Graham Reynolds
University College of Cape Breton
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
Graham Reynolds is Professor of History at the University College of Cape Breton where he teaches courses in cross cultural studies and the history of Canada and North America. He is co-producer of "The Peopling of Atlantic Canada" CD ROM and, currently, with funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage's Canadian Studies Program, he is co-producing a culturally integrated history of Canada CD ROM and web based activities centre.