History on JmsDnns

AI For History Teachers

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

AI has been a whole thing for several years now and it’s been hyped beyond belief. One of the ways we notice how excessive the hype has been is how many people are sure AI is going to change everything, yet they can’t quite describe how anyone should use it. They’re just convinced it’s the future and that we’re all going to lose our jobs.

Between working for UPenn and being part of the History Matters community with Dr Joanne Freeman (shown above) and Annie Evans, I have heard a many teachers discuss AI. They’ve been scared. They’ve been confused. Even the AI professors at UPenn have had existential panics. Above all, when teachers finally get around to using it, they quickly experience AI’s notorious hallucinations, causing them to think the stuff doesn’t even work.

The Wild Man of the Revolution, Samuel Adams

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I had been curious about Samuel Adams’ story for a while, but his story is so rarely told in any detail that I also didn’t know why I should care about him. What little I knew, I knew from the history of John Adams, the second US President, and Samuel’s cousin. Each bio I read of John Adams mentioned a detail about his trip to France, during the Revolution, that suggests something huge about Samuel before moving on without explanation. The story usually goes, while John was in France, he kept getting annoyed by people he met who always asked about his much more famous cousin, Samuel. In the context of a book about John, I found it’s surprisingly easy to read that, wonder why Samuel was more famous, and then go back to reading about John as my curiosity fades from memory.

The Founders On Virtue

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

People paying attention to politics in the US have probably come across the term virtue signaling. It is typically used to mock anyone that expect others to live for a cause higher than self-interest. Folks have claimed it is virtue signaling, instead of virtuous, to resist racism, homophobia, sexism, or to support noble causes like helping the poor. Instead of adjusting to be more virtuous, these folks want to resist letting anyone call them out for bad behavior. Often enough, the folks resisting virtue see themselves as patriotic too, without realizing they are at odds with the nation’s founding principles.

July 4th is NOT the US's Birthday

Tue, 04 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The country’s real birthday is December 1st, 1774. Before the shot heard around the world. Before July 4th, 1776.

Ben Franklin had the idea for a union of states decades before the United States existed. He first proposed it in 1754, and he plays an audacious role in ensuring it came into existence that only he could play.

Franklin’s story is one of bending the rules and stretching the truth to somehow improve society. He starts at a young age and it becomes a decisive trait that ensures an end to the Revolutionary War as much as George Washington, though GW worked much harder.

How I Started Reading History

Fri, 31 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Lincoln#

This story begins in 2012, when Lincoln was in the theaters. I went on my own one afternoon and came out of the theater bewildered by what I just saw. I knew I saw a story about Lincoln that had all kinds of intense moments, but that was about as far as I got. Any notion I may have had of understanding US history was gone by the time I walked out of the theater.