This past weekend, I had the pleasure to attend the Saturday events of the House Divided Opening Weekend. I was very sorry to have missed the Friday night film festival, but I found myself engaged with other activities of the track and field nature.
I arrived on Saturday morning somewhat groggy, and found myself greeted by a more than appreciated table of coffee and doughnuts, as well as several teachers from across the country. Our first order of business was to be introduced to the House Divided project by professor Pinsker. I have been familiar with the project, so I spent the session observing the teachers, and came to the conclusion that high school teachers don’t know much more about certain topics of history than I do, and that the trick to being a teacher seems to be in the methods of actually teaching rather than knowing facts. I don’t know how I feel about this, since I was always brought up with the idea that the teacher always knows what he/she is talking about.
After the information session, the History 304 class found itself engaged in a discussion with a woman from the Washington Post, whose name escapes me (I am never good with names, especially after little sleep), who talked to us about the importance of Twitter in conveying information, in this case historical. Her project involved tweeting direct quotes from various historical sources about the Civil War as it was happening in “real time” 150 years ago. I thought the idea was very interesting, but that it has a limited audience, namely students and history geeks (I use the term with as much affection as possible). Also, the percentage of those people who have a Twitter account could affect the usefulness of it. I personally don’t follow those kinds of things, or celebrities in general, except Lady Gaga, which is something I should not be discussing on a public blog post.
The afternoon found us in the old Cumberland County Courthouse. I personally found this part of the day a bit tedious, partially because I was tired, but also because I have been listening to the same information for the majority of the semester, and it seemed like another opportunity for me to go and hear the same thing. The demonstration of technology was fantastic, especially the part with the iPad and the images overlaid in the real world. However, I couldn’t get the technology to work on my blackberry, which was very frustrating. The movie was also well done, and Prof. Osborne’s voice is very soothing (sometimes; it is also terrifying sometimes).
David Blight’s lecture was in the evening, and I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. After a brief discussion with Professor Isherwood about Hemmingway and in particular “A Farewell to Arms”, I settled back into my chair and was carried away by Blight’s humor and knowledge as well as insight into how people remember historical events. His lecture somewhat indirectly inspired my current historiography paper, which I am working to shape into how the Great War has changed in societal perceptions. Hopefully that will turn out.
In conclusion, aside from the exhaustion and repetitive information, the weekend proved to be a very interesting one. I was very impressed by the display of technology in the HD project, and think there is a lot of potential, although also that there is still a lot of work to be done. I was very impressed by what I saw of the films, especially the one done by Colin, after hearing how much time he spent on it and how much time he had to work on it.