The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media developed a website that gives users information about the National Mall.
A George Mason University-produced website that helps visitors to the National Mall learn more about its history has been recognized by the National Council on Public History with its 2015 Outstanding Public History Project Award.
The award is presented each year for work that contributes to a broader public reflection and appreciation of the past or that serves as a model of professional public history practice.
Histories of the National Mall is a place-based public history mobile website developed by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, with support of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Designed primarily for tourists in Washington, D.C., the Histories of the National Mall website reveals that the National Mall has a history of its own that is invisible when walking along its paths and lawns.
The website has four entry points—place-based, thematic, chronological and biographical—allowing users to connect the physical space and its development, together with the social, cultural and political events that have transpired there.
The project’s co-directors, Sheila Brennan and Sharon Leon, will accept the award at the NCPH conference in April on behalf of the center and the project team.
Read about all the council’s award winners here.
In the same vein, the center is also developing a new course, Teaching Hidden History, in a joint project with Virginia Tech. The course will feature online components and in-person meetings using the 4-VA telepresence rooms on the two campuses.
Teaching Hidden History, which will be offered this summer, integrates digital history, history education and best practices in teaching and learning history. Students will conduct research using primary and secondary sources to develop online history modules using an open-source platform.
Through the course, graduate students in history and social studies education will be able to strengthen their historical research and historical thinking skills while using digital tools and exploring history education in an online environment.