Sharon M. Leon | Dossier

Omeka

Sharon M. Leon — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:25:26 +0000

Omeka is a free and open-source software that provides museums, historical societies, libraries and individuals with an easy to use platform for publishing collections and creating attractive, standards-based, interoperable online exhibits. Omeka is designed to satisfy the needs of cultural institutions that lack technical staffs and large budgets. Bringing Web 2.0 technologies and approaches to small museum, historical society, and library websites, Omeka fosters the kind of user interaction and participation that is central the mission of those cultural institutions. Omeka is funded by a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services.

Position: Co-Director

URL: http://omeka.org

Awards: 2008 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Award for Technology Collaboration.

Scripto: Crowdsourcing Documentary Transcription

Sharon M. Leon — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:25:11 +0000

Scripto is a light-weight, open source, tool that will allow users to contribute transcriptions to online documentary projects. The tool will include a versioning history and full set of editorial controls, so that project staff and manage public contributions. The design and development of the tool is being supported by grant funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Office of Digital Humanities, and the National Historical Publication and Records Commission.

Position: Director

Anticipated release: Summer 2011.

Mobile for Museums

Sharon M. Leon — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:24:31 +0000

Mobile for Museums, funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, provides an overview of the current state of the art in the use of mobile technology by museums. The website includes a comprehensive collection of existing work on mobile technologies for cultural heritage institutions, provides a set of recommendations for moving forward with mobile work, and a set of implementation prototypes.

Position: Director

URL: http://chnm.gmu.edu/labs/mobile-for-museums/

Summit on Digital Tools for Museum Educators

Sharon M. Leon — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:24:13 +0000

Innovation in new media and digital outreach for museums has grown exponentially in the last several years. Unfortunately, the museum educators have frequently been left out the conversations about online innovation and digital strategy. The time has come for the leading museum educators around the country to take stock of the state of the field with respect to new media and the distribution of online educational resources, and to create a road map for a digital education strategy. Bringing together museum educators from the nation’s most prominent art museums, this summit would provide a venue for these leaders in the field to discuss the work that they are doing in their museums.

Position: Director

Bracero History Archive

Sharon M. Leon — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:23:20 +0000

The Bracero History Archive is an effort to collect, aggregate and make publicly available the documents and oral histories of the bracero guest worker program between the United States and Mexico (1942-1964). The major content partners on the project are the Institute of Oral History at the University of Texas at El Paso, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, and the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Brown University. The Bracero History Archive was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Position: Director

URL: http://braceroarchive.org

Awards: 2010 National Council on Public History’s Outstanding Public History Project

Martha Washington: a Life

Sharon M. Leon — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:22:44 +0000

This public history project brings together archival research and material culture from the Mt. Vernon Estates and Gardens to present a biographical narrative of the nation’s first First Lady. The site also includes an extensive archive, and a number of teaching modules that focus on key objects and themes from the narrative. Funding for the project was provided by a private donor.

Position: Director

URL: http://marthawashington.us

Papers of the War Department

Sharon M. Leon — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:22:08 +0000

Papers of the War Department 1784-1800, an innovative digital editorial project, makes some 55,000 long lost documents of the early War Department available online to scholars, students, and the general public. By providing free and open access to these previously unavailable documents, Papers of the War Department 1784-1800 offers a unique window into a time when there was no law beyond the Constitution, when the federal government hardly existed outside of the Army and Navy, and when a new nation struggled to define itself at home and abroad.

URL: http://wardepartmentpapers.org/

National History Education Clearinghouse

Sharon M. Leon — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:21:22 +0000

NHEC is a central place for information on history education. The site includes access to history content on the web, best practices in teaching history, a discussion of relevant policy and research matters, information about work going on in Department of Education Teaching American History grants, and a gateway to professional development opportunities for teachers. NHEC is funded by the U.S. Department of Education.

Position: Co-Director (2007-2010), Director of Teaching History Commons (2010-present)

URL: http://teachinghistory.org
Anticipated Launch of Teaching History Commons: Fall 2011

Historical Thinking Matters

Sharon M. Leon — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:20:31 +0000

HTM provides high school students with a framework that teaches them to read documents like historians. Using these “habits of mind,” they will be able to interrogate historical sources and use them to form reasoned conclusions about the past. Equally important, they will become critical users of the vast historical archives on the web. Historical Thinking Matters equips students to navigate the uncharted waters of the World Wide Web. Historical Thinking Matters was funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Position: Director

URL: http://historicalthinkingmatters.org

Awards: 2008 James Harvey Robinson Prize for Outstanding Teaching Aid from the American Historical Association

Object of History

Sharon M. Leon — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:19:33 +0000

Object of History is a cooperative project between the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media. The project was conceived of in an effort to find a low cost way for students and teacher of U.S. History to have access to the museum’s collections and the expertise of the curators. As a result the materials on the site are designed to improve students’ content knowledge of standard topics in U.S. History and to improve their ability to understand material culture objects as types of historical evidence. Object of History was funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Position: Director

URL: http://objectofhistory.org