In our youth there was certainly a much greater emphasis on the three Rs and we learned many things by rote, which had the effect of staying in our minds to this present day. The history of reading instruction is, to some degree, the history of pendulum swings between what was believed to be the correct method at the time. For full story click here.
Category: Uncategorized
Sydney Harbour Bridge 85th Anniversary
The State Library of NSW is celebrating 85 years of the Sydney Harbour Bridge with the release of an oral history collection of interviews made in 1982 with about 70 surviving men and a woman who had built the bridge. For full story click here.
Wynnum Manly Historical Society’s Oral History Project
THE 21st century and history are colliding in a unique way, as a new project aims to capture the past. The Wynnum Manly Historical Society’s Bayside Stories project team is collecting oral histories from people in the area using iPads and iPhones. The society’s oral history co-ordinator, Sharee Cordes, said she came up with the idea of recording the history of people in the area to involve the community. For full story click here.
Perth’s Museum of Water
People are invited to bring water that is significant to them in a container and donate it to the museum. The water is then “archived”, the details of the donor and the provenance of the water are recorded, and the donor is interviewed about the particular significance of the water they have donated. For full story click here.
Jenny Davis – WA Theatre Doyen
Jenny Davis is a doyenne of WA theatre. Listening to stories as a child nurtured her passion for the oral history of others. She came to Perth on a whim and entrenched herself into the arts scene. She is Tim Minchin's "Miss Honey' and is now a champion for celebrating the lives of seniors. She is speaking to Geoff Hutchison on Who are You? Listen to her interview where she talks about oral history and reminiscence therapy here.
Technology changes farming
A REPORT published by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia in 2015 found that “developments in computers, robotics and machine learning algorithms mean that almost 58 per cent of the jobs in Australia have a medium- to high-probability of being substituted with computing in the next few decades.” With this in mind, the Oral History Group looked at the jobs they had in the past and how they had changed. Read full story here.
Beatles First US Concert
Here’s the tale of the historic 1964 visit, as told to The Washington Post by some of the people who lived it. Click here.
Fighting for Freedom in India
“The British… found novel ways to torture Indians.” So begins a paragraph in the preface to Licy Bharucha’s book, Oral History of the Indian Freedom Movement, which was released in Mumbai on Wednesday. Ms. Bharucha, former executive secretary of Mani Bhavan, Gandhi Museum, Mumbai, and scholar of peace studies and Gandhian studies, has recorded stories of India’s freedom fighters, a “fast vanishing community”, in the book. She chronicles the unrecorded history of inhuman treatment at the hand of the British, and the involvement of many families in the city in the freedom struggle. For full story click here.
The Fall of Singapore
It was more than 30 years after the end of World War II before Australian prisoners of war really began to tell the stories of what happened in the wake of the fall of Singapore. For full story click here.
Hurricane Sandy Project
I’ve used oral history in my teaching before, but the semester during which we developed Staring out to Sea was the first time I’d ever taught a seminar specifically focused around oral history, and specifically centered on the development of one collaborative project. So, it’s hard to know what made the difference – was it spending the entire term concentrating on oral history? Was it the nature of the work and the immediacy of the experience for the students? Was it the project-based approach that allowed the students to feel some ownership over the work they were doing, some agency in the process? For full article from The Oral History Review click here.
I’ve used oral history in my teaching before, but the semester during which we developed Staring out to Sea was the first time I’d ever taught a seminar specifically focused around oral history, and specifically centered on the development of one collaborative project. So, it’s hard to know what made the difference – was it spending the entire term concentrating on oral history? Was it the nature of the work and the immediacy of the experience for the students? Was it the project-based approach that allowed the students to feel some ownership over the work they were doing, some agency in the process? – See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2017/01/natural-disaster-oral-history/#sthash.doqDycV9.dpuf