Welcome to MIT Visualizing Cultures

NERC NCSS Conference
In May 2005 the New England regional conference of the National Council for the Social Studies held its annual event. John Dower and Scott Shunk presented the Visualizing Cultures Ground Zero 1945 unit as a keynote seminar to over 150 teachers in attendance.

Visualizing Cultures will be featured again as part of the NERC event to be held in March 2007 bringing together over 500 regional social science teachers.

NCSS Teachers Conference
On November 17–20, 2005, the National Council for the Social Studies held its annual conference in Kansas City, MI. This yearly gathering brings together over 5000 social science teachers from the United States for four days of peer exchange, workshops, and seminars. Each year the NCSS receives as many as 1000 proposals for inclusion in the conference program.

Visualizing Cultures and the Black Ships and Samurai curriculum, developed in collaboration with Lynn Parisi, director of the Teaching East Asia (TEA) program at the University of Colorado, were selected as part of the NCSS program. Lynn and several teachers in her TEA program presented the Visualizing Cultures curriculum for the Black Ships and Samurai unit in a two-hour workshop. Teachers took part in actual lessons and classroom exercises. Afterwards, they discussed how they would employ Visualizing Cultures in their lesson plans, and how the curriculum addressed national standards.

Scott Shunk, Program Director for Visualizing Cultures, presented an overview of the project and discussed with teachers what types of content, technology, and additional curriculum would be available from Visualizing Cultures in the coming months.

Over forty teachers attended the workshop and had an overwhelmingly positive response when asked about the content and the curriculum’s application in their classrooms. Three of the teachers who attended the workshop have become field testers for the project. Additionally, TEA will keep in contact with these teachers and many others they work with in similar workshops and provide periodic updates as Visualizing Cultures introduces new content and curriculum.

Visualizing Cultures has been nominated to do a half-day workshop for the 2006 NCSS conference to be held in Washington, DC in December, elevating it to a featured presentation.

MIT Visualizing Cultures/Five College Center for East Asian Studies conference
On May 6, 2006, Visualizing Cultures and the Five College Center for East Asian Studies held a teachers conference in MIT’s Stada Center. This day-long workshop, attended by more then 90 area teachers, was a collaboration of Visualizing Cultures and Kathleen Woods-Masalaski, director of the Five College Center for East Asian Studies at Smith College. The focus of the workshop was Visualizing Cultures and the curriculum, but it also included presentations by other teacher resource groups working with VC including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Primary Source; and, from Yale, PIER.
John Dower presented a pedagogical overview of Visualizing Cultures and spoke to the myriad of resources available to teachers on the Web site including VCID database and VCTV video resources. The afternoon sessions included concurrent workshops featuring the Visualizing Cultures curriculum where all teachers were able to work hands-on with the new VC curriculum.

Exit surveys were conducted asking the teachers their thoughts regarding the content and if they felt they could include the curriculum in their lesson plans. Of the 90 surveys collected there were 89 positive responses.

Click here to visit the VC Curriculum.

Upcoming Visualizing Cultures Educational outreach events

• TEA Workshop, July 2006
• Primary Source Teachers Workshop, July 2006
• NCSS Conference, December 2006
• iCampus event, December 2006
• NERC NCSS, March 2007
• AAS Visualizing Cultures Teachers Workshop, Early 2007*
• NCTA Visualizing Cultures Teachers Workshop, Spring 2007*.