Abstract
A substantial body of history teaching scholarship links student archival engagements and primary source work to various desirable educational outcomes, among them an enhanced capacity for historical thinking and imagination. A related scholarly literature considers the interface between pedagogy and public memory-making. This article enters and links these points of discussion by reflecting on a collaborative classroom project of digital archivebuilding, using the online Dublin Core-complicit platform Omeka. At the University of Johannesburg, during the first six months of 2021, first-year students in an online world history classroom produced, submitted, and categorised a body of primary sources-both textual and visual. These submissions reflected their own, ongoing experiences of Covid-19 and of lockdown policies. They used photographs and wrote in their home languages to convey the disruptions, innovations, hardships, and resiliences felt as young people within diverse lifeworlds. Aligned to photovoice methodologies, the exercise promoted a reflection of historical consciousness in two ways: first, by situating the pandemic of the present within a broad global history; and, second, by considering 'future pasts' as a politics of memory, research, and representation. The article describes the production of the archival database, 'Joburg21', and considers the pedagogical challenges and rewards of building a digital 'archive for the future'.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
