Place-Based Learning: Creating Clio Entries

Getting Started with Clio

Clio has created a a series of four instructional videos that walk users through the process of creating an entry with Clio's interface, available on Clio's Resources page. On the same page, there is a set of resources for instructors who wish to use Clio in the classroom. Because these resources are tailored to fit a 16-week semester, this lesson plan instead focuses on the process of creating an entry, from site selection to finished product, on a more flexible timeline, and with more scaffolding for younger researchers.

Educators can create a classroom account that allows them to review all student entries before making them public on Clio. This also protects student privacy by allowing students to create entries without needing to set up an account using their personal information. Instructors need simply create an institutional account, which will be verified by Clio, and then share the classroom password with students.

Developing Research Skills through Place-Based Learning

This lesson plan walks students through the creation of an original piece of scholarship in the form of a Clio entry. It uses the landscape as an entry point to historical inquiry, inviting students to explore the history of the physical world they inhabit. In so doing, it foregrounds geography and place as key components of historical analysis and understanding, with respect to both the unfolding of events in the past, and the politics and processes of commemoration in the present. How has the landscape, both built and natural, shaped history? Why are some moments in history etched onto the physical landscape with granite and concrete, while others lie invisible?

This lesson combines this attention to geography and place-based learning with a focus on strengthening students' research skills. Students move through the entire research process, from identifying a suitable topic, to finding and using primary and secondary sources, to creating and revising a final product for a specific audience. This sustained critical inquiry fosters deeper engagement with the place and its history, as well as an awareness of how that history connects to major themes and concepts in U.S. history. Requiring students to use a narrow topic to ground their narrative—a particular building, monument, marker, etc.—encourages both breadth and depth as students work to uncover a geographically-specific history while also expressing its broader significance.

Lesson Duration and Pacing

This lesson is meant to be used over an extended period of at least several weeks. Students will plan their research process; conduct research, drawing on local resources such as libraries, archives, and museums; and compose their entry, which includes two written sections, images, and additional materials such as websites and videos. Depending on students' ages, the accessibility of historical sources, the period devoted to the lesson during class time, and students' previous research experience, the lesson may be used over the course of two to three weeks or more than a month.

Lesson Overview

The lesson is broken into 4 main activities. Also provided are a warm up activity (under the "Preparation" tab), suggestions for assessment, and two possible extension activities.

Warm Up: Touring the School
Encourage students to start thinking about the importance of place and how landscapes shape lives by planning a tour of the school for a visiting celebrity. Students are asked to choose 3-5 places they would include on their tour, as well as provide an explanation for why they have decided on these places. Then, they reflect on the ways history is visible and invisible in the school and local community.

Activity 1. Understanding Clio Entries
Clio entries are different from a "traditional" research paper in many ways, so it is important for students to understand the anatomy of an entry before embarking on their own research processes. This activity asks them to identify the strengths and weaknesses in different entries so that they can later incorporate these insights into their own work.

Activity 2. Choosing a Research Topic
Finding a topic can be daunting and overwhelming for students, especially if it seems that many of the most obvious historical sites in their area have already been documented in Clio. As you help them decide on topics, check to see that the Clio entries in your area are complete and original. Depending on the circumstances, you may decide it is acceptable for students to improve an existing entry, or, if those entries are clearly copied from another source, rewrite them more or less from scratch. Students should spend a fair amount of time finding a research topic and making sure that it is feasible. Before moving forward with their projects, they should be able to express a sense of the site's significance as well as the primary and secondary sources they plan to consult.

Activity 3. Drafting and Executing a Research Plan
Students will complete the bulk of their research in this activity. Depending on your students' experience levels, you may want to take some additional time to review primary and secondary sources, how to discern whether a source is reliable or not, and how to reach out to librarians and archivists for help.

Activity 4. Creating a Clio Entry
The final activity in the lesson guides students through the components in a Clio entry as they write and revise their own drafts. They will also do a peer review of a classmate's work. Again, depending on your students' experience, the final products may need some additional fine-tuning before being published on Clio, which is why it is a good idea to set up an institutional account so that you can review all submissions before they are made public.

Assessment
Students are asked to reflect on the research and learning process and how their understanding of local history changed over the course of the project.

Extensions
Extension activities provide a chance for students to create a walking (or virtual) tour of the sites they researched, and/or a local history podcast that shares their research in a different format.

Warm Up: Touring the School

If someone famous were coming to visit your school, and you were in charge of giving them a tour, what would you show them? Why? Create a list of 3-5 places you would visit and explain why you have included each one. Then, address the following discussion questions.

• How is history visible in your school? Is your school named for someone? Are there statues, commemorative plaques, named buildings or facilities? What do you know about the people or events that are represented?
• What about in your community? What museums, landmarks, historical markers, etc. do you know about?
• Are there historical events in your school or local history that you know about but that aren't represented in the landscape?

Activity 1. Understanding Clio Entries

Take some time to explore Clio, focusing on a geographic area, a particular historical theme, or a type of landmark—whatever interests you. Use this observation form to record your observations and assessments of five entries, including three things you learned, the parts of the entry that you thought worked well, and the parts of the entry that you felt could be improved. The following prompts can guide your analysis:

• Introduction
  • How does the author structure the introduction?
  • Does it draw you in with a compelling beginning, or does it merely repeat information about the location and name of the place/event?
• Backstory & Context
  • How does the author structure the backstory/context section?
  • Is there a clear organizational structure that moves you through the entry?
  • Is the entry well-written?
  • Is the entry informative? What did you learn while reading it? Are you left with questions that the author might have anticipated and answered in the entry?
  • Is the entry long enough to make an insightful and information presentation of the event/place, while remaining concise and holding your attention throughout?
• Bibliography & Citation Practices
  • Does the author use good citation practices?
  • Are direct quotes properly formatted?
  • Is there a bibliography with at least three sources?
  • What kinds of sources did the author use? Is there a mix of primary and secondary sources?
• Images & Additional Information
  • Did the author include images? Do they expand your understanding of the topic?
  • Did the author include additional sources? How do they contribute to your understanding of the topic?

After reviewing your chosen entries in detail, what do you think makes for a strong Clio entry?

Alternative Activities:

• Contribute to existing entries by improving them based on your evaluations. This might involve:
  • Incorporating additional sources, including primary sources
  • Removing sections of entries that are plagiarized and replacing them with original content
  • Proofreading entries to improve their clarity and professionalism
  • Adding new images or additional information to provide readers with options to continue learning about the place/event
  • Interviewing local historians, librarians, archivists, and museum curators about the site to create
• Annotate an existing entry, individually or in small groups

Activity 2. Choosing a Research Topic

Now that you have a sense of what a strong Clio entry looks like, think about possible topics for your own research. It's a good idea to search locally: you'll be able to speak with members of the community who may know about, or have experienced, the event in question; you will also have access to local archives, museums, and research materials; and you will be able to visit the place in person, an experience for which there are few good substitutes. Another good approach is to wait to settle on a particular site until you have done some preliminary research. It may be that as you start investigating, you come across another location that you find more compelling or for which there are particularly rich primary sources. The Finding a Research Topic sheet can help you home in on a particular topic.

Resources for Finding a Topic & Preliminary Research

• Historical Marker Database: This database contains images and inscriptions from over 100,000 historical markers in the United States, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, but excluding American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands. As with other crowd-sourced projects (like Clio itself), the database is incomplete and constantly changing.
• Museums USA: This database lists museums in the 50 states and District of Columbia.
• National Register of Historic Places: This database provides basic information about historic places registered in the 50 states, American Samoa, District of Columbia, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. In many cases, this database includes a site's nomination form, which is typically based on in-depth research about the location's historic significance and can illuminate internal debates about why a place was included on the register.
• NativeLand.ca: This database is a crowd-sourced mapping project that shows the territories inhabited by native peoples and provides historical backgrounds and links to additional sources. As with other crowd-sourced projects (like Clio itself), the database is incomplete and constantly changing. The site's Teacher's Guide provides additional information about how to interpret the map and use the materials in a classroom setting.

Activity 3. Drafting and Executing a Research Plan

Once you have settled on a topic and have a sense of the historical context in which you will situate it, it's a good idea to create a research plan that lays out what you intend to accomplish. Even though your plans will undoubtedly change as you learn more and uncover new sources, the plan can help you set realistic goals for the sources you want to consult. The Research Plan Template can help guide you, and the following source suggestions can give you some ideas for how to go about your research.

Secondary Sources

• School and public libraries: Libraries contain a wealth of print materials, and many have subscriptions to online resources, as well, including academic journals, genealogy websites, newspaper archives, and other collections. Librarians can help you learn about what resources your library has, and in many cases can arrange for loans from other libraries in case your local branch doesn't have what you need.
• Wikipedia: You've probably heard that you should never use Wikipedia in academic work, and while it's not a good idea to use Wikipedia articles as a secondary source, these articles often list useful secondary and primary sources in their footnotes and bibliographies. It is worth taking a look to see what you can find, especially as you're just starting out.
• National Register of Historic Places Nomination Forms: If you're writing about a place included in the National Register, it's possible that the full nomination form is available online from the National Park Service. These forms straddle the line between primary and secondary source: the nomination process requires thorough research into a place's history to justify its inclusion on the register, and this research is often conducted by historians or other reputable scholars. However, the forms also contain other material about the decision-making process, and can be read as primary sources that illuminate how the NPS determined the location's historical significance.
• State encyclopedias: The NEH has helped to fund many state and territory encyclopedias, which can provide a good overview of state and local history, as well as suggestions for further reading.
• Local public history projects: Colleges, universities, public libraries, and other community organizations may have carried out public history projects whose products are publicly available. Some examples may be digital exhibitions, digital history projects, walking tours, podcasts, and so on. In addition to being valuable sources in their own right, these projects can likely steer you to other secondary and primary sources that will help your research.

Primary Sources

• State and local historical societies: Historical societies are often home to archives, artifacts, and exhibits that are unique to their state, region, or location. It is helpful to speak with a staff member who can explain what collections the society has, in case they are not indexed on a website or other publicly available document, and who can help set up a visit.
• Museums: Most museums have far more materials than they can display in their exhibits, from document archives to artifacts and more. As with historical societies, speaking to curators and museum staff will give you the best sense of what collections exist so that you can take advantage of the time you're able to spend at the museum.
• Archives: Archives can be daunting because of the amount of material many contain, so speaking with an archivist is critical. They will be able to guide you to the collections relevant to your project and help you understand how the archive is organized. Some archives will allow you to photograph documents or make photocopies of them; be sure to clarify these policies before beginning your research.
  • Digital archives: Some archival collections have been partially or completely digitized, making them more widely accessible, and often more searchable. Be careful, however, to avoid taking documents out of context when using digital archives.
• Historic newspapers: Chronicling America provides free, online access to thousands of newspapers from 1789 to 1963. Coverage includes the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, but not American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, or the Virgin Islands. Your school or public library may have additional newspaper archives, whether through subscriptions to online databases, in print, or on microfilm.
• Oral histories: Many libraries, museums, and history societies have collections of oral histories that are available to the public. You may also wish to conduct your own oral histories as part of your research. This can be a wonderful way to explore local history through the voices of people who lived it, and it also allows you, as the interviewer, to co-create the interview and tailor questions to your particular research interests. As with any research, it is important to carry out oral histories ethically, and historians have established best practices for doing so. You can learn more with the EDSITEment Teacher's Guide Oral History as an Educational Experience. The Oral History Association has also compiled a list of helpful resources for aspiring oral historians.
• Maps: Historical maps are an amazing source for place-based research because they can give you a sense of how the landscape looked at different moments in time. The New York Public Library has a robust collection of digitized historic maps. The Newberry also has an impressive cartographic collection, including a digital atlas of historic county boundaries. For current information about ownership, it is often useful to consult tax parcel records, which for many jurisdictions are available online.
• Census records: Many libraries provide access to census databases that allow you to find granular information about individuals and where they lived and worked.

Once you have your research plan and list of potential sources ready to go, you may want to use the Primary Source Analysis Worksheet and Secondary Source Analysis Worksheet to guide your reading and viewing.

Alternative Activities:

• Create an annotated bibliography of at least 3 secondary and 3 primary sources. Each entry in the bibliography should provide a very brief summary of the source's main argument and/or significance, as well as a sentence or two connecting it to your research topic.
• Crowd-source your Clio research. Work together with a team of students to conduct your research, with each group member working with a source or set of sources.
• Create a guide to local research. Consult local libraries, museums, community organizations, and historical societies to compile a guide to historical research in the area. Provide brief descriptions of the different resources available and the audiences for whom they might be most useful.

Activity 4. Creating a Clio Entry

As you wrap up your research and move into the writing phase of this project, think carefully about what you observed in other Clio entries in Activity 1, and work to model the effective parts of those entries. This activity addresses each of the components in a Clio entry with some tips for how to approach them. It's a good idea to assemble these components—especially the written ones—offline and them upload them to Clio so that you have time to revise and to safeguard against the loss of your work.

Backstory and Context

This is where the bulk of your time will likely be spent, and it is a good idea to tackle this before the shorter introductory paragraph. The backstory is a 4-6 paragraph narrative about your topic. It should accomplish the following:

• Provide a concise, but thorough and well-researched, narrative about the topic.
• Include basic historical information (who, what, when, where, how, why).
• Connect the place to the broader historical context and articulate its significance. Readers should finish the narrative and understand where this place fits into history and why it's important to know about it.
• Use proper grammar and spelling, as well as a professional writing style appropriate for a general audience.
• Correctly cite at least 3 sources.

This section is the backbone of your Clio entry and the place where you can showcase your research. Start by writing an outline of what you would like to cover to help organize your thinking and make sure that you are covering all of the material you want to include. Generally, a chronological structure is easiest to follow, but you may decide that a conceptual or thematic approach makes more sense for your topic. In your outline, be sure to include the sources you plan to use to support your narrative.

Once you have completed your outline, use it to help you write a first draft of your backstory section. Remember that your audience is the general public, so keep your writing accessible and engaging. Incorporating quotes, vignettes, or anecdotes that you have uncovered in your research is an excellent way to draw readers into the site or topic and make history feel more present.

After finishing your draft, make sure to revise it independently and with at least one peer reviewer (see "Editing and Revising Your Work," below).

Introduction

The introduction should be roughly 100 words. In this space, you should draw readers into the rest of your entry while recognizing that some won't get past the first paragraph. The introduction should therefore include all of the basic information a visitor would want to know, such as key names and dates. While you should not include footnotes or citations in the introduction, you should include sources used to write it in your bibliography section.

Tags, Location, Visiting Information

Select appropriate tags for your site, and make sure that you correctly enter information about the location's address, visiting hours, and contact information (if applicable). If you cannot find an address for your chosen site, you can use coordinates to plot the location:

1. Find the location on Google Maps.
2. Right click on the location and select "What's here?" The latitude and longitude will appear in a pop-up window at the bottom of the screen, and you can copy and paste them into Clio. Be sure that you are using the decimal degree format (e.g. 41.40338, 2.17403).

Images

Be sure to include several images that augment your written narrative. Images and their captions are a great place to introduce tidbits of information or anecdotes that you couldn't squeeze into the backstory or introduction, so take advantage of them. Some suggestions:

• Historic maps of the location from the period you discuss in the backstory
• Portraits of individuals associated with the location
• Images of historic events occurring at the location
• Clippings from newspapers or other primary source documents

As with all information taken from other sources, images must be properly attributed. Images are also subject to copyright restrictions in many cases, so it is important to check that you have permission to use the image for noncommercial purposes. When possible, it is best to use images that are licensed for non-commercial reuse. Most browsers allow you to filter images by usage restrictions. Wikimedia Commons is a good source for reusable images, as are sites like the Library of Congress and many museums and archives, which often provide explicit guidelines for citing their materials. Screenshots of newspapers in Chronicling America are another good option. If you're uncertain about whether or not you can use an image, you can always contact the owner.

Additional Information

Clio entries aren't meant to be comprehensive, and the additional information section is one way to include materials you couldn't fit into your own narrative. Be sure that anything you include in this section is something you would consider a reliable source, whether a video, book, website, or otherwise.

Extras

Clio provides an automated text-to-speech feature that can narrate your introduction and backstory. If you would like, you can record and upload this narration yourself: look for the link under the text entry box for both the introduction and backstory.

Editing & Revising Your Work

Before sharing your work with a peer reviewer, be sure that you:

• have cited all of your sources and properly formatted direct quotes and footnotes
• have proofread your work several times
• have included all of the required components of the entry as a whole and the backstory section

The Peer Review Worksheet can help you revise a colleague's work (or your own).

Publishing Your Clio Entry

Once you have reviewed your work with at least one peer and are satisfied with your entry, you can upload it to Clio and submit it for review by your instructor. After they have approved your entry, it will go live for the world to see!

Clio provides a sample rubric for how finished entries might be assessed. An extended research project like this is also an excellent opportunity for self-assessment and reflection on the learning process. The questions below provide some structure for such reflection.

• Describe how your Backstory section changed from outline to final draft. How did each step in the writing and revision process affect the final outcome?
• What challenges did you encounter during the research and writing process? How did you approach them?
• What unexpected discoveries did you make during this project?
• How has your knowledge of local history changed over the course of this project?
• If the site you wrote about is marked in some way, would you change the marker or memorial? If so, how? If your site is unmarked, would you place a marker there, and if so, what would it be?

Create a Walking Tour

If the locations selected by your class are close together, create a Clio walking tour that guides viewers through the different sites you have chosen. You will need to work together to write a short introduction to the tour that explains the reasoning behind it, so think carefully about the order of the stops on the tour and how you might link them together for the viewer. Once the route is ready to go, you might run a guided version for residents of your community. Invite the librarians, archivists, curators, and interviewees who helped with your research, who may also be interested in sharing their experience with or knowledge about certain stops on the tour.

If the chosen locations are far apart, you can instead create a virtual tour that links up distant sites that are related to each other through some criterion other than physical proximity. In this case, the tour introduction is particularly important because viewers need to understand how such far-flung places are connected to each other.

Additionally, you may choose to create an "uncomfortable" or "hidden" walking (or virtual) tour that centers stories that are not visible or that are infrequently shared. This can be a good way to move beyond the standard narratives of your community or city's history and offer readers/viewers a new perspective on the area and its past.

Create a Local History Podcast

A podcast can be a fun and accessible way to share local history, especially if the sites your class has chosen are too far for walking but fall within driving distance of each other. You might choose to structure the podcast around a tour, with narration moving from one place to the next, or you might opt for more thematic organization, discussing all of the local sites related to women's history, African American history, military history, and so on. Depending on how detailed your podcast is, you may want to consider breaking it up into several episodes.

A podcast is also a great format for including excerpts of interviews, musical performances, celebrations, and other community events that might not be captured in your written or spoken narrative. Including these elements in your podcast can create a soundscape to accompany the historical landscape you describe.