Amadou Hampâté Bâ and the Uncertain Fortunes of French West Africa (created using a blog turned into a website with only a single post and then a lot of added simple pages)
VCCS professional development page, especially the Paul Lee Professional Development Grant Application
Proposal abstract:
In this project, we will develop a content-rich website (a learning object) that focuses on the French colonies in West Africa in the late nineteenth century through the eyes of Amadou Hampaté Bâ (1901-1991). His L'étrange destin du Wangrin (The Fortunes of Wangrin, published in 1973), was a devastating critique of the French colonial presence in that region. Our website will publish important background materials that will make Bâ’s works usable for students in mainly western and world history survey courses but also in world literature courses.
Part of our Statement of Problem.
Our proposed project is a collaboration to create an extensive, content-rich website (a learning object) that will make The Fortunes of Wangrin usable by students in our history survey classes by providing the necessary contextual background information to the novel. My role will be to provide the technical expertise to design the website and also to structure the informational materials so that they will be most useful to students. I will also provide information about the role of Islam in West Africa. My colleague’s role will be to develop relevant content materials in a number of areas for the project. For example, we propose to treat these subjects (This is not meant to be an exhaustive list.):
- the geography of West Africa, especially the countries of Senegal, Mauritania and Mali
- notes about social and class status in West Africa
- the diversity of religious belief in the area
- West African nationalism
- French colonial attitudes and practices in Africa
- Bâ’s background and biography
Note: There are now many options for building a website, such as Google sites, Google Docs, Composer (part of the Mozilla project), Blogger/Blogspot, Webnode, Weebly, Wix, Jimdo, Spruz, Dreamweaver, etc. Look at the results of this google search for free website builders and free website hosting (It is a little bit difficult to differentiate these days between free website builders and free website hosting services.)
Take a look at some of the National History Day projects.
So why do it? Why take the time to put your content on line: access (for you and your students), mobility, fun.
See the short video by Viraj David on how to create a web page using a blog.
Here are some screen shots of the Ba site (and customizing a template)
Blogger (part of the google/gmail family of software)
