Twelve-year-old students across
the country are digging into the secrets of ancient Mesopotamia
through a teaching Web site that lets them direct virtual
archeological expeditions and curate museum exhibits with
the excavated artifacts. The Web site, Ancient Mesopotamia:
This History, Our History, examines gifts left to the
modern world of the region that includes Iraq. It was developed
by the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute Museum
in partnership with Chicago Public School teachers, the University
of Chicago’s Chicago Web Docent, and the eCUIP Digital
Library Project and was funded by a National Leadership Grant
from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
“We needed to bring Mesopotamia out of the textbook
and into the virtual world in order to grab kids’ attention,”
said Wendy Ennes, project director and Teacher Services and
e-Learning Coordinator at the Oriental Institute Museum. Most
sixth graders nationwide are required to study ancient civilizations,
and the Web site was built to appeal to and support different
learning styles – online interactions, reading and visual
exploration, as well as searching and browsing strategies.
Students who enjoy gaming love Dig
Into History in the Interactives section of the Web
site, where they lead digs in present-day Iraq to collect
and catalog Mesopotamian artifacts. Students select a quest
statement that relates to a big idea about ancient Mesopotamia
such as the beginning of writing, the development of certain
inventions, or the domestication of plants and animals. Students
then dig for artifacts in an early village, a city on the
plains, or an imperial capital. Meanwhile, the “dig
leader” must solve problems such as sand storm delays,
drooping team morale, and funding issues. Students must discover
at least four artifacts that support their quest statement,
catalog their characteristics, write labels, and craft an
overarching statement. Their work culminates in the students
curating an online museum exhibit.
“By collecting and curating a museum exhibit, kids
learn how exhibits are structured and what a curator’s
job is like.” Ennes explained. The interactive section
also includes video interviews with three archeologists and
detailed analyses of 13 artifacts.
The site offers three other sections: Life
In Mesopotamia, which presents details on 14 topics surrounding
daily life in ancient Mesopotamia; Teaching
Materials with 16 lesson plans, which synchronize with
the National Council for the Social Studies Curriculum Standards;
and the Learning
Collection of 142 artifacts and photographs of archeological
sites.
The topics covered in Life in Mesopotamia drive
home one of the Web site’s central themes: that ancient
Mesopotamians and their myriad gifts still affect almost every
aspect of our daily lives 5,000 years later. Among those gifts
are:
- Writing: The Sumerians developed one of the earliest
writing systems in about 3,200 B.C.
- Mathematics: Symbols for numbers were found on the
earliest written documents.
- Time: The Mesopotamians were the first to divide time
units into 60 parts, leading to the 60-second minute and
60-minute hour.
- Urban civilization: One of the world’s earliest
cities was Uruk, which by the year 3,000 B.C. had an estimated
population of 50,000.
- The wheel: The ancient Mesopotamians were using the
wheel by about 3,500 B.C. They used the potter’s
wheel to throw pots and wheels on carts to transport people
and goods.
- The sail: The Mesopotamians made sails to harness the
wind to move boats.
- Astronomy: From a very early time, the Mesopotamians
had charted the movements of the sun, moon, planets, and
stars and were able to predict celestial events.
In addition, the Teaching Materials section includes a Symbols
From History (PDF) assignment that asks students to research
the use of ancient symbols in modern Iraq using newspaper
articles, library visits, and the Internet. As students learn
about the ancient past, they also become more aware of current
events in Iraq.
“With all that is going on in the world today, it
is important that American students know and appreciate the
legacies that we have inherited from this region of the world,”
Ennes said.
The Learning Collection allows kids to “zoomify”
in on photos of artifacts and examine them up close. “Students
like looking at the cracks because the cracks tell them that
an artifact is really old,” said Ennes, noting that
the section also provides opportunities for visual analysis,
discussion questions to get classroom conversations rolling,
links to related artifacts, and maps pinpointing where the
objects were discovered.
For teachers who wish to learn more about Mesopotamia and
earn graduate credit, the museum offers an in-depth, eight-week
Online
Professional Development Course. The online course is
now being disseminated in publications and conferences so
that K-12 teachers nationwide can benefit from the museum’s
offerings.
Ennes and the museum staff learned many lessons as they
developed this rich resource. For example, they learned that
organizing metadata and digitizing collections takes a very
long time.
“This was our first attempt to digitize and make public
a portion of our collection. These particular artifacts came
out of the ground between the early 1900s and the 1950s, and
the metadata didn’t exist in a manageable form. We had
to gather a lot of old archival information located in card
catalogs, Institute publications, and from other places throughout
the Oriental Institute and museum. There was a lot of research
done for each object. It also took a lot of time to photograph
and digitize the artifacts,” she said. Museum prep staff
developed a portable backdrop and a mobile studio so that
Ennes could shoot the artifacts in situ when the museum was
closed. In addition to writing the grant and shooting the
photos, Ennes also wrote much of the content for the site
– particularly for the Dig Into History interactive.
Staffing issues cropped up during the project: the museum
lost its museum director and the Web site’s Flash developer.
Fortunately, Geoff Emberling, the new museum director, threw
his support behind the project. eCUIP’s original programmer,
Glen Biggus, and Web designer Steven Lane collaborated with
Sean York, Chicago Web Docent’s Flash developer who
had moved across the country, to develop a template that helped
streamline the programming process for Dig Into History.
“All museum departments had to support the project
for it to succeed,” Ennes said. “As an institution
we had to find the time to collaborate on the project and
meet challenges we faced along the way. Now that we know what
it takes, we can look forward to tackling a larger digitization
of our collection in the future. We’re better prepared
for what’s involved,” Ennes said. “It was
a labor of love and I’m happy it’s out there.
We couldn’t have done it without IMLS’s support.”
About the image:
Lamassu, 721 BC - 705 BC, Oriental Institute Museum #A7369.
This colossal stone sculpture (weighing approximately 40
tons) was one of a pair that guarded the entrance to the throne
room of King Sargon II's palace at Dur-Sharrukin (modern-day
Khorsabad, Iraq). A protective spirit known as a lamassu,
it is shown as a composite being with the head of a human,
the body and ears of a bull, and the wings of a bird. When
viewed from the side, the creature appears to be walking;
when viewed from the front, to be standing still. Thus it
is actually represented with five, rather than four, legs.
Photography by Wendy Ennes, courtesy of the Oriental Institute
Museum of the University of Chicago.
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