The New Amsterdam History Center sponsored a workshop that addressed the identification of potential projects suitable for funding under the recent grant received from the Empire State Development Corporation.
The NAHC grant funding is to be utilized to support the following:
(1) Virtual New Amsterdam: The primary purpose of the 3D modeling project is to spatialize and present information and theories about how New Amsterdam looked in the period of 1660 as the “capital” of New Netherland. The spatialization and presentation involve two forms of communication: • knowledge that we have about the settlement will be used to reconstruct digitally how its topography, infrastructure, (streets, bridges, walls) and individual buildings and fort may have looked; and • whenever possible, the sources of archaeological information and speculative reasoning behind the digital reconstruction will be made available. Thus the virtual project, or digital model, will be a representation about the present state of knowledge about the settlement as we currently know it. Beyond this primary purpose, it can be used to teach students or the general public about how it looked. It can be used to collect data about the built form, the natural features and cultural phenomenon. Finally, a digital model can easily be updated with new information or archaeological discovery.
(2) The NAHC will sponsor the development of prototype products that include the following concepts: • Provide multi-disciplinary study and training in New Netherlandic History and related social studies, including the classroom use of historic artifacts and documents in teaching; • Integrate the use, into classroom teaching, of a high quality website and on-line learning methods that delivers primary sources to the classroom; • House a digital library of teaching resources, a bank of computers for teacher use, and a comfortable area for educators to participate in educational offerings and explore new resources with a community of learners; • Offer a variety of professional development programs necessary for teacher re-certification. In addition to workshops the NAHC will provide consultations with “historians-in-residence” and assistance to teachers in their research.
Purpose
The NAHC plans to offer professional development opportunities for educators and provide documents and exercises for classroom use that will result in a sustainable history center. Plans include the on-line offering of a variety of resources dealing with the New Netherland period in American History, to assist teachers, students and historians in the New York City area and beyond as demand increases. The NAHC wishes to pioneer new models of virtual history that, combined with complementary on-line curriculum and exhibits, can prove to be successful as measured by interest from primary/secondary schools and programs, and demonstration of methods of improved information dissemination.
Online resources are expected to include:
- Virtual New Amsterdam/Visual Imagery
- Digital documentation for classroom use
- Major topics in the New Netherland period of American History
- Primary source documents from its digital documentation to include images, deeds, bios, wills and locational related information
- Curriculums for classroom use including methods for creating digital historical documentaries prepared by students
- Traveling exhibitions
- Podcasts
- Walking tours
A qualitative field-based study evaluation methodology involving observations, interviews, document collection, and surveys of teachers and students will be performed subsequent to Workshop Two to assist in allocation of grant resources.
The evaluation will be research-based, and provide comparative case study examples of innovate American History programs designed to improve teaching and learning, where teachers, students, school systems, and program developers have achieved success. The evaluation will be used to create a baseline of standards enabling the NAHC Collections Committee to make resource allocation decisions.
For example, the existing curriculums of both the New Netherland Institute and New Netherland Museum have been implemented but need to be evaluated as to their success and failures as well as their potential for new methods of distribution that will take advantage of new instructional technology and media for learning.
