Peer Review

Africans in America

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Oct 12, 2004 by History

Bookmark

Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:: This is the companion website for the PBS series of the same name. The
television show and the web site chronicle the history of slavery in the
United States -- from the start of the Atlantic slave trade in the 16th century
to the end of the American Civil War in 1865 -- and explore the impact of
African Americans and of slavery on the United States. The site is divided into
four parts, corresponding to the periods covered by the episodes of the
companion television series. For each part, there is a Narrative, a Resource
Bank, and a Teacher?s Guide. The Narrative is a survey of the history of the
period and provides links to specific entries in the Resource Bank. The Resource
Bank is a compilation of over 400 items, comprised of biographies and notes
about important people and events, copies of historical documents, and excerpts
from interviews with experts. The Teacher's Guide for each section provides a
Question and Activity section and two lesson plans that draw upon primary source
materials in the Resource Bank. The web site also provides other learning
materials such as bibliographies and essays on using primary sources and
evaluating web sites.
Type of Material:: Lecture/presentation
Collection
Recommended Uses:: To supplement the United States survey course.
Technical Requirements:: None.
Identify Major Learning Goals:: To understand how the contradiction of slavery in a free society has had
profound consequences on the course of American history.
To show how Africans and Europeans in America had a common history.
To teach students how racism developed in the Americas.
To provide students with the background and consequences of slavery on the American Psyche.
To instruct users in the values of freedom, citizenship, and the need to effect change.
Target Student Population:: High School
College
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: Basic computer skills. Background knowledge about slavery and its role in United States history is helpful.

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:: The site covers a wide range of topics including those commonly associated
with the discussion of slavery (i.e., abolitionism, slave revolts, and the slave
trade) as well as topics that usually don?t get enough attention in survey
courses including the lives of free blacks in the antebellum period, the impact
of Indian removal on slavery, black miners in California, and written appeals
from black advocates of the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the
colonial and revolutionary periods. The narratives provide interesting details
and links to primary sources, interviews, and short essays about specific events
and people. The quality of the scholarship is outstanding, which reflects the
years of research that went into preparing the program. Extensive use of primary sources is an important asset of this site. Content emphasis is place on the economic and intellectural foundations of slavery and slavery's impact on a global economy.
Concerns:: The writers of the narratives should give more attention to paragraph and
essay organization. Occasionally, the narratives move back and forth between
opposing sides in a conflict in a way that is confusing. For example, in the
discussion about the American Revolution, a paragraph on Lord Dunmore?s
proclamation offering freedom to slaves who fought for the British is followed
by a paragraph on George Washington?s decision to allow Rhode Island to raise a
black regiment, which is followed by a paragraph on Colonial Tye, a black
loyalist soldier. This reader was well into the paragraph about Tye before
realizing that he fought on the British side rather than for the colonies. The
sequencing of the prior paragraphs lead me to expect a story about an American
soldier.
A bigger problem however, is that many paragraphs in the narratives have
weak structures. Sometimes it?s not clear what the point of the paragraph is.
Sometimes there is a stream-of-consciousness feel to a paragraph as the writer
moves from topic to topic in order to convey a lot of information in a small
space. The impact is that students might get lost in the details. They have to
work a lot harder than they should have to work in order to understand the
points that all of the details and examples are supporting.
Viewing the television series would be helpful. Suggested links to other sites devoted to slavery are recommended.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:: The site provides a number of classroom activities that would help a teacher use
the provided materials to teach students about the topics covered in the site
and about doing the work of historians. Some of the classroom activities
require that students watch segments of the television show, but several
activities are based just upon the web site materials. Some activities involve
research; some are designed to be completed in one or two classroom sessions.
And, many of the activities involve some sort of group work that makes the
learning process more student directed.
Students are encouraged to speculate on how the past influences the present and future of the United States. The Teacher's Guide can be downloaded as a PDF file. It is up to the instructor to decide how to use the material and in what creative ways. The site offers students the opportunity to interpret history, to find areas of factual distortion, compare and contrast, analyze information, and see events from different perspectives.
Concerns:: Instructors are given wide latitude on how to use the site.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:
Strengths:: The web site is well organized and easy to navigate. It provides instructions
that clearly describe the organization and content of the site. Download times
for pictures is minimal. And the site allows users to enlarge images for better
viewing. No special downloads are required. The site user can easily return to the home page or to another section of the site because an icon bar is at the bottom of the page. Each section offers the same features: narrative, resource bank, people and events entries, historical documents, modern voices, and a teacher's guide.
Concerns:: The web site would be enhanced if the Resource Bank listing linked to the
home page contained a search mechanism or a more complex indexing system. The
site contains several points of entry to the Resource Bank. First, each
narrative has links to individual items in the Bank. Second, the introduction
to each of the four sections has a link to a list of the resources referenced in
that section. And third, the home page to the site has a link to the whole
Resource Bank. If a user enters through either of the first two points, he or
she would have some sense what each item is about. The narratives talk about
the topics of the resources. And the resource bank listings within each section
list items by general category ? abolition, westward expansion, Civil War.
But if one enters the Resource Bank from the home page, the user may have
more difficulty figuring out what the documents are about. That listing splits
items by type of item ? People and Events (biographies and historical notes),
Historical Documents (annotated visual materials and texts), and Modern Voices
(commentaries excerpted from the original interviews with experts who appear
on-camera in the television series). Within those categories, items are listed
in the order in which they appear in the narratives on the web site. The title
of some items makes it clear what the item is about. But the subject of many
historical documents is unclear, especially for items related to particular
people. Is ?Flora? about plants or a person? Is the person black or white or
of a different race? When was the item created? What is it ? a picture or a
text document of some sort? One can answer these questions only by examining
the item or by accessing it through one of the other access points.
The layout of the narratives could be less cluttered. The narrative text
and the sidebars of quotes or excerpts from the text are very close togetherleaving lots of white space on the right side of the screen. The font for some
sidebars was also too large. However, the use of color to distinguish between
sidebar quotes, links to items in the Resource Bank, and the narrative text is
effective.

Other Issues and Comments:: The site offers interviews, primary sources, and a teacher's guide. The PBS site offers videos and related educational materials for sale.
Creative Commons: