Crash Course in World History

It is summer, I have a book manuscript to finish, so for the rest of the season I will be posting videos and silliness. Deep thinking will resume in the fall.

I had heard about the Crash Course in World History videos a ways back, but unthinkingly dismissed them as some cartoon-y gimmick. I got around to actually watching one yesterday, and it turns out they are really good. A little background here. Their YouTube channel features 24 world history videos, with topics from the Indus Valley Civilizations to the video below on the Columbian Exchange:

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The videos are so much better than I expected, with up-to-date historical interpretations, good production values, and wit. They would be excellent in the high school or even college classroom as an activity to build student interest. I could do without the cinnamon challenge in the middle of the Columbian exchange, but then I am not the target audience. Enjoy.

Then and Now: at the Spokesman-Review

I like this as a variation on the before-and-after rephotography theme--a slide show drawn from the archives of the Spokesman Review and modern photos of the same scene:


The video page at the Spokesman has additional historic videos, including one featuring historic neighborhoods.

Oregon Experience Online

Oregon Experience is a documentary film program about important people in Oregon history from the Oregon Public Broadcasting. And they have a website full of resources. Two dozen episodes are available to watch online, covering people such as Sam Hill, Abigail Scott Dunaway, and York. Not only are the videos online but for each program there are supplemental materials such as images, articles on related topics, time lines, and other resources. The programs are very good, with deep research and excellent production values. The site is well-designed and easy to navigate, and the video player delivers high-quality streaming video with an option for full-screen viewing. These half-hour videos would be great for classroom use.

There is room for improvement of the site. Given the potential classroom use it would be nice to see some teaching material here--guided questions, primary source excerpts, even lesson plans. It would be nice to be able to download the videos to play on a mobile viewer or show where an internet connection is not available. Some of the linked essays are from the Oregon Historical Quarterly and are behind a pay wall, you can't read them unless you are connected to a university that subscribes to the database. But having 24 excellent programs online is a great thing!

Dan Cohen on The Future of the Digital University

Here is an interesting talk from Dan Cohen, Director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. (He also has a blog and tweets and is one of the hosts of the Digital Campus podcast.) Despite the video presentation this is largely a talk with few illustrations and you can play it in the background while you play World of Warcraft or whatever.*



*I have never played World of Warcraft.

LOC Launches a YouTube Channel

The Library of Congress has just announced that they have a YouTube channel. I'll let them tell you about it:

Well, this is a day that has been a long time in coming. The Library of Congress has been working for several months now so that we could “do YouTube right.” When you’re the stewards of the world’s largest collection of audiovisual materials (some 6 million films, broadcasts and sound recordings), nothing less would be expected of you, and our own YouTube channel has now gone public.

We are starting with more than 70 videos, arranged in the following playlists: 2008 National Book Festival author presentations, the Books and Beyond author series, Journeys and Crossings (a series of curator discussions), “Westinghouse” industrial films from 1904 (I defy you to watch some of them without thinking of the Carl Stalling song “Powerhouse”), scholar discussions from the John W. Kluge Center, and the earliest movies made by Thomas Edison, including the first moving image ever made (curiously enough, a sneeze by a man named Fred Ott).

There is not a ton of material there yet, let alone Northwest material, but I did find this wonderful snipped of some unidentified Plains Indians who worked for Buffalo Bill doing a buffalo dance:



I see that the LOC has disabled comments on the videos! I am a bit surprised--not very 2.0 of them!

PBS Videos Online

Watch Video From Your Favorite PBS Programs: PBS is starting to put quite a few programs online in streaming video. For history fans there are a bunch of episodes of American Experience, including shows on Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill, and the excellent series on Reconstruction. They also have episodes of Independent Lens and POV, both of which often feature progams on a historical theme. PBS even put online so of Ken Burns' horrid WW2 series The War.

Video Podcasting from the Minnesota Historical Society

Video Podcasts from the Minnesota Historical Society. The MHS has some great brief video podcasts on its website. I found this one while researching googling a public history controversy--the refusal of Minnesota to return to Virginia a Confederate flag captured at Gettysburg by a Minnesota regiment. (As then-Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura famously said of the request, "Why should we? We won.")

I think these three-to-six-minute vidcasts are a nice model of how a public institution can use the video podcasting format for different purposes. There are vidcasts about historical issues such as the flag controversy or the 1963 Andersen – Rolvaag Election Recount (and which of us can forget that?). Mini-documentaries on Minnesota historical topics such as the1892 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis or The Younger Brothers: After the Attempted Robbery show off highlights of the MHS collections and are great classroom resources. I especially like how they use vidcasts to present and to preserve museum exhibits: see RetroRama - A Celebration of ’50s Suburbia and Pulp Fiction. Even roadtrips by MHS staff become fodder for vidcasts as in this video on 1950s Tourist Cabins.

Virtually any small humanities institution with a video camera and a YouTube account could create online documentaries along the Minnesota model. I think I feel an assignment for my Public History class coming into being!

NCPH Screening: The Last Conquistador

Today at the NCPH Conference I saw a terrific new film: The Last Conquistador by John Valdez. The film told the story of the decision by the town of El Paso, Texas to erect what became a 36-foot-high statue of conquistador Juan de Oñate. New Mexican Indians, reflecting on the fact that Oñate had murdered no small number of native men women and children, did not think highly of the plan. The resulting controversy ripped the town apart--and made for a powerful film.

The Last Conquistador will air on PBS this summer.