You've read the historical account...now tell the story!

Everyone has heard someone tell their account of a true event, only to later hear someone say, "Wait -- you have to understand the background to really understand what really happened there."  Historians call such background "context."  Context is the landscape on which a story is painted.  Context is the big stream of culture, conflict, or trends in a civilization which explain much that is unsaid in the story.  It provides perspective and helps us understand the points of view of the different characters in the historical account.

Many times we get those large brushstrokes of context in textbooks, yet events seem devoid of a human element.  To get the most out of studying history we need to "zoom out" and look at the larger context -- then "zoom back in" for a closeup -- so close we can see the sweat on the face of a character, or feel the tension in a room, or the elation on the faces in the crowd.

Click on the next frame of the Pixton comic strip to advance the story...

In this exercise, you will be using the web 2.0 tool, Pixton, to tell a "little story," meaning the story of a personal moment in history.  The example below was created based on a fight that broke out between two legislators.  The context was Arkansas' transition from territory to early statehood.

Your mission is to find a "little story" that occurred during the context we have chosen together and to illustrate and narrate that story using Pixton.

1.  Choose your story.
2.  Set up a free Pixton account.  Your free account allows you to create only two Pixton comics, so make sure you use one for your assignment before you play with the other one!
3.  Choose the Pixton format that allows you to add frames of whatever size you choose as you go along.
4.  Create a written "storyboard" like filmmakers and animators do.  Number your frames and write down what will happen in each one before you ever begin producing your comic.

Storyboard Template

5. When your project is complete, set it to play as a slideshow.
6.  Post your link in the reply thread to this blog post, and in your reply, explain how the context (that big picture, remember?) is illustrated in your story.  For example, for this Pixton, you might say, "Arkansas was in her first year of statehood at the time this event occurred.  The "wild West" mentality was probably a result of the fact that Arkansas was American frontier at this time, still the jumping-off place for Westward expansion, and did not yet have the well-formed, stable political structure that states in the East, which had achieved statehood many years earlier, had developed."
7.  Print your Pixton so we can display your comic strip.

I can't wait to see your excellent work!