project
1. Students should examine the websites, looking for themes and examining the posters for similarities and differences.
2. Students will locate posters with at least two different themes and from at least two different countries and discuss what they have found.

Activity
1. After discussing the posters, students will create a propaganda poster of their own using graphics and text.
2. Students should be prepared to discuss why they chose the theme, the graphics and the text for their poster.

 
   

Power Point as a Classroom Tool

 
      The capability for Power Point presentations has become one of the standard ways institutions have incorporated technology into their classrooms. Power Point first appeared in math, science, and business classrooms and gradually spread to the humanities. Now candidates for history jobs are routinely queried not only on what they know about the subject matter but also on whether or not they are exposing students to technology. Power Point can be a powerful classroom tool but it can also simply be a gimmick getting in the way of learning. If Power Point is used as a textually heavy application, one could just as well create handouts or overhead transparencies. Power Point looks better than an overhead, but its pedagogical usefulness is limited if one does not think beyond its most basic presentation capabilities. If too much text is presented on Power Point slides, students tend to simply copy down the outline and stop listening further. Conversely, too many visual distractions can diminish the value of what is being said. All of us have been at presentations where the presenter used too many pieces of moving text or a different type of font and style format on every single slide. Thus, it is important to know not just if Power Point is being used but how it is being used. Power Point can move beyond its static presentation by a "sage on the stage" and lead to opportunities for discussion and consideration of visual sources. 10
      In a class where I am using Power Point as a lecture tool, I will try to have an image up for students when they come into the classroom. This can set the tone for the lecture and discussion to follow. For instance, using photographs from the Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust website, one can set up a lecture on the Holocaust by projecting an image of a little boy.14 As students come in one can ask them to speculate on who the child is and where he lives. Are there any clues in the picture? Then, as the lecture progresses and they have more context, they may be able to remember the child in the original photographs. Alternatively, before a lecture on the industrial revolution, one might put up a picture of any number of new inventions and ask students to speculate about their uses. Looking at images in this manner in class can also help them to develop literacy in dealing with visual sources and to begin asking new questions about visual sources. Although students have frequently asked me to do so, I have not yet put my Power Point presentations in a place where students can access them outside of class. I am hesitant to do this because I believe students may feel that there is no need to be in class if they can simply access lecture notes and visuals on-line. My Power Point presentations are intended to augment a lecture, to encourage discussion and to investigate visual sources, not to replace classroom interaction. 11
   

Student Projects Using Power Point

 
      Power Point is also a perfect medium for student projects and presentations. It is simple enough to learn and most students can master the basics without much instruction. In fact, some students may have time to learn and use many more of Power Point's bells and whistles than professors who are trying to create new lectures ever will. For several years now I have been asking students to create and present a power point lecture in my World Civilization courses. This experience requires students to do real research to locate information on their topics. I ask them to use a variety of sources, web, library, newspaper, etc. I talk to them about plagiarism and copyright issues.15 Beause their work will become public they must understand the seriousness of simply cutting and pasting material from the web and using it as their own. They also have to create a presentation that will make their information intelligible to their fellow students. Rather than simply having student presentations at the end of the semester I stagger them so that they present their topics where they belong in our class discussions. Thus, a student doing a presentation on Zoroastrianism would present his/her material after we had discussed other early monotheistic religions. Students are told that they will be tested on the material in student presentations as well as the material in my lectures. This helps to encourage those not presenting to pay attention, to ask questions, and to participate. This project is perfect for survey courses and General Education courses because students not only learn history, but also speaking skills, presentation skills, some technology skills, and some research skills. Students who have completed this project comment that they have learned valuable skills which they will remember long after they have forgotten the names of all of the early river valley civilizations. One student noted, "Because of your class I am now understanding more about computers than I ever did in the past. Thanks to your class I am now able to understand the Internet a little better. Working in this manner also helps me to see what other people in class think about different historical information. So, working on the computer is a good thing for me."16 12
      In my World Civilization class this semester a group project, together with a paper which each student will write individually, will be worth twenty percent of the student's final grade. In this class, because it is large, I have had students work in groups (of no more than four students) on the power point project. In smaller classes (and upper division classes), I have had students work on individual power point projects. This semester my guidelines for the project state that student presentations will be graded on the following criteria:
  1. Is the presentation clear, understandable and factually accurate?
  2. Do students use visual aids (maps, photos, art work, etc.) in addition to text?
  3. Is the presentation presented in a professional manner (i.e. do students read clearly and without stumbling, are students familiar enough with the material to answer questions, and have students practiced the presentation so that it flows smoothly)?
  4. Do students cover the required content in their presentation?
 13
      Although the Power Point project is intended to be an independent project (much like a traditional research paper), I do devote some class time to it. Generally, I begin discussing the project on the first day of class. I talk about my expectations for the project, possible topics, and answer any questions about the project. By the second week of class I have students choose their group and their topic and I give them about fifteen minutes of class time to talk with their groups about the project. By the end of the fourth week, students are asked to submit a tentative outline to me. Mid-semester I have the groups begin meeting with me before they actually present so that I can again remind them of expectations, review their material, and catch any potential problems. If I am going to be out of town for a conference or other professional engagement, I often leave that class period free for students to work on their projects as groups. In general, student projects have been excellent. Students usually devote far more time to the visual aspects of the presentation than I ever can and their research is usually at least satisfactory. Given proper guidance and a sufficient amount of time, the Power Point project can allow even mediocre students to excel. 14
   

Discussion Boards

 
      My favorite and perhaps most effective tool has been the use of a discussion board in my world history courses. I have used a board called the Speakeasy Café housed at Washington State University and made available to participants in various New Media Institutes.17 I make the use of the Speakeasy Café mandatory in my World Civilizations courses and ask students to post twice a week to the discussion board. Each weekend I put up a new question related to what we will be doing in class during the week. Prior to an exam I usually set up a section called "exam review" where students can ask one another questions about the upcoming exam. Student's posts are worth ten percent of their final grade and their postings are graded based on "participation, thoughtfulness and completeness of answers." Students are given some credit simply for doing the assignment with better grades assigned to those who answered in more detail. Although I initially met with some hostility from students who did not have computers at home or who were not as computer savvy as other students, in the end most students (and the professor) thoroughly enjoyed the discussions on-line. 15
      My students at Arkansas Tech University (where I first used the Speakeasy Café) were mostly first generation college students with low levels of computer skills. They spent very little time on campus because nearly all had jobs and/or family responsibilities. Many students did not have their own personal computers. I explained that in a traditional history class students might be asked to write a research paper for which they would need to spend time outside of class in the library. In this class, students were told that they should view their Speakeasy assignments in much the same way, i.e. as a necessary and important learning component of the course. One reluctantly convinced student wrote that, "Sometimes having to use a computer in a class where there are no computers is a hindrance. It can make us have to read [!] and put some thought into the matters being discussed, which is actually good. But when people do not have a computer at home it is difficult finding time in the day or week to get to a computer. Overall, though, I think using computers in class is a great idea." 16
      Although there was a great deal of complaining by students about the time required to access a computer and type in entries, in the end I believe that the Speakeasy helped to create an interested, connected and vibrant learning community for my students. Students from different sections of the course sought each other out to continue discussions which they had begun online. "I really think the Speakeasy Café is an interesting and fun way to learn, as well as to get to know other students. When we are used to the usual pen and paper and taking notes we get stuck in a rut. I give it a two thumbs up. It's a great learning tool." I noticed that students arrived in class discussing the questions which I had posed online. This was the first time I had taught a course where, when I arrived, students were discussing course related questions at a deeper level than just what they thought would be on the test. One student noted, "I am now able to understand the Internet a little better. Working in this manner also helps me to see what other people in this class think about different historical information." Another student wrote, "this class helped students learn more about a computer. It forced students to come together to work after class." Some students also noted that they preferred this type of class participation to face-to-face class participation. For some students who might be shy about speaking up in class, Speakeasy provided a different outlet. "I like the opportunity of using Speakeasy in my history class. Because that is exactly what it is—it give me an easy opportunity to speak about what I think on the topic. Being a somewhat shy person, I don't particularly enjoy speaking up in class. And when participation is a part of the grade, it creates quite a burden. But with the Speakeasy participation is made very simple without being uncomfortable." 17
      Discussion boards used carefully can foster a sense of community among students, encourage students to come prepared to class, encourage the development of reading and writing skills and foster critical thinking. In the classes where I have used this technique I have devoted some class time to preparing students for the concept and the use of the technology. I try to take each class to a lab so that we can all log on together the first time and students can be steered through the process. Then, as their first discussion board assignment, I have them introduce themselves to each other. Many of them are in class together but would otherwise know only the students they sit beside every day. Furthermore, when I teach multiple sections of the same course, students can become acquainted with online comrades in other sections. Finally, I make sure to explain online etiquette to them. In fact, I discuss in-class, face-to-face discussion etiquette as well so this is not an entirely foreign concept to them. Thus far, I have not had any instances of discussions becoming hostile or students "flaming" one another. 18
      While the discussion board can be a strong community builder, it can also help to reinforce content. I have used it to check in on students' progress, asking questions such as "what did you feel was the most valuable thing you learned in class this week?" Or, "are there any concepts we have covered in class that need further explanation?" I also ask more content sensitive questions such as "What is the significance of technological advances made during the late middle ages?" "Was there a Renaissance for women?" Often, I use the discussion board to check in on student comprehension of the readings assigned. If they have been given a primary source document to read I can ask them a discussion board question about it before our next class meeting. The discussion board can serve to prepare students for an in-class discussion or to continue an in-class discussion after class. 19
   

Conclusions

 
      Although many professors and academics have expressed concern over how technology can alienate students, my experience has shown the opposite—that students in a traditional course which is supplemented by online materials and various types of technology can find a love of learning and of history through "doing" history, through hands-on exposure to primary sources, and through discovering that history is not just a series of unrelated facts. My experience challenges a finding of Dennis Trinkle's survey of professors using technology. He found that "more than 20 instructors anecdotally claimed that participation and enthusiasm dropped in direct correlation to the number of hours spent online in a course."18 To my mind, the effectiveness or lack thereof, of incorporating technology into teaching depends largely on how it is done. Are students prepared for it? Do they remain tied to a "learning community?" Is the assignment well constructed and clear? Dr. Carl Berger, Director of Instructional Technology at the University of Michigan has argued that "technology motivates students to spend more time on their work and that the variety of experiences available through technology actually improve the quality of the educational experience."19 While I did not find that always to be true, I certainly believe that it CAN be true. 20
      One of the major downsides to incorporating technology into one's classroom remains the time issue. Both anecdotal evidence and research supports this claim. Creating websites, locating valuable historical sources on the web, instructing students in the use of technology and helping them to create credible projects, all takes enormous amounts of time. Staff assistance, technology assistance, release time for creating new courses, and lower teaching loads would all help ease this burden. But for the moment, I have found that the best solution is to be careful about what I incorporate, to do it gradually, and to pick and choose both projects and the courses for which I intend to use it. One does not need immediately to have a course website for every course, interactive syllabi, and power point slides for every lecture to make a foray into technology a valuable experience for both professor and student. Professors should pick and choose the type of technology that suits their course, their teaching style, and their students. Technology used simply for the sake of technology may be flashy, but it is most likely pedagogically useless. Students can and do learn from professors who use nothing but a chalkboard or an overhead projector. 21
      I would like to claim the comfortable middle ground for the promise of technology in the history classroom. Technology used carefully and wisely offers many advantages. As historians, we have an important role to play in teaching and reminding students about how to access, assess, decipher and disseminate information. "As with any pedagogical innovation, the integration of multimedia technology into an undergraduate history curriculum requires a suitable mixture of enthusiasm and prudence. Enthusiasm is necessary to generate support and student acceptance. Prudence is required to ensure that the introduction of multimedia technology answers specific and explicit pedagogical needs and that the resources required for successful implementation are available."20 The web can and does produce good history.21 It can also help students to become aware of what constitutes good history and to feel confident that they are capable of discerning the good from the bad. As Michael McNally has pointed out, "The Web may not be the brave new world or the postmodern inferno, but it is an arena with which everyone concerned about the uses of the past in the present should be engaged."22 Students of the 21(st) century, perhaps more than ever before are faced with a mountain of information, which threatens to bury them. The traditional skills of history: locating information, sorting data, analyzing it and thinking critically about our sources and our data, remain crucial for our students.23 22


Notes

1.  One such study is broken down in Dennis Trinkle, "Technology and the History Classroom: Where Are We? Where are We Headed?" History.edu: Essays on Teaching with Technology, Dennis Trinkle and Scott Merriman, eds. (Armonk NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2001). The full results are available at Dennis Trinkle, "History and the Computer Revolution: A Survey of Current Practices," Journal of the Association of History and Computing 2, no. 2 (1999) or online at http://mcel.pacificu.JAHC/JAHCII1/ARTICLESII1/Trinkle/Trinkleindex .html .

2.  Many of Winston Churchill's speeches can be found at the Winston Churchill Home Page, www.winstonchurchill.org/ . The FDR library offers and extensive on-line site with many sound recordings, www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu . The National Archives also has some on-line sound files, including "The Date Which Shall Live in Infamy" speech, www.nara.gov/education/teaching/fdr/infamy.html . Many sound recordings from WWI can be found at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/nfhtml/nfhome.html .

3.  A great deal of interesting material, including the Internationale, biographies of Marxists, and photographs can be found at the Marxist History Web site, http://csf.colorado.edu/mirrors/marxist.org/history/ussr/sounds/index.htm .

4.  See for instance, Sarah Carr, "Black Colleges Lag in Offering Students Computer Access, Report Says," The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 27, 2000, A48 or at http://chronicle.com and Florence Olsen, "Survey of Colleges' Spending on IT Finds Overall Increase, Hints of A 'Digital Divide,'" The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 30 2001, or online at http://chronicle.com.

5.  See Dean Hammer, "The Interactive Journal: Creating a Learning Space," PS: Political Science and Politics 30, no. 1 (1997): 70–73; Lee R. Alley, "Technology Precipitates Reflective Teaching: An Instructional Epiphany," Change 28, no. 2 (1996), 48, 54, 56–57; Stephen C. Ehrmann, "Asking the Right Questions: What Does Research Tell Us About Technology and Higher Education?" Change 27, no. 2 (1995), 20–27; Chet Meyers and Thomas B. Jones, Promoting Active Learning: Strategies for the College Classroom (San Francisco: Jassey-Bass Publishers, 1993); Charles Bonwell and James Eison, Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the College Classroom, ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 1 (Washington D.C: The George Washington School of Education and Human Development, 1991).

6.  Douglas Cremer, "Matter, Method and Machine: The Synergy of World History, Active Learning and Computer Technology," In History.edu, 118. For several examples of active learning projects see Daniel M. Ringrose, "Beyond Amusement: Reflections on Multimedia, Pedagogy and Digital Literacy in the History Seminar,"The History Teacher, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Feb. 2001), 209–228.

7.  For a discussion of this issue as well as useful hyperlinks (from the electronic version), see Andrew McMichael, Michael O'Malley and Roy Rosenzweig, "Historians and the Web: A Beginners Guide," Perspectives (American Historical Association), December 1995 or online at http://chnm.gmu.edu/chnm/beginner.html. For a useful discussion of one such historical web site, History Matters, see Kelly Schrum, "Making History on the Web Matter in Your Classroom,"The History Teacher, Vol. 34, No. 3 (May 2001), 327–337.

8.  The e-mail, responses to it, and suggestions for where one might verify its veracity can be located at http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blemtax2.htm.

9.  Gertrude Himmelfarb, "A Neo-Luddite Reflects on the Internet," Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 1 1996, A56.

10.  See for instance Berkeley's Library Guide at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html ; Evaluating Internet Resources http://milton.mse.jhu.edu:8001/research/education/net.html ; and the University of Illinois' site on teaching students to evaluate internet sources http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/up/credibility/index.html.

11.  Two towns, New Hartford, Minnesota and Redvers, Saskatchewan can be found at http://www.lme.mankato.msus.edu/newhartford/newhtfd.html and http://members.xoom.com/tricapsk/redvers/index.html . Another website lists a variety of bogus web sites and is located at www.tsc.k12.in.us/training/BogusWebSites.htm .

12.  Adapted from a project designed by the American Social History Project (http://www.ashp.cuny.edu/index_new.html).

13.  Examples of student projects were taken from my classes at California State University, Fresno, fall 2002.

14.  A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust, http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/default.htm. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum also has many potential teaching tools (photographs, oral histories of survivors, accounts of camp life, etc.), www.ushm.org/museum.

15.  Several excellent sites are available which discuss proper citations of electronic sources. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/Resources/cite/index.html and http://cas.memphis.edu/~mcrouse/elcite.html are just two. On copyright issues see http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/resources/cpyrt/index.html .

16.  All student comments are from students in my World Civilizations courses at Arkansas Tech University in fall and spring of 1999/2000.

17.  I attended the NEH Faculty Development Institute, New Media Classroom: Teaching, Learning and Technology in the Humanities Classroom, July 19–23, Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Speakeasy Café is housed at http://morrison.wsu.edu/Studio.

18.  Dennis Trinkle, "Technology and the History Classroom," History.edu: Essays on Teaching with Technology (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2001), xiii.

19.  Carl Berger, "Ann Jackson and the Four Myths of Integrating Technology into Teaching," Syllabus: Technology for Education, Vol. 11, No. 7, March 1998: 18–20.

20.  Jose E. Igartua, "Integrating Multimedia Technology into an Undergraduate History Curriculum: Pedagogical Considerations and Practical Examples," History.edu, 100.

21.  Carl Smith, "Can You Do Serious History on the Web?" Perspectives (American Historical Association), February 1998. Also online at http://chnm.gmu.edu/assets/historyessays/serioushistory.html .

22.  Michael O'Malley and Roy Rosenzweig, "Brave New World or Blind Alley? American History on the World Wide Web," Journal of American History (June 1997). Also available online at http://chnm.gmu.edu/assets/historyessays/bravenewworld.html .

23.  Resources for creating student projects and source evaluation activities: National Archives and Records Administration, http://www.archives.gov/ ; Library of Congress American Memory, www.loc.gov/ ; American Social History Project, www.ashp.cuny.edu/index.html ; History Matters, http://chnm.gmu.edu/ ; H-Net, http://www2.h-net.msu.edu ; Internet Modern History Sourcebook, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook.html .

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