Creating this exhibit was a stressful experience, I constantly felt like I was doing things wrong or not doing enough. Now that I’ve finished it I’m very happy with how it turned out. I felt like I was able to create exactly what I wanted, an exhibit that not only answered my historical question: how and why the Great Depression era was harder for Immigrant Americans, and make it feel very personal.
I wanted my exhibit to not only answer my question but to also tell a story. I wanted it to feel personal and like you were listening to the people talk about their own experiences. That’s why I choose the digital tools I did. I choose to make an image gallery so the viewer could see the faces of the people whose stories were being told. I feel like being able to see someone’s face makes you relate to them easier. That is always why I choose to use sound cite, that way you could see their faces and hear their voices. It makes it feel more personal and really gets the message through to the reader.
I choose to use a geo-location map to tell the stories of immigrant Americans for multiple reasons. The first being it was a great way to compile multiple stories from many people for the viewer to easily access, but it also demonstrated how widespread the problems immigrant Americans faced were. I think my choices of digital tools added a lot to my exhibit and really transformed my sources. They changed them from just photos and stories to something much more personal and relatable. Besides that they really helped me display what I’ve learned in this class.
The main thing I learned in this class was the importance of learning how to use technology in matters relating to history and record keeping. One of the articles we had read stated that the National Archive and Records Administration won’t be taking records on paper anymore starting on December 31st, 2022. I’ve always been someone who preferred traditional pen and paper over reading something on my computer. So, this class has been extremely helpful in getting me prepared for that.
Besides preparing me for the future this class taught me about digital citizenship. That had always been a topic in high school that I never really paid much attention too. That was until the article about how someone was able to create an internet hoax and the guest speaker who talked to us about how he and a class of college students here at George Mason were able to create a hoax online. This information shocked me and made me much more aware of what I’m reading. I really believe that lecture made me a better digital citizen as I’ve become a lot more critical of my sources of information and I’ve stopped retweeting what I’ve now learned are fake news. I definitely feel like this lecture specifically helped me become a more ethical and productive digital citizen.
I also learned a lot about the 1930s in this class. We talked a lot about the Great Depression and its effects on the American people. I learned a lot about the politics in that time, especially about President Herbert Hoover. I also learned about the Dustbowl and how it caused so many people to leave Oklahoma in search of a better life in California. I’m certain that these lessons that I’ve learned about the 1930s will stick with me through life because of the lessons they carry.
I’m a firm believer that when you don’t learn about history it’s bound to repeat itself, so that is a big reason why these lessons will stay with me, but I have another reason for why I believe these lessons will stick with me. The 1930’s leaves a legacy of American resilience. We went through such a hard time and emerged better than we were before. It’s a reminder that no matter how hard things get we can always get through it and possibly emerge better than we were before.
In the end I’ve learned a lot throughout this class and during the process of making this exhibit. It was a long process that caused a lot of stress but in the end, I am extremely proud of what I’ve created. I think my exhibit does exactly what I wanted it to and I feel like I was able to learn a lot not only about the 1930’s but also about digital citizenship and how to use the digital resources that are available to me.
Citations:
Appelbaum, Yoni. “How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, May 15, 2012. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/how-the-professor-who-fooled-wikipedia-got-caught-by-reddit/257134/.
Dana Cochran et al., “The Great Depression,” Matthew Downs, ed., in The American Yawp, eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).
Milligan, Ian. “Historians’ Archival Research Looks Quite Different in the Digital Age.” The Conversation, August 19, 2019. http://theconversation.com/historians-archival-research-looks-quite-different-in-the-digital-age-121096?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twitterbutton.
“The Migrant Experience”, Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940 to 1941, Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/collections/todd-and-sonkin-migrant-workers-from-1940-to-1941/articles-and-essays/the-migrant-experience/
