Unit Plan Public History

GRADE LEVEL:Appropriate for grades 7-12

ESTIMATED TIME NEEDED:Approximately two weeks

OBJECTIVES:Students should be able to:

• List the major careers available in the field of public history.
• Describe some tasks of each major public history career.
• Describe the importance of a specific public history jobs in terms of their services to the public.
• With a critical eye, recognize in a museum the results of public history projects.
• Use technology as an information source.
• Evaluate the validity of a source of information.

ACTIVITIES:

1. Introduce the concept of public history by listing the primary careers that define it, those being:
   • museum curator
   • archival work
   • oral history
   • historical preservation
   • exhibit design
   • exhibit fabrication
   • government service in any of the above fields

2. Explain some of the duties and tasks involved in each career, supplementing the explanations by allowing the students to visit other pages on this web site about historic preservation, photography as a historical tool, oral history, historical and recent photographs, and exibits. Discuss with them the importance of each task

3. Discuss ways in which a particular source of information is proven to be valid. Use examples from the Internet to demonstrate.

4. Take the students on a morning or afternoon field trip to a local museum, pointing out the visible results of public historians' work. For example, in a large museum, the displays would have been planned out by an exhibit designer, constructed by an exhibit fabricator--all under the watchful eye of the curator. Quotes that may appear throughout the museum would have been collected by oral historians, and every one of them would have learned certain details from the museum's (or other) archives.

5. Following the trip, facilitate a discussion dealing with what the students were most impressed with, and what they might have done differently if public history was their job.

6. Introduce the Public History Unit Project to the students. Go over the evaluation criteria for the project, which will provide standards and a guide for the students while working through their project. Identify specific due dates for each component of the project.

7. Demonstrate skills needed for the project. These skills can be taught throughout the unit in mini-lessons as students need the skills. The skills will include:
   • How to create questions for tests(Component 3)
   • How to access the web site for the project (Component 1)
   • Use of a word processor (Component 2)
   • How to practice for an oral presentation (Component 4)

8. Schedule a day or two at the end of the unit for students to present their papers to the class. MATERIALS/RESOURCES:

   Access to computers; access to the internet; access to adequate public research facilities; access to a museum; activity rubrics.

   Author

   Alisa Cooper (Senior English Major from Raton, New Mexico) 1998 Field School Team

   For corrections and contributions regarding this World Wide Web page, contact Dr. Vernon L. Williams, ACU Box 28130, Department of History, Abilene Christian University, Abilene, Texas 79699.
   E-mail: vwilliams@nicanor.acu.edu
   FAX 915-674-2369
   telephone 915-674-2150.