Welcome to the opening inaugural session of a pilot course, Place in Massachusetts History, being offered through a grant from the University of Massachusetts Presidents' Office and the combined efforts of the education programs and outreach centers of three campuses of the UMass system, UMass Boston, Dartmouth and Lowell.

The principal investigator on the grant is Mr. Barbara Robinson of the Massachusetts Studies Project, which operates under the auspices of the Institute for Teaching and Learning at the Graduate College of Education of the University of Massachusetts at Boston.  Later in this session we'll meet the collaborators at each campus who have worked with Barbara Robinson  (or Bobby, as we know her).

The course is, as you know, and is taking place, simultaneously on the Lowell, Dartmouth, and Boston campuses of the university through interactive distance learning media.


I am Reed Stewart and have the challenge and fun of being the lead teacher in this twelve session series.  In a minute or two, I'll hand the podium over to the other faculty, both here in Boston and on the other two campuses.  A little of my own background may, or may not, be appropriate.  In 1998, I retired after 28 years as professor of geography and anthropology at Bridgewater State College.  During that tenure, I served for some 15 years as mentor to pre-service teachers of secondary school geography.  My particular fields are cultural geography and open space preservation and Africa, where I have taught for thirteen years.  That included three years at a training college in Kenya for secondary school teachers.  I hope that much of what I have learned from my students will be of value to you and me as we look at Place in Massachusetts History.

The idea behind the course is to assist K-12 teachers to put history, and other social sciences, in the context of the places in which events took place (and are still taking occurring).  That will call upon geography as the discipline which asks where things are and why things are where they are, and which looks at the consequences of phenomena being in specific locations.  The course is intended to be aligned with the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework.

Each week we will have a guest presenters presenting on topics about which they have special interest and knowledge, thus the course will be taught by committee.  Some weeks presenters will present from this location at UMass Boston.  Other weeks, presenters will present from your site, either from UMass Dartmouth or UMass Lowell.  Those main presentations for each session will emanate from the three campuses and from organizations working in partnership with the campuses, with the first few sessions originating from UMB.  Then the offerings will rotate among the three campuses. I will have the opportunity to be on-site at each campus at its presentation time and so will be able to meet with you all, and perceive and receive direct comments on the way in which the course is going, as to both content and technology.


My share in the project is to provide continuity along the way, among the various specialists who will, week in and week out, present their individual "take" on changes in the Commonwealth over the centuries, from before Contact to 2003.  I will be introducing each presenter (connecting her or his topic to the preceding one) will pose questions for the speaker and for you scholars on the three campuses.

After this first, introductory session, we will adopt the following format for each session.  Sessions will open with about fifty minutes of formal presentation.  We will then set aside time for you to pose questions to the scholars who have presented, rotating in a orderly fashion to take questions from each site at the three campuses.  (We're told that's the best way to adapt to the limitations of this interactive video technology, so we'll go with the experts on this one.  And we'll be hearing more about that later, by the way.)

As we take questions from each site, we'll hear responses from the presenters.  We'll then allot time for comments from teacher-practitioners brought in each week to discuss the ways in which they would use the material in a classroom setting.  So each week we will actual have two presenters, since teacher-practitioners with special interest and knowledge about the day's topic will join the scholar/presenters each week.

Each week we'll be using this format for about hour and a half of interactive television time.  Then the activity will switch to the separate campuses where local discussion will enlarge upon what has been spoken of.   Your site-based activities will being at or around 5:45 each week, after a short break following the interactive video sessions.

In your site-based activities, you will begin to put material that has been presented during the interactive video session into content, into specific localities that are germane to your teaching.  For instance, you might address the question:  "What effect did the development of industrial water power have on Arlington and what effect did Arlington have on the development of water power?"  At the moment, my answers would be "Duh?" and "Duh?", but that is because I haven't looked carefully at Arlington.

In fact, this first session will follow the general format with the difference that the "presentation" will include some training on the delivery technology employed in this course, to provide you with some assistance in learning to learn in new media.  In other weeks, of course, the opening hour and a half of presentational material conducted over this interactive video network will involve the Social Science content which is the basis of our semester long study.

To return, though, to the content: underlying or accompanying each session, and the whole course, are several essential questions: (These will be on the threaded discussion pages or otherwise available, by the way.)

What happened (mentally or physically)?
Where did it happen?
What peoples were there, then?
What was the place like, then?
Why was the place important for that event, at that time?
Why else was that place important, then?
How was that place physically connected to other places?
What was the relevant context in the state, nation, and world of that event?
How is that place connected to other places, now?
What remains of that important event in that place?
What is the importance of that place, now?

 As you may see, these questions range throughout the social sciences, but from a geographic point of view.

Finally, any class depends as much on the students' contribution as on that from the "talking head".  That will be especially true for this course as we contribute to each other's ideas across space.   Please jump in to the conversation and make it a true interactive experience.