Building history : learning with archival photographs

Abstract

In many classrooms, learning about history means memorizing facts from textbooks, films, and other media. It is rare for students to engage in authentic historical activities - analyzing multiple documents to look for similarities and variations and ultimately assembling interpretations of past events. In this thesis, I present a set of tools, called Image Maps, that allow students to conduct historical inquiry within their own communities. Rather that reading about the history of a community, students are encouraged to photograph the buildings in their neighborhoods. The cameras they use have been augmented with global positioning system (GPS) receivers and digital compasses. The metadata provided by these sensors are used to retrieve historical images of the locations that students photograph. This collection of photographs is used as evidence for hypotheses about how and why a city has changed over time. In this document, I explain how the integration of geographic information systems (GIS) and digital photography can lead to new ways of thinking about local history. I describe the hardware and software used to make historical photographs accessible for reasoning about community change. I also describe preliminary evaluations that show how sophisticated reasoning can occur when students are made to develop their own interpretations of historical photographs.