The following explanation of the project is extracted from:
http://www.pgce.soton.ac.uk/ict/NewPGCE/Foundation/Albany/Albany.htm
Please refer to that site for more information and for a contact email address
This project developed as a result of my concerns about the overuse of drill and practice software in schools and attempts to provide an example of how computers can be used to facilitate higher order thinking and problem solving skills, using common data base and spreadsheet software. The project involves the capture of headstone data in the Albany area of the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The Albany area was settled by British immigrants in 1820, partly as a result of socio-economic problems in Britain following the Napoleonic wars. Their impact on the region caused major disruption amongst the AmaXhosa, leading to a number of frontier wars over several decades. In spite of this, their influence on the region has been enormous and many people living in the vicinity can trace their roots back to these original settlers. There are many graveyards in the area, with graves dating back to the 1820's. These provide a rich historical resource for anyone interested in tapping it.
|
| Major 1820 settler locations in Albany: Bryer and Hunt (1984) - The 1820 Settlers, Heritage Series: 19th Century. Don Nelson, Cape Town. Click to see map full size. |
 |
| Standard five girls from DSG in Grahamstown recording data, Rokeby Park, 1995 |
Groups normally spend a morning in a specific graveyard, capturing headstone data on paper. This date is then entered into an electronic data base. The fields used are surname, first name, gender, date of death, age at death, comments and location. Burial patterns are haphazard at best, so the information is rather opaque at this stage. However, the data base's facility to sort the data by any field and to select specific data soon enables users to make it clearer.
We do a number of sorts during the query stage. Data is sorted firstly by surname, so as to enable the children to analyze the frequency of surnames and establish family links. This enables them to draw up rudimentary family trees. The data is also sorted by age of death and date of death. These 'sorts' are applied to the entire data base, and then selectively to specific data sets or selections (men, women, 19th century and 20th century data). This allows users to test for differences with respect to gender or between centuries.
The kinds of information that we look for include the following:
The information gleaned is tabled, entered into a spreadsheet and then graphed. The tables and graphs are then analyzed, providing children with the opportunity to look carefully and critically at the information and to discuss its meaning.
 |
| Data is queried using computers at the Rhodes University Education Department (1995) |
Children are also encouraged to write reports on their discoveries. They can also do further research on interesting or curious incidents referred to on particular grave stones. The Blaauwkraanz Disaster (a train disaster which took the lives of many people in 1911) and the 'Great Flu' epidemic of 1918 have proved to be topics that children find interesting and which they can do further research on by themselves.
I use a facilitatory technique throughout the process, asking questions which lead the children to suggest the kinds of queries posed above. I encourage them to make hypotheses, which are then tested by the data query process. This differs somewhat from the fact listing approach of the usual history lesson. The fact that the children are all working at a computer (albeit in pairs) ensures that they are are involved and active.
Besides exposing children to what are usually two new kinds of software - the data base and the spreadsheet - the project provides an opportunity to work in a really cross-curricular environment which includes history, mathematics, data collection, data analysis, data presentation, graphing and report writing. Thinking about the data and how to extract meaning from it helps develop thinking and problem solving skills.
Several groups are involved in the graveyard project. These include local school children (usually grades 7 and 8) and their teachers, and the students in our own faculty (Bachelor of Primary Education and Master of Education).
The database consists of 4299 records from 14 graveyards at present.
The graveyards already researched include:
Groups involved thus far include:
There are many graveyards in the Albany area, so the project has the potential to continue for many years. The bigger graveyards have not been covered yet, simply because they are too big to investigate effectively with the small groups that I have been working with. I hope, however, to cover them some day.