New American History
By the numbers...
Published January 30, 2020
It is hard to believe New American History is celebrating its fifth anniversary this month. Our website launched in January of 2020, just 41 days before a global pandemic would close schools around the world and the need for digital humanities resources skyrocketed. We spent much of our first year and a half on Zoom, working with K12 teachers, higher education faculty, and students across multiple content areas and age groups, participating in public history talks delivered through computer screens, navigating chat boxes and mute buttons, and sharing to wider audiences via YouTube .
Our library of learning resources has grown from a small handful of inquiry-based lessons that were field tested in classrooms across Virginia to a collection of 78 resources, co-created and piloted by talented teachers across the country who are using Bunk , American Panorama , and BackStory in their teaching. Along the way, we rebuilt The Valley of the Shadow and launched companion sites to recent works of scholarship by New American History Executive Director Ed Ayers. Fittingly enough, this month’s featured learning resource revisits The Valley of the Shadow , Ed‘s earliest digital humanities project.
New American History... By The Numbers (infographic contributed by Nathaniel Ayers)
It is heartening to see that 40,000+ history lovers of all ages have accessed our learning resources in the past year and that we have engaged with more than 25,000 K16 educators and over 30,000 students either in person or in digital spaces since we launched this project in 2020.
Our New American History ecosystem (with thanks to our friends at Journey Group who design and build our websites!)
Our most heartfelt thanks to all the teachers, students, historians, geographers, cartographers, archivists, museum educators and curators, filmmakers, and partner orgs who continue to collaborate and support our work. We are looking forward to what the next 5 years might bring!
