Virtual History
Web Site for Teachers

By Autumn Bouck

Early on a Friday morning, two junior high history teachers wandered the dark and quiet corridors of Kerr Hall on our campus. Their destination: the Roland Marchand Resource Library, a small but amazing room full of resources for K-12 history teachers--lesson plans, slides, videos, books, maps, and much more. Another teacher, unable to make the trip to UC Davis, logged on to http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/, searched the library's contents remotely, quickly downloaded a lesson plan, and checked out a book. All of these teachers, traditional researchers and online explorers, are now equipped with resources designed to enhance the discussion of history in the classroom.

 
The History and Cultures Project
The Marchand Library is run by the Area 3 History and Cultures Project, a collaborative venture between university faculty and K-12 history teachers. The History and Cultures Project was funded in 1991 by the California State Legislature to serve the 8,700 K-12 history teachers in the Sacramento Valley. It is one of ten sites of the California History-Social Science Project (CHSSP), and one of the 98 sites of the California Subject Matter Projects administered by the UC Office of the President. Since 1991, the Project has focused on low-performing schools and expanded its geographic scope to include schools from Lake Tahoe to Vallejo.

The History and Cultures Project was built on a fundamental belief that the best teachers function within a network of professionals who share a common goal: to enhance their love and knowledge of the subject matter they teach. No one knows this better than Kathy Medina, project director, who helped found the History and Cultures Project when she was a UC Davis graduate student and high school history teacher.

In the early 1990s, Medina was inspired by UC Davis Professor Roland Marchand's video compilation of Watergate "moments" and wanted to share it with her students. But she was frustrated that there was no easy way to access the video or to share such an excellent resource with other history teachers. As a result, she helped found the History and Cultures Project, with the goal of forming a professional community of history teachers.

Leveraging the Web to Enhance Teaching
The History and Cultures Project recently launched a powerful Web site intended to strengthen the network that Medina and her colleagues have been building for nearly a decade. The site provides a dynamic vehicle for sharing knowledge and advancing the art of teaching history.

"We perceive the Web site, and technology in general, as a means of expanding our capacity to improve the quality of teaching and learning in history classrooms," says Matthew Pigg, a junior high school history teacher who created the Project's Web site and database.

The History and Cultures Project Web site opens the door on a wide variety of resources:

• Online Library
  Named after the late UC Davis history professor Marchand (one of the original members of the History and Cultures Project team), the Marchand Resource Library database can be searched by subject, author, title, resource type, or grade level. Some items in the database, such as slide collections and lesson plans, are downloadable; others are available for check-out. Teachers can come into the library to check out the material, or they can check them out online and have them mailed or delivered to them (free of charge if the teacher is from a school that has a partnership with the History Project). Beyond the library resources, the database also includes information about historians and other experts in the field whom teachers can ask for help.

• State Standards
  At the end of summer 1999, the California State Board of Education passed a set of content standards: a list of subjects that teachers are required to teach at each grade level. The History Project integrated this information into its library database so that teachers could search specifically by content standard. For example, a seventh grade teacher can click on "Grade 7" to find resources for each specific topic, or unit, that she or he will teach during that year. This is the only Web site in the State of California that matches resources, such as syllabi and lesson plans, to the content standards.

• Digitized Collection of Lesson Plans and Historical Artifacts
  The Project's site also contains a special collection gathered by Professor Marchand during his 30+ years as a UC Davis professor. Kacey Kamrin, a member of the Project team, worked with the Arbor to put Professor Marchand's lesson plans online. As the plans were all written originally for university students, the History Project worked with history teachers to rewrite them for high school and junior high levels. At http://marchand.ucdavis.edu/ there are currently 24 university-level lesson plans available, 22 at the high school level, and 10 at the junior high level.

  The next step is to digitize and catalogue Marchand's collection of 6,500 images and notecards related to US History. This slide collection represents the enormous investment the late Professor Marchand made in his teaching career at UC Davis. "When completed," says Kamrin, "we plan to have all or large portions of the images searchable by subject area and linked to the California State Standards so that teachers and researchers can access this tremendous collection for their work." To date, one-third of the collection has been digitized and volunteer teachers have typed nearly two-thirds of the corresponding hand-written notecards. The Web interface for this special collection should be available Fall 2000.

• Opportunities for Learning and Collaboration
  Through the Web site, teachers may also register for in-service workshops, join history book reading groups for K-12 teachers, and find out about Saturday sessions on topics related to K-12 history curriculum. Teachers can also register for in-depth summer institutes that provide cutting-edge information and research opportunities. This summer's Institute will focus on the use of the Web in the classroom.

• The Digital Divide
  The biggest challenge remains the lack of computers in K-12 schools, especially in the low-performing schools that are typically partners with the Project. Victims of the "digital divide," some interested teachers will not come to the technology institute this summer--they know they would lack the equipment to apply their skills and knowledge back in the classroom.

• Lack of Trained Staff
  Still another obstacle was the lack of trained staff. According to Pigg, "[Creating such a content-driven site] required someone who had a decent grasp of the content referenced to the standards so that resources could be correlated to their appropriate standard. Luckily we had a great teacher on our staff (Sherrill Futrell, Dixon High School) who dedicated herself to the task and personally correlated over a thousand resources to the standards."

• Finding Subject Matter Specialists
  Finding the "subject matter specialists" or teachers and professors who volunteered to be resources for a particular subject was yet another hurdle. "The challenge," says Pigg, "was to find those who are willing to serve in this capacity. Thankfully, with our broad base of support from the [UC Davis] history faculty and the large numbers of history teachers in the area who are regular leaders and participants in our work, we have been adding 'specialists' quite quickly." The Project is always looking for more specialists to assist history teachers in the Sacramento area. For those who are interested, send inquiries to Pigg at mjpigg@ucdavis.edu.