My name is Andrew Hutsko (you can call me Drew) and I am excited to be a student in HIST 694 Digital Public History this semester. I am taking this course as part of the masters program. I am pursuing a Master of Arts in Applied History with New Media
and Information Technology Emphasis and a specialization in the United States. In addition, I am also pursuing the graduate certificate in Digital Public Humanities. I already have a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Minor in Political Science from American University, that I received in May 2019.
Last semester I took the course An Introduction to Digital Humanities, where I gained background knowledge of the concepts and tools used in the field of digital humanities. As part of the class, I created by own digital humanities project were I mapped around one hundred Carpatho-Rusyn villages in Slovakia and analyzed the relationships between the different villages.
Public history has long been an area of interest to me. Engaging and educating the public about the past is something that I am passionate about. I have always enjoyed talking to members of the public about history and historical events and getting them excited and interested in history. In the world we live today where we cannot have in person interactions with other people, there is a need to use available digital technology to have these same kind of interactions to get the public interested and engaged in the study of history.
My learning goals for this semester are to gain knowledge of an area of the historical field that I have not previously done work in, and to learn how to use different digital technologies to create works of public history.
