History Chip

Key takeaways

History Chip belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect History Chip to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of History Chip from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

History Chip is a website dedicated to recreating history as a mosaic of individual recounts.

History Story Chip was founded in 2009 by Jean Pamela McGavin and her brother Lee McGavin and later renamed History Chip. It is an archive of non-fiction, personal narratives for the expansion of contemporary history by including stories and experiences of all members of society. Its current director is Jean McGavin. History Chip was awarded the 2021 Connecticut Entrepreneur Award for Community Favorite Venture Pre-Revenue.

Themes All people are invited to share stories on a broad framework. Stories on any topic are accepted for inclusion into the database, describing for example events, societal norms, food, clothing, nature, military, government, etc. Topics are not limited by any in particular and have a broad scope and wide perspective. The editors reserve the right to exclude stories based on hate speech, pornography, and blatant falsehoods. Outreach is expansive in order to include global storytellers and historically underrepresented communities - women, economically disadvantaged, native peoples, people in developing countries, LGBTQ, and people of color.

Mission and scope History Chip's mission is to present all sides of history. It was in part, a response to teaching materials used in the 1950s and 1960s in Virginia. The Virginia State history textbook, Virginia: History • Government • Geography, taught that slaves' lives were better on the plantations and that they were happier than they would have been in Africa. Virginia children were taught that the day the first slaves were brought to Virginia was a day to celebrate. "Virginia offered a better life for the Negroes than did Africa. In his new home, the Negro was far away from the spears and war clubs of enemy tribes. He had some of the comforts of civilized life. He had better food, a better house, and better medical care than he did in Africa. And he was comforted by a religion of love and mercy."A Slave narratives and African American points of view were apparently absent from that and many other textbooks. African American perspectives would have offered a more complete and honest historical presentation of life in Virginia. The absence of their story challenges the foundation of all history taught in Virginia at that time. For Virginia history to be truthful, points of view of the significant parties, on significant issues, such as slavery, are imperative. As textbooks bear the weight of authority, teaching from a textbook renders the information in that textbook as fact when presented to young children. Teaching young children that slavery was a good thing for Africans kidnapped and taken to the Americas (an assumption that would not likely have reflected truthfully in the minds of African Americans), runs the risk of solidifying that notion in the minds of large numbers of children who may maintain those falsehoods into adulthood, running the risk of institutionalizing racism and conflict. In an effort to counter the sort of history taught with only limited perspectives, as was the case in the Virginia textbook, History Chip was established to include voices from all walks of life, thus expanding historical perspectives and understanding. In an effort to effort to stay true to the voices of everyday voices, people's stories are not edited rather published as submitted. The website contains approximately 500 articles from 70 different authors.

Name change The project and website were renamed in 2019 as History Chip, for branding reasons.

See also A People's History of the United States Lies My Teacher Told Me

Further reading Garrison, Lloyd (1967-12-03). "Pupils On Cyprus Taught To Hate". The New York Times. p. 18. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-05-31. Regine Cabato (2019-06-06). "Trying to save the stories of a Philippine culture, one scan at a time". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2021-05-31. Susan Goldberg (2018-03-12). "For Decades, National Geographic's Coverage Was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It". National Geographic. No. The Race Issue. Archived from the original on February 18, 2021. Retrieved 2021-05-31. Antoon De Baets (2019-05-04). "Fake news about the past is a crime against history". University World News. Retrieved 2021-05-31.

References

Notes A.^See Simkins et al., p.187

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with History Chip

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what History Chip claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to History Chip before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about History Chip ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of History Chip

In research: History Chip appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses History Chip in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: History Chip is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Digital humanities, Tertiary educational websites, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for History Chip outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study History Chip in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what History Chip means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain History Chip out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is History Chip in simple terms?

History Chip is a website dedicated to recreating history as a mosaic of individual recounts. History Story Chip was founded in 2009 by Jean Pamela McGavin and her brother Lee McGavin and later renamed History Chip.

Why does History Chip matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study History Chip?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on History Chip.