What Do you Have?You have a thesis,secondary sources,andthe raw materials ofhistory

PhotosAudiovisualsMapsTimelineDocumentsArtifactsAnd more

Why choose a web project?

Essays, documentary films, performances, and web projects all give us different ways to ask and answer questions about the past.

Web projects allow us to build a narrative that interprets the past by weaving together images, documents, audiovisuals, graphic elements, and other primary and secondary sources.

What a National History Day web project is not

A National History Day web project is NOTAn online text document

An archive of primary sources attached to an essay

So what is a good National History Day Web Project?

A good National History Day project develops a thesis and explains why a subject matters.

Look at the web projects presented in the next two slides.Analyze the relationships of text, images, objects, graphics—all

the elements that comprise the presentations.(These are large sites built with sophisticated technology—but that isn’t always

necessary to create strong, meaningful history web projects.)

A good National History Day WEB project emphasizes relationships among the raw materials of history. The project emphasizes those relationships to construct a historical narrative.

The Way We Worked Visit the National Archives: The Way We Worked

Explore how text and images work together. Would either text or images alone offer a strong historical narrative?

This site states the thesis on the home page and repeats concepts that support that thesis on subsequent pages.

Images illustrate the main ideas, and captions for those images add additional information. (note citations!)

Each section is complete and each includes a thesis statement, clear text narration, and supporting images.

Visit National Museum of the American Indian: Identity by Design

This is a narrative of culturalhistory explored through textiles and design and interpreted through the voices of women.

Artifacts and documentation build a narrative of experience, values, traditions, social and cultural change.

This project has a clear thesis and each section explains an aspect of the thesis. Each section is a complete entity.

What makes this historical analysis and the web a particularly good fit?

Where do I begin?You needa plan.How do yourresourceswork togetherto create a narrative andsupport yourthesis?

Map it outDefine the ideas

you want to develop.

Build diagramsOr

Put each of the elements—text, artifacts, images, graphics—on individual cards. Find a flat surface and move them around until you find the best relationships.

Design Counts

A web project is a publication.

Every kind of publication is governed by standards and principles of design and presentation.

These standards and principles support and enhance the clarity of any web project, just as they do in text-based, graphic, or exhibition media.

What’s important about design?TheElementsHeaderNavigationFooter

are consistentelements andshould appearon each page

Elements of Design and LayoutDesign and layout help emphasize the thesis and

most important ideas of your project. Follow these links about standards:

Putting them all together

ConsiderConsider the best style of writing for the web. Look at the width of columns, the length of paragraphs, and where appropriate, at the use of headings and subheadings.

Analyze

Visit these sitesMaking the History of 1989

Gulag

The Object of History

HierarchyFont ColorSpacingConsistency