Veteran Oral History Interviews and the TTU Vietnam Center

Published by in digitalstorytelling, history, military, podcasting on October 4th, 2005

We need students to be engaged in “History That Matters:” Educational activities that truly engage students in ways simply reading a textbook and writing an essay cannot. We also need to engage students in the process of CREATING multimedia, not just merely consuming it. Having access to a robust variety of “voices from history” like those contained in the TTU Virtual Vietnam Archive is a tremendous educational resource, freely available to anyone worldwide with access to the Internet. The archive presently contains over 2.2 million pages of scanned documents, which are all searchable in full-text. These include transcripts of interviewed Vietnam-era vetarans. The archive also provides training resources and curriculum for teachers and students to utilize in the Teachers’ Resources Web.

I posted a podcast interview today with Dr. James Reckner and Mr. Steve Maxner of the Texas Tech Vietnam Center, in which they discuss the importance of engaging students in oral history projects and the resources of the TTU Vietnam Center. Access this podcast through the Texas Tech College of Education podcast feed. The podcast is 30 min long.

The The Virtual Vietnam Archive at TTU is accessible on www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive. My presentation from February 2004, “Veteran Wisdom: An Oral History Project with Digital Video,” is also available online.

More info about TTU College of Education podcasts is available on www.educ.ttu.edu/podcasts.

On this day..

3 Comments »
  • http://tmchale.blogspot.com Tom McHale

    This is something that I believe in as well. There’s so much out there that will engage kids in their own history and culture. I team teach an American Studies class that combines US History from 1920 to the present with the 10th grade English curriculum (I’m the English teacher half).
    This year I’ve been trying to use weblogs to involve kids in a writing and research project that asks them to follow a topic that has a personal interest or connection to them. We’re just getting started but you can take a look at central.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/americanstudies. Any feedback you or your readers could give me (at tmchale.blogspot.com) would be greatly appreciated.
    Also I’ve just recently stumbled upon a book that look at combining writing, history and community engagement. The book (Writing America: Classroom Literacy and Public Engagement ) grew out of a project called Keeping and Creating American Communites created by the National Writing Project with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Studies Association. They list a website at kcac.kennesaw.edu, but the server seems to be down right now so I haven’t seen it.
    I think the key to really engaging the students is in the creation as you mentioned. But if we really want to engage them I believe we need to have them create those connections to their own lives.

  • http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~sdenney Stephen Denney

    Thanks for the interesting interview with James Reckner and Steve Maxwell. Their work is very commendable. I have some plans about placing on the web post-75 materials on Vietnam, mostly news reports.

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