My project is titled “Contested History: 17th Century Encounters of the French Jesuits and the Onondaga Nation.” My audience are undergraduate students, primarily history majors, at Le Moyne College, which just so happens to be named after one of those French Jesuits and stands on Onondaga ground. I am designing the project for students to be able to do a few things. First, I want them to understand that interpreting the past can come up with different, and sometimes conflicting, results. Second, I want them to think about why, as students at Le Moyne college, this matters and why the story is still relevant today. Third, I want them to understand how and why the primary sources that we use to interpret this encounter were created and how that affects the way we read them as evidence. Fourth, I want them to create their own digital project that tells the story of the encounter and its significance for other Le Moyne students, the vast majority of whom know nothing about the topic. Although this assignment probably won’t be part of this project.

Now it’s time for a bit of confession–Le Moyne is a Catholic college after all. My biggest obstacle was my lack of planning on other projects. Last week I did not get much done on this project as I spent most of my time working against an article deadline I let sneak up on me, although when you are watching it coming, I guess “sneak” isn’t the right word. I also had several big meetings. Now I feel like one of my own students, hat in hand, giving my excuses. Alas, as they would say “It’s not an excuse, just an explanation.” The one good part is that the article dealt in part with the Jesuits and Onondagas so I found some additional information online that could help the project.

I have the Google site organized and the “background” done. I hit “submit” on the article (fingers crossed) and now it’s time to get down to creating the content and assignments for the source reading segments.