CANADIAN SOCIAL STUDIES
VOLUME 36, NUMBER 1, FALL 2001
Making Canadian History More Inclusive Through the
Multi-Media:
The Peopling of Atlantic Canada CD ROM*
Graham Reynolds
University College of Cape Breton
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There is a growing awareness today about the need to
create new strategies in order to make Canadian history more culturally
inclusive and relevant for students. Most provinces have revised and
expanded their course offerings in Canadian history and, increasingly,
the trend is toward making these courses compulsory for all students.
In Atlantic Canada, for example, the province of Nova Scotia is developing
a new more inclusive and compulsory Canadian history course for grade
eleven that will add to an already existing repertoire of culturally
specific courses in Acadian, Mi'kmaq and African-Canadian Studies.
In addition, the Nova Scotia Department of Education has recently
adopted a new multicultural CD ROM entitled, "The Peopling of
Atlantic Canada" which will be used in the grade nine social
studies course "Atlantic Canada in the Global Community".
This CD ROM has been purchased for all schools in the province and
it will be available in September, 2001.
"The Peopling of Atlantic Canada" CD ROM represents
the latest developments in multimedia technology and in presenting
a multicultural and contextually integrated approach to Canadian history.
For these reasons, it should be of general interest to all teachers
and students of Canadian history. My colleague, Richard MacKinnon,
and I conceived this project five years ago while we were attending
the Atlantic Association of Historians annual conference that was
being held at the Fortress of Louisbourg. That year's conference highlighted
the research of Fortress of Louisbourg historians together with the
production of a new CD ROM exploring the daily life in eighteenth
century Louisbourg. The conference presentations focused on cultural
diversity and interaction as a central feature in the history and
historical reconstruction of eighteenth century Louisbourg. Our project
was inspired by this theme as well as by the educational possibilities
of using the innovative features of multimedia information technology.
"The Peopling of Atlantic Canada" CD ROM explores the multicultural
and multiracial history of Atlantic Canada in an interactive and multimedia
format. It presents a substantially expanded vision of our region's
history beginning with the arrival of First Peoples more than 10,000
years ago and extending into the period of large scale immigration
during the modern industrial age. This expanded perspective brings
into focus a number of important factors that are not emphasized in
most of the more traditional histories of Atlantic Canada. Seeing
our history from the perspective of thousands rather than hundreds
of years, for example, allows students to see the fundamental interconnectedness
between culture and the environment, especially between culture, the
land and the climate. Users of our CD ROM will discover that the climate
of North America has fluctuated dramatically since the last great
Ice Age and that, in several instances, these fluctuations have effected
large scale changes in cultures. On some occasions, climate has stimulated
technological innovation and on other occasions it has contributed
to either the growth or passing away of cultures.
Our expanded vision of history also brings into focus
the importance of cultural interaction and accommodation as central
and enduring themes in the survival and development of all cultural
groups in our region. Users of our CD ROM will learn that cultures
are by their very nature hybrid and dynamic. Those that have survived
have had the ability and willingness to adapt to changes in their
environment and to reach accommodation with other cultures.
"The Peopling of Atlantic Canada" CD ROM
contains over 500 pages of hypertext, 20 video clips together with
over 1000 visuals. Clearly, the technology and format of the CD ROM
can convey an impressive amount of important information while at
the same time maintaining a high level of interest among users. It
has the potential to create for the learner a truly contextualized
history that recreates the experiences of the past in a highly personal
manner. Individual learners have direct control over what they want
to learn, yet they are so constantly stimulated by the richness of
the historical experience that they are unavoidably led to ask new
questions and pursue new areas of investigation. In observing, for
example, that a Louisbourg tavern owner portrayed in one of the CD
ROM video clips was a middle aged women of African descent, learners
might inquire into the presence of blacks in eighteenth century Louisbourg
and discover that slavery was an integral part of the life in Louisbourg
and elsewhere in New France. In discovering further that the woman
tavern owner had been recently freed from serving as a domestic slave
and had married a local Mi'kmaq, the learner might follow a range
of inquiries from the nature of interracial marriages in New France
to incidents and laws relating to former (female) slaves owning and
operating taverns.
In another portion of the CD ROM students are given
the activity of tracing their own family histories. In preparation
for this particular activity they see a video interview relating a
story about the family history of Ruth Holms Whitehead the head of
Nova Scotia Museum's Black Data Bank project and Carmelita Carvey
Robertson her research assistant. They describe a remarkable coincidence
of discovering that their own ancestors lived in the very same community
in South Carolina. After discovering this coincidence both of them
make a trip together to South Carolina to the plantation where Carmelita's
family had been slaves. Carmelita describes her feelings after visiting
the former slave master's house and states that she was overcome with
emotion in standing in the place where her ancestors had lived under
slavery. She felt an intimate connection between their suffering and
her own sense of freedom. This story provides a vivid personal account
linking the lives of past generations to those in the present and
it conveys a powerful historical lesson and inspiration to students.
The story together with the other activities in the CD ROM is intended
to stimulate a direct and personal connection among students from
all cultural and racial backgrounds.
The effective use of information technology can be
an important tool in the teaching and learning of history. Our CD
ROM was designed specifically to meet the latest learning outcomes
in the Foundation for the Atlantic Canada Social Studies Curriculum
for grade nine; however, the content and activities are suitable for
use in most Canadian history and social studies courses from K9 through
K12. Unlike many CD ROMs, "The Peopling of Atlantic Canada"
moves beyond the limited use, "point and click", technology
and it is organized around a series of individualized and group activities
that are intended to engage students for the entire duration of the
course. Some of these activities such as "Creating Your Family
History" encourage individualized community based research that
is to be done in conjunction with use of authorized web sites. The
CD ROM also has its own search engine and notebook with cut and paste
features that allows students to collect and save information as well
as create and print their own assignments. All these activities and
technological features are intended to create a multi-dimensional
learning environment in order to present an expansive and culturally
inclusive history of Atlantic Canada.
* "The Peopling of Atlantic Canada"
CD ROM is produced by Dr. Graham Reynolds and Dr. Richard MacKinnon
at the University College of Cape Breton in partnership with Folkus
Atlantic, a multi-media research and production company in Sydney,
Nova Scotia. Funding for the project was provided by the Department
of Canadian Heritage's Canadian Studies Program, The Secretary of
State for Multiculturalism and the Status of Women and Enterprise
Cape Breton Corporation. Copies of the CD ROM and teacher's guide
are available through Folkus Atlantic Productions at www.folkus.com
(902-539-3363).
Notes