Project Vietnam Site Launched

CCNMTL recently launched a public website detailing the outcomes of Project Vietnam, an initiative among CCNMTL, WGBH, and the University of Massachusetts-Boston to introduce videos from Vietnam: A Television History along with custom analysis tools into classrooms at Columbia University as part of a three-year grant (2008-2011) from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

IMLS awarded a National Leadership Grant to the WGBH Educational Foundation Media Library and Archives (WGBH) to support the digitization of filmed interviews and stock footage gathered for the 1983 WGBH miniseries, Vietnam: A Television History housed at the University of Massachusetts-Boston Healey Library (UMB). The digitized materials were made available via OpenVault, WGBH's media repository and include extensive interviews from important witnesses from both sides of the war.

Columbia students were able to discover and watch the unedited interviews and stock footage from the documentary and to incorporate that material into online multimedia projects and assignments. The new website provides information about the project, the OpenVault repository, the custom video annotation tool, faculty partners and curricular engagements.


Special Event: Recapping Project Vietnam

On June 9th, please join us at this special public event for a recap on Project Vietnam presented by CCNMTL's Mark Phillipson and Maria Janelli.

Project Vietnam is a partnership among CCNMTL, WGBH, and the University of Massachusetts-Boston to digitize, preserve, and disseminate primary source materials created for the 13-part series landmark documentary, Vietnam: A Television History, which examines in depth the causes and consequences of the Vietnam War.

Project Vietnam was funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. It enables students to discover and watch full-length interviews and a range of stock footage; annotate, edit, and create sub-collections of these videos; and incorporate clips into multimedia projects. Faculty from Columbia University's Teachers College, Graduate School of Journalism, Department of History, and Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures have integrated Project Vietnam into their curricula.

Phillipson and Janelli will be joined by professors Margaret Crocco, William Gaudelli, and James Lap, who will describe their experiences incorporating Project Vietnam into their curricula.

Date: June 9, 2011, 2pm -4pm
Location: 203 Butler Library
Information: ccnmtl@columbia.edu or 212 854-9058
RSVP: https://calendar.columbia.edu/sundial/webapi/register.php?eventID=50385

See also:

More information on Project Vietnam


The Chronicle of Higher Education Highlights Vietnam Collection

pv_chronicle.jpg August 5, 2010. The Vietnam Collection, an online archive of the 1983 WGBH series, "Vietnam: A Television History," which is currently being used in Columbia classrooms under Project Vietnam, was featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education. In Archive Watch: Summer Doldrums Edition, author Jennifer Howard lists the collection as one of the cool digital archives that she came across lately.

The Vietnam Collection is housed in WGBH's Open Vault archive, and comprises original footage and stills from the 13-hour television series. CCNMTL, along with the University of Massachusetts at Boston, partnered with WGBH Media Library and Archives to make the online collection available to the public and accessible for educators to use in the classroom.

At Columbia, the CCNMTL-developed Project Vietnam enables students to discover and watch full-length interviews and a range of stock footage from the Vietnam Collection; annotate, edit, and create sub-collections of these videos; and incorporate clips into multimedia projects. Faculty from Columbia University's Teachers College, Department of History, and Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures are integrating Project Vietnam into their curricula.

Visit the Vietnam Collection and learn more about Project Vietnam at Columbia.


The Vietnam Collection Featured in New York Times

nytimes_vietnam.jpg May 3, 2010. The New York Times' Arts Briefly section recently featured the launch of the Vietnam Collection, the online video library developed and disseminated by a partnership between the WGBH Media Library and Archives, the University of Massachusetts in Boston, and CCNMTL.

The article, Rare Interviews Tell Vietnam’s Story Online, describes the Vietnam Collection's robust digital repository containing previously unavailable original interviews and stock footage from WGBH’s 1983 landmark series, Vietnam: A Television History. With a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, CCNMTL joined WGBH and the University of Massachusetts in Boston to make the collection available to the public on WGBH's OpenVault website and used for educational purposes at Columbia University and other interested institutions.

Read the New York Times article here and learn more about the Vietnam Collection and Project Vietnam.


WGBH Launches the Vietnam Collection

openvault.jpg April 15, 2010. WGBH Boston announced the public release of the Vietnam Collection, an online video library comprising WGBH’s 1983 landmark series, Vietnam: A Television History. The Vietnam Collection is at the center of Project Vietnam - a joint collaboration between CCNMTL, WGBH Media Library and Archives, and the University of Massachusetts/Boston to provide professors and students hands-on engagement with digitized source materials from the Vietnam: A Television History series.

The Vietnam Collection, accessible on the newly designed Open Vault website, contains hundreds of hours of original interviews and stock footage from the 13-hour series. While much of the series' interview materials and stills were previously unavailable to the public, the launch of the Vietnam Collection has enabled students, researchers, educators, and the general public to access the collection's resources.

At Columbia, professors in Teacher College, the Graduate School of Journalism, the Department of History, and the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures have partnered with CCNMTL to build curricular models that incorporate the Vietnam Collection in their courses. Students in Teachers College, for instance, are using CCNMTL-developed analysis tools to annotate, edit, and incorporate clips from the Vietnam Collection into multimedia lesson plans. Read the WGBH press release and learn more about Project Vietnam.


Project Vietnam Presented at WebWise Conference

webwise.jpg March 3, 2010. Project Vietnam, a collaboration among CCNMTL, WGBH Media Library and Archives, and the University of Massachusetts–Boston, will be presented at the 2010 WebWise Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital World being held today, March 3 through March 5.

The WebWise Conference, sponsored by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and co-hosted by the University of Denver and the Denver Art Museum, will address the successes and innovations of the past as well as the opportunities and challenges faced by museums and libraries navigating the future. The conference theme, "Imagining the Digital Future," will be explored in a variety of topics including online learning spaces, digital repository management, and new tools and services for discovery and access. Project Vietnam was selected for a project demonstration, which will be conducted by CCNMTL's partners, WGBH Boston. This project was launched in 2008 with the goal of digitizing, preserving, and disseminating filmed interviews and stock footage from the 1983 WGBH series Vietnam: A Television History. Today, the project provides an online archive and workspace where students can analyze, annotate, and incorporate footage from the series into multimedia projects. WGBH will present Project Vietnam at the conference and share how professors and students at Columbia University are using the archive and analysis tools to enhance teaching and learning of the War. Learn more about Project Vietnam.


CCNMTL Faculty Partners Call for Media Literacy in Education

edweek.jpg August 26, 2009. Teachers College professors and CCNMTL faculty partners Margaret Crocco and William Guadelli penned an editorial in Education Week focusing on the importance of teaching students media literacy in the face of a changed news cycle, a point underscored during both professors' work on the recently launched Project Vietnam developed by CCNMTL, Teachers College, WGBH, and the University of Massachusetts-Boston.

In Media Literacy and the Fog of War, Crocco and Guadelli compare access to information about the Vietnam War to that of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The professors find that unedited footage of the Vietnam War aired on television and in documentaries like Vietnam: A Television History differs greatly with the current "sanitized and streamlined" news coverage of the middle east wars. Crocco and Gaudelli spent a year reviewing footage produced for WGBH's Vietnam: A Television History in preparation for Project Vietnam and are using footage from the documentary in Vietnam Now!, a course they created this summer.

"[Our work] has left us convinced that changes in the news media, together with an end to the draft and compassion fatigue in the face of the 24-hour news cycle, have combined to put recent wars in a more ambiguous cultural and psychological space for Americans than the Vietnam War inhabited in its day."

To contend with this trend, Crocco and Guadelli call for educators to teach students media literacy—to question the source of their information and examine who is controlling and shaping the information and images they see. The professors use their course to help K-12 teachers implement effective and media-savvy social studies lessons, using custom analysis tools developed by CCNMTL for students to view, annotate, and embed clips of archived footage and interviews into multimedia projects that explore the teaching of the Vietnam War.

Read more about Crocco and Guadelli's appeal for media literacy at Education Week or learn more about Project Vietnam, a CCNMTL Digital Bridges strategic initiative project.


Project Vietnam Launches at Teachers College

June 29, 2009. Project Vietnam, the educational component of a partnership among the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL), WGBH Media Library and Archives, and the University of Massachusetts-Boston, launched its Vietnam War film archive and accompanying analysis tools in a week-long intensive course at Teachers College today.

Vietnam: A Television Archive is the result of the Project’s initiative to digitize, preserve, and disseminate primary source materials from the landmark 1983 documentary, Vietnam: A Television History, co-produced by WGBH. The online archive offers students unique access to hundreds of hours of original interviews and stock footage from the 13-hour series, which closely examines the causes and consequences of the Vietnam War. CCNMTL has also developed custom analysis tools that integrate the archive in online workspaces where students can view, annotate, edit, and incorporate clips into multimedia projects.

Drs. Margaret Crocco and Bill Gaudelli, Teachers College professors of social studies and social studies and education, respectively, will use the Vietnam: A Television Archive and analysis tools in the course, Vietnam Now!. Participating students will explore how multimedia can be used to enhance teaching of the War by examining primary source materials from the series and identifying topics for lesson plans. CCNMTL staff will be on hand to assist the students and to film lectures by guest faculty, including noted 1960s cultural historian Todd Gitlin.

With funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, WGBH Media Library and Archives (MLA)—a department within WGBH that manages and provides access to historical content produced by the Boston-based public television station—has reconstructed and digitized materials for use in Project Vietnam. “We are thrilled that Columbia University will utilize this digital library from our Vietnam series. This collaboration marks an on-going effort to unlock the WGBH archive for educational use,” said MLA Director Karen Cariani.

CCNMTL continues to partner with Teachers College and Columbia University faculty members interested in using the Project Vietnam archive and tools in varying ways. In 2011, Project Vietnam partners will host a consortium conference to showcase exemplary uses of the digital collection.

"Project Vietnam represents new opportunities for students and faculty to further the exploration and education of the Vietnam War using previously inaccessible resources. After 18 months in the making, we are excited to see the educational deployment of the project this week,” said CCNMTL Executive Director Frank Moretti.

See also:

Download the press release (PDF)
Read more about Project Vietnam


CCNMTL Project Analyzing Vietnam War Documentary Footage Highlighted in Teachers College Article

May 13, 2009. Teachers College (TC) press recently posted an article about a summer course that will be taught by TC faculty Margaret Crocco and Bill Gaudelli. The course, "Vietnam Now," will use a CCNMTL-created video analysis tool called VITAL to clip and annotate segments of documentary footage of the Vietnam War. Students will learn about the Vietnam War and explore how multimedia can be used to enhance the teaching of the War in middle and high school classrooms.

The documentary footage comes from Project Vietnam, a partnership between CCNMTL, WGBH, and the University of Massachusetts-Boston to digitize, preserve, and disseminate primary source materials created for the 1983 documentary, Vietnam: A Television History, which examines in depth the causes and consequences of the Vietnam War. Project Vietnam offers an online library comprising hundreds of hours of original interview materials and images from the documentary.

CCNMTL is also working with faculty from the Columbia School of Journalism, the Department of History, and the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures to integrate the Project Vietnam into their educational activities.

See also:

See the full Teachers College article for "Vietnam Now"
Read about Project Vietnam, a Digital Bridges Project


CCNMTL Collaborates with WGBH and UMASS Boston to Activate Vietnam Digital Archive

June 25, 2008. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has recently awarded a National Leadership Grant to the WGBH Educational Foundation Media Library and Archives (WGBH) along with the University of Massachusetts Boston Healey Library (UMB) and the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) for the creation of a digital library with material from the 1983 WGBH miniseries Vietnam: A Television History. The IMLS grant award is $709,000, and WGBH has raised an additional $451,000 in matching funds.

The materials that WGBH generated to create the landmark 13-hour miniseries about the war in Vietnam are currently being preserved and digitized at the University of Massachusetts Boston. CCNMTL will work with WGBH to make these materials accessible to instructors, scholars, and the general public. Photographs and hundreds of hours of interviews, original footage, and archived footage will allow for significant scholarly work to be conducted with these materials that heretofore were inaccessible to scholars, students, and the public. Working in partnership with Columbia faculty from several departments, CCNMTL will define pedagogical models for engaging a range of these multimedia materials.

Dr. Charles Armstrong, Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Korean Studies in the Social Sciences at Columbia University, is partnering with CCNMTL to allow the students in his fall 2009 History of the Vietnam War course to create their own short documentaries using materials from the digital archive. Drs. Margaret Crocco and Bill Gaudelli, Teachers College professors of Social Studies and Social Studies and Education, respectively, are teaming up to create a course where educators will assess how the Vietnam War has been taught, and conceptualize new methods of teaching this subject in K-12 schools using multimedia lesson plans. Dr. John Broughton, associate professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, will use the materials in a course in Media Studies to help students examine representations of culture and youth during the Vietnam era.

The public will have access to the miniseries materials through the WGBH Open Vault website (http://openvault.wgbh.org/) and on-site at UMB Healey Library. Pedagogical models developed at Columbia will be made available to the public. WGBH, CCNMTL, and the University of Massachusetts also plan to create a consortium of institutions and instructors interested in using the Vietnam Digital Library in their own classrooms.

"This project represents an important partnership between public television, academic institutions, and a digital media and education center where the collaboration produces a profound and lasting impact on the teaching and study of the Vietnam War," said Frank Moretti, CCNMTL's executive director.

See also:

Download the press release (PDF)
Read the Project Vietnam informational page (PDF)