Utilizing Bill Ferster’s ASSERT model, Devorah Burgess and I will be examining the classes and subjects taught at the Hungerford Normal and Industrial School in Eatonville, Florida. While Devorah will be primarily be focusing on the subjects being taught, I plan on focusing primarily on the agricultural subjects, both those taught in specific classes and those explored in clubs and student organizations.

Ask a Question

The first step for this project is of course deciding on the right research question to ask. For this project Dev and I will be asking the following questions:

1. What courses were offered at the Hungerford School? (vocational, traditional, agricultural, etc.)
2. Did these courses change over time?
3. How did student groups and organizations like 4-H and Project VI contribute to the agricultural education offerings of the Hungerford School?

Search for Information

For this research Dev and I have been combing through the information on Dr. French’s Digital Resource Bank as well as examining secondary sources surrounding the history of the Florida Extension Service which was responsible for many of the 4-H and Tomato Clubs across the state of Florida. I have also been interested in the presence of Black County Extension Agents present or associated with Eatonville, and hopefully Hungerford which might have been involved with Project VI, a state project that was organized in 1917 by the Florida Extension and Demonstration Service. While I would ideally like to get my hands on one of the 4-H manuals or agricultural curriculum books, I am making do with the Hungerford Annual Reports, and I am hoping to continue looking through the digitized Annual Reports that are available from the University of Florida IFAS website.

Structure the Data

To organize this information, Dev and I have decided to sort all of our findings into the respective decades they’re from. Dev wants to eventually construct a spreadsheet that will be easily sortable for us to input information in a non-linear visualization later on. I think that for some of the information, especially crop information, there could be a chronological aspect to it but by dividing curriculum up into boys and girls education, rather than sorting it linearly, we may be able to view the data we are examining more easily.

Envision the Answer

The sources that we have been gathering are an interesting combination of written, visual, and topographical sources. We hope to incorporate these into a comparative visualization that will be an engaging way for viewers to understand the history of the student activities and classes that made up the everyday lives of Hungerford students.

Represent the Visualization

For this project, Dev and I have decided that Twine might be the best fit for our project, although given our unfamiliarity with the software and the steep learning curve to using it, we are open to other options.

Tell a Story

The most important part of our project is to share the history and lives of the students of Hungerford and how they changed throughout the years that the school was open and active. The diverse range of courses, clubs, and student organizations showed that even in eras of segregation, social, and industrial changes, the Hungerford School worked to provide its students with a solid education that would prepare them for a variety of fields whether that be agricultural, industrial, vocational, or traditional.

Bibliography

Ferster, Bill. Interactive Visualization: Insight Through Inquiry. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012.