This week was very quiet, which was expected given that no major papers were due this week and that out of three students assigned to post their facilitations this week and hence complete their primary source papers only one did so. Though Dr. Amanda Snyder suspected that a longer Independence Day weekend would create confusion and sent a reminder to students, the other two facilitators have not shown up. We still have two more facilitation weeks to go, so hopefully I will receive some requests for reviewing primary source papers because, when I was a student in Dr. Snyder’s courses, primary source analysis was my favorite assignment.
In the past few weeks, I have not been dedicating enough time to the Sutori page, but this week I received an indirect reminder about it. Long ago, I subscribed to newsletters from edX and Coursera to be alerted about any new courses available in the subjects that interest me, one of which is, of course, history. This week, I saw a course from HarvardX titled “Tangible Things: Discovering History Through Artworks, Artifacts, Scientific Specimens, and the Stuff Around You” based on a course Laurel Thatcher Ulrich helped to create in 2011 for Harvard University. The main idea this course tries to demonstrate is that objects can also “talk” and therefore can be very valuable in conducting historical research. While the goal of the Sutori page I was creating is to show the differences between secondary, primary, popular, and academic sources, I also wanted to showcase the diversity of primary sources available to historians by adding Mary Todd Lincoln's velvet dress, for example. I will consult with Dr. Snyder about adding the link to the course, which is free, to the Sutori page as a suggestion for further study.
The familiarity with sources of information is especially important as students are approaching their final research assignment and choosing their topics. Dr. Snyder had previously created a discussion board for students to propose their intended research topic, and many of them indicated their interest in Native cultures or the earliest interactions between the natives and the Europeans. In the introduction to “Tangible Things,” Laurel Ulrich specifically noted the necessity to explore physical objects whenever a research concerns people or groups whose voices are scarcely represented in the surviving written documents. Thus, I decided to work more on the Sutori page and think about ways to encourage students to venture into the world of “things” along the way.
This week my fellow-intern Stephen and I received a reminder about the upcoming internship showcase and had a chance to select a time slot for our final presentation. Time flies! However, the pace of a twelve-week-long summer semester is higher than that of fall or spring, which is perhaps why some students have not reached out even if they were willing to use our tutoring services. I proposed to Stephen to set up a meeting and discuss what we both would like to address in our final presentation. Although we can still face new challenges and gain more experience that we will want to feature in our presentation, I think it is a good idea to start outlining it now.
Comments