History News Network is Looking for Interns

If you have any experience with HTML coding, content management systems, or blogging, please be sure to mention it in your cover letter!

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FYI:  Our own Christine Kelly (’10) had one of these internships.   Read about it here.

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More Jobs and Internships

Exhibits Coordinator, Delaware Division of Parks and Recreation, Dover, DE

Collections Assistant, The Field Museum, Chicago, IL

Education Program Coordinator, Historic New England, Boston, MA

Education Program Coordinator, Lowell’s Boat Shop, Amesbury, MA

Curator of Education, Elkhart County Historical Museum, Elkhart, IN

Trail Programs Internship, American Hiking Society, Silver Spring, MD

Park Guide, Adams National Park, Quincy, MA

Associate Curator, The Historical Society of Martin,County, Stuart, FL

Program Associate, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, MNAcademic Site Leader, Tenacity, INC, Boston, MA

Park Guide, Vicksburg National Park, Vicksburg, MS

Director of Education, The Shaker Historical Society, Shaker Heights, OH

Interpretive Assistant, Pamplin Historical Park, VA

Middle School History Teacher, Community Partnership Charter School, Brooklyn

Collection Curatorial Internship, Fraunces Tavern Museum, New York, NY

Fall Tours Intern, Preservation Society of Charleston, SC

Internships at Napa Valley Museum, Napa, CA

Interpretive Guide, Oatlands Mansion, Leesburg, VA

Development Intern, Civil War Trust, Washington D.C.

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Intern Wanted tor the Preserving Freedom Project at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania plans to launch a new digital history project, “Preserving American Freedom,” in early 2013. Drawing on HSP’s rich collections, the project will illuminate the diverse ways that  Americans have conceptualized and fought for their freedoms from the 17th century to the present day by selecting 50 documents for preservation and digitization and publication online alongside XML-encoded transcriptions, annotations, and contextual materials, including scholarly essays and resources for educators.

Job Duties:

Interns are needed to help research the people, organizations, and events associated with these significant documents—as well as to help uncover the backgrounds of the documents themselves—and to write annotations, descriptions, and biographies that will be published as part of this online exhibit.

Requirements:

Candidates must be able to conduct scholarly and archival research, delve into topics ranging across numerous time periods and topics, and write clear and concise prose that will be accessible to different audiences. A background and/or interest in digital publishing is preferred, although not strictly necessary.

Time Commitment:

10–15 hours a week (flexible schedule), beginning in early September and continuing at least three months.

Application Process:
Interested candidates should submit a cover letter and resume to

Rachel Moloshok, Project Manager, at rmoloshok@hsp.org.

Successful candidates must also visit HSP for an interview and pass a background check.

Deadline: Applications for fall internships due August 12.

Please note that this is an unpaid opportunity, but HSP is happy to work with intern(s) pursuing course credit.

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iPads in Cyprus, Part 5: Reflections

I asked my students on the last day of the course how the use of iPads influenced their experience of Cyprus and fieldwork, and how they actually used the devices on the course. The comments were very positive and highlighted both familiar activities and some unanticipated uses.

Students used the devices to…

1. Interact with one another via games and social media (Facebook), their friends and family in the US (Skype & FaceTime), and the senior staff of the archaeological project (email).
2. Share files with members of the archaeological project (Dropbox).
3. Read books and articles, including those related to course content
4. Take photographs. Some six of nine students used the iPad cameras at some point on the trip for one reason or another. One student’s personal camera broke because of the dust. Other students used iPads because their batteries were so much more powerful than those in their hand-held cameras.
5. Record video for blogs and final digital projects
6. Journal. Six of nine used the iPads to create a digital journal over a physical journal.
7. Blog (via WordPress) at the Pyla-Koutsopetria Student site.
8. Complete museum assignments and tours
9. Listen to music
10. Follow PDF presentations on the history of the archaeological project
11. Input archaeological data in the field through PKapp

 

My only fear in giving students iPads for use in Cyprus was that a dumb device would erode their experience of a country. But this did not happen…much. Students were engaged in the archaeological work and pursued learning about the country. The devices encouraged students to learn and experience in different ways. Students had access to information about Cyprus (and our work there) in a way that no students have had in the past. They completed assignments with iPads and publicized their experiences through facebook and the project blog. They captured their experiences through the cameras, and recorded them through journals. And they learned to process archaeology through digital apps designed for our project.

Such multi-functional devices come with their problems of distraction, of course. But they also encouraged me to think outside the box about how to introduce students to learning about archaeology in Cyprus. I always had the feeling that I was just scratching the surface.

 

If you missed my series on using iPads for the History and Archaeology of Cyprus course, you can go through the posts here:

• iPads in Cyprus
• Paperless Tours
• iPads in Cyprus, Part 3: Using PKapp
• iPads in Cyprus, Part 4: Practical Matters

My collaborator, Dr. Fee, also wrote a series of posts on the design and execution of the PKapp:

• PKapp: Project Design
• PKapp: User Interface
• PKapp: Technical Difficulties
• PKapp: Lessons Learned

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iPads in Cyprus, Part 4: Practical Matters

On Tuesday, I discussed our use of an archaeological iPad app in fieldwork in Cyprus. Today I will discuss our use of iPads in the field more generally.

First, Glare. The major problem we encountered was the incredible glare from the sun. If we had thought ahead, we could have remedied this from the start by purchasing an anti-glare screen shield. But alas, we did not, and we could only view screens with the brightness cranked all the way up. Even that required squinting in the intense Mediterranean sun.

My solution initially with my own iPad was to sit in one of the rental cars and take notes in the shade, but that was not practical for the students recording notes next to their trenches. Lesson learned on this one.

 

Dust. This was not the problem we thought it might be. We brought along protective jackets to keep the dust out of the iPads designed for field use. We encouraged students to keep iPads in their jackets at most times, and if possible, all times. Some students simply entered the data through these covers.

Others took the covers off when they were using them.

Battery. Given the intensity of the sun and the need to crank up brightness to see the screens, we expected battery life would be a problem especially on those days when we were in the field from 7 AM to 6 PM. Not once, however, did we totally exhaust an iPad battery. Setting the Auto-Lock to 5 minutes helped keep the iPad batteries charged and lasting longer.

Camera. We sometimes used the iPads for taking photographs. We instructed students to take photos of the bottom of every Stratigraphic Unit upon completion, but some trenches did this more consistently than others. These photos would act as a backup to the digital photos we took with point-and-shoot cameras. For one trench, the iPad’s camera unfortunately failed to function at all.

The camera was not linked to the PKapp, but Sam Fee tells me that it may be possible for future version of the app to do so. That would be valuable, especially if the resolution of the iPad camera improves. The quality of the photos (5 megapixels) was not nearly as good as the point-and-shoot hand-held cameras we were using to record photographs.

Compare the two following contexts. The first photo in each comparison was shot with the iPad, the second with a 10 megapixel camera.

 

And SU 5309

The 10 megapixel provides enough extra detail to make it a significant improvement on the iPad. We could not use the iPad camera for serious fieldwork at its current resolution.

On the other hand, the iPad camera was great for capturing and modifying photos of people in action, and was especially useful for sharing via social media sites like Facebook

 

 

Recording. In Tuesday’s post, we discussed the use of PKapp for recording stratigraphic contexts. As the area director, I also kept an “Area Notebook” to describe my impressions of the “big picture” across the site. This notebook acted as a running log of the simultaneous work of all four trenches. In the past, we recorded these general notes in an old school field notebook. My problem was always writing legibly in such small notebooks — I have such terrible handwriting.

This year I recorded comparable notes using the iPad. Besides glare, my main problem with using the iPad for recording was simply getting used to the keyboard. Initially, I used a table with an external keyboard, but this required establishing a bluetooth connection every time I wanted to use it, and the setup was no good for roaming from trench to trench.

Eventually I got used to the internal screen keyboard, and I could use it with one hand, or could type with both hands by the end of our season.

At the beginning of the season, I used the simple Notes app that comes with the iPad, which I would email to myself and append to a master notebook file in MS Word (on my laptop). By the end of the season, though, I realized how much potential there was for using more sophisticated apps. How I would have liked to use an app like Dragon Dictation for turning voice into text, but this required an internet connection, and our iPads were not 3G capable.

By the last week, I was experimenting with Evernote and wish I had used this from the beginning since it allowed me to make audio recordings and include photos inside each log. The next time I teach this course, in fact, I will have students take their personal iPads into the field and use an app like Evernote to record a running notebook on what they are finding. These will complement the master field notebook for each trench.

In the end, our experience with iPads in the field was very positive. We used the devices in a sophisticated way to collect data via an app designed for the project (PKapp). And we used the devices in very simple ways to record notes and take photos. What strikes me about the use of the iPad in archaeological fieldwork is its potential. Given this explosion of apps, I can only imagine that mobile technology will be one of the main ways that archaeologists complete their work.

In my final post tomorrow, I will conclude the use of iPads in the Cyprus class.

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iPads in Cyprus, Part 3: Using PKapp

Dr. Fee (Washington and Jefferson College) has now completed a series of posts on the technical aspects of designing and implementing “PKapp” at the 2012 Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project blog:

• PKapp: Project Design
• PKapp: User Interface
• PKapp: Technical Difficulties
• PKapp: Lessons Learned

In previous posts (here and here), I wrote about our use of iPads in the “History and Archaeology of Cyprus” course I taught this summer. In this post, I will discuss the use of PKapp in the field. I will follow with a couple of other posts on our use of the iPads more generally.

Messiah College gave us 13 total iPads for use with our course. Nine were assigned to students, who used them for a range of purposes, some of which I’ve already discussed (here and here). Four of the iPads were assigned to trench supervisors responsible for our four different “excavation units”.  These were iPads strictly used for the field, and they contained a minimal set of apps: Find iPhone in case the device went missing; Dropbox for transferring files, photos, etc..; a PDF reader; “Files” and “FileApp Pro” for storing PDFs and documents related to our work on Cyprus (see below), and most importantly, “PKapp” the PKAP app designed by Sam Fee and labeled according to the Excavation Unit number (in the case below “EU 15”). We initially considered using all 13 iPads in the field, but this seemed too involved, and students generally did not bring their own iPad into the field. 

 

In archaeological fieldwork, most especially excavation, recording is among the most important responsibilities of the fieldworker. As excavation destroys the contexts that it removes, the finds (artifacts) and the notes are the only material for reconstructing the occupations being investigated. The goal always is to record detail sufficient for understanding finds in their natural and cultural contexts (strata).

You can understand, then, both our excitement and hesitation about using these iPads in the field. On the one hand, iPads could offer new ways to improve our note-taking through, for example, devices like the camera and video, and apps for recording audio and visual notes. On the other hand, we were terrified at the many ways we might lose our information and electronic data. We did not want to leave Cyprus with nothing to show for our work. Our solution was to treat the PKAP 2012 season as an experimental year for using iPads in the field. Initially, in our modified excavation manual, we put it as follows:

We will record the excavation process according to the basic unit of the stratum (SU) and describe as we excavate. We will collect data in two ways in 2012: 1) A volunteer will fill out a standardized SU form for each new SU (see below) and 2) the trench supervisor will collect the same data via an iPad designated for the SU. The iPad will contain the master version of the data, the paper copy the backup. It is important for the supervisor to bring both SU forms and the trench iPad into the field each day, and the supervisor should charge the iPad each night.

After some discussion with co-director, Bill Caraher, however, we changed the language of this section so that the paper version would be the master and the iPad the backup. The trench supervisor or his proxy would record the master set of notes in paper version, while the students would record the backup using the PKapp on the iPad. In the end, for reasons we will discuss below, we were very glad we did it this way.

In Excavation Unit 15 (below), trench supervisor Aaron Barth keeps the master paper notebook in the red clipboard while David Crout records with the iPad.

In Excavation Unit 14, trench supervisor and field director Brandon Olson advises students Megan Piette and Jimmie Nelson on how to fill out forms. Megan uses the iPad while Jimmie records the same information with the paper.

In both cases, our paper forms and iPad PKapp recorded nearly identical information on each “Stratigraphic Unit,” the basic spatial for recording stratigraphic contexts.

Our paper form for recording contexts consists of two pages. The first page asks the recorder to write information about the context including name and identifiers (date, supervisor, recorder), location (area, excavation unit, elevation, stratigraphic relationships, UTM coordinates), soil descriptors (soil type, clast size, munsell color), associated data (features and photographs), method, and relative quantity of finds (by bag).

The second page simply contains identifying fields (in case the page becomes separated from the first) and blank lines for description and interpretation. The recorder can use as many of these description pages as necessary to record the context.

 

As Sam Fee has described it, the PKapp on the iPad was designed to duplicate the same information collected on paper form. So, in the image below, one can see some parallels with the image of the paper form above.

Like any other app requiring text, selecting inside any field brought up the keyboard for keying the data.

You will notice in the description field above “See hard copy.” In this instance, this SU description marks a complete duplicate of the hard copy—and the trench supervisor (Crowley) recorded it in this way because in this small trench, he was responsible for both the digital and paper form. Generally, though, we did not attempt to duplicate the “Description” field because we felt that this field allowed us to record two distinct interpretations of each stratigraphic unit. And each interpretation could inform the other.

A major advantage of the digital version is that it forced the recorder to enter data in standardized ways and did not allow (as the paper version did) for inconsistency in entering certain fields. For example, the fields related to soils required the user choose one of several options from a list rather than try to remember what the options were.  This ensured a more normalized data set.

 

Clicking the “Load SU Data” allowed the user to revisit data from previous SUs. This was extremely useful in comparing SUs in the field. However, the continual improvement of the PKapp during the field season meant that a couple of new versions were issued after fieldwork was already underway. Each new version required wiping the iPad of its previous data (after backing up the data). We were not, consequently, able to pull up SUs of previous versions. Note that the data for EU 14 below starts with SU 5107, but it does not contain 5101-5106 (we did have these in paper form). Perhaps a future version of PKapp could reimport data back into the PKapp.

 

We encouraged trench supervisors to back up their iPad frequently whenever a connection was available. Our simple wireless iPads required a wireless connection at the hotel, and data was backed up less frequently than we would have liked. In one case, I could not get a good wireless connection to backup the data. Having iPads with 3G would have allowed us to do this from the field at the end of each day.

Backing up data was a two-step process. Touch the “Export these data” button, which converts all the data into CSV format. Then touch the “Email the data” button.

…which resulted in this confirmation screen.

Only in one case did this process result in data loss, but the details of this loss are too cloudy to be sure that the app was to blame.

We also lost data once or twice at a different stage of the data recording process, when a student forgot to hit the “Record the Data” button while collecting data on the SU. That was unfortunate but not unexpected. All the same, we were glad that our iPad was the backup in this first season using them and that we had the paper version to go along with them.

Besides the PKapp, we also used the iPads in the field for several other purposes. We used the devices to take photographs, to circulate files (via Dropbox), and to load files. It was extremely useful, for example, to have the SU Form Guide for filling out the SU forms at the touch of a button. Same with the instructions for describing features and soils. In the past, we have had to drag out the entire paper version of the field manual, which is a hassle to look through on an afternoon when the coastal winds are powerful.

 

 

In the end, collecting data via the PKapp was easy and worked remarkably well. We have some hiccups to work out in regard to data preservation, but our use this season did not result in major losses.

In Thursday’s post, I’ll continue this series with a discussion of the practical dimensions of using iPads in the field.

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Book of the Year

Even more good news for Dr. Fea. The American Library Association selected his recent book, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction, as the gold medalist for ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year in the category of Religion. 

 

Here is how ForeWord Reviews describes the Book of the Year award:

Every year ForeWord looks back to the best books of the previous year. The ForeWord Book of the Year competition provides publishers with a valuable opportunity to breathe new life into the promotion of a distinguished title. These fiercely contested awards are viewed by librarians and booksellers as an important statement about a title they might have overlooked. For thirteen years, savvy publishers have used the gold, silver, and bronze awards as additional marketing material as their titles drift toward the backlist.

 

Congrats, Dr. Fea!

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