Dickinson College / Gilder Lehrman Institute

Author: Lance Warren

Layers and Fusion Tables: the future of historical research?

Chris Bunin boldly led us into the world of GIS yesterday, and he has provided a number of documents to help you make the technology a part of your teaching.

Toward the end of his presentation, Chris noted that he was excited to hear that no one had explored GIS just yet — because that meant everything he presented was new.  And yet, he wishes the technology were more widely used and embraced.

What do you think?  Will GIS shape some of your lessons next year?  Are there particular aspects of our course that would be easier or more difficult to illustrate using GIS?

Teacher’s Tour of Gettysburg

Take a teacher’s tour of Gettysburg as Matt guides you through the battle’s turning points, illustrating some of its most significant personalities and acts of heroism while sketching the bigger picture of the Gettysburg Campaign.

http://vimeo.com/48368173

http://vimeo.com/48363076

http://vimeo.com/48326791

http://vimeo.com/48326733

http://vimeo.com/48322824

Visualizing Emancipation

We’re so glad that Rob Nelson and Scott Nesbit could join us today to offer an introduction to Visualizing Emancipation.  Make sure to explore the site — and start imagining how you could use it with your students.  The worksheet and lesson plan Rob and Scott shared should help you to get started.

Let us know your thoughts.  Will Visualizing Emancipation or Mining the Dispatch make an appearance in your classroom next year?

Also, make sure to keep in touch with Rob and Scott as you develop ways of using their work.  Write to them at rnelson2@richmond.edu and snesbit@richmond.edu.

Loud and clear: checking your audio setup on WebEx

If you have encountered trouble in using your microphone over the last two days, or you’re concerned about attempting to use it for fear that others have run into problems, here are a few simple checks you can complete that will ensure we can hear you.

When you enter the webcast, a box will appear asking you whether you want to join an “Integrated VoIP conference.”  We discussed this earlier, and you have been correctly clicking “yes” to enable the audio through this prompt.  But the next steps are just as important.

The audio setup wizard opens automatically after you enable the audio.  The first box looks like this:

Click next.  Then, you will see a prompt asking you to check your speakers.  Make sure they’re turned on, and then click the test or play button to ensure the audio is clear.  This way, you will know you can hear Matt and the other presenters before we’ve said a word.  Note that you can use the horizontal slider in this box to raise the audio level, if necessary.

Once your speakers are ready, click next.  Then — and this is the most important step in making sure you can speak to us — take a look at the options in the microphone test box:

Note that you can select the “input device” — or, your microphone, whether it’s an internal mic, as in many laptops, or an external device you have plugged into your microphone jack or USB port.  As with the speakers, you can also raise the microphone volume.  It’s a good idea to raise the microphone volume to the very top, as I have above for our presentations.  Once this is set, click next.

And when the final prompt appears, click Finish to save your settings.

To speak a question or comment during the session, remember that you have a few options for letting me know you would like to take the floor.  You could simply text me a note through the chat box, or click the raise hand or “ask for mic” buttons, which will cause an alert to pop-up on my screen.  Those buttons are located at the bottom of the participant box, on the right side of the screen:

And that’s it!  If you have a microphone connected or built-into your computer, then there’s nothing holding you back from joining the conversation.

Just email me with any questions: warren@gilderlehrman.org.

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