Digging for Facts

I wanted to focus on one article this week which is From Babel to Knowledge by Daniel Cohen.  The main reason for doing so is the fact that in my recent research on a particular obscure historian, most of my hours of research have been fruitless and redundant.  Most of my frustration stems from the fact that search engines such has Google and Bing retrieve lots of the same information over and over, and some sites that are not even relevant.  So much digging for information I know exist on the Internet made me really relate to Cohen's article.

I realize that research before the Internet was more intense and difficult, however now that we have the technology, Cohen's idea about a more effective way to search for information and to eliminate the extra "noise" holds great potential.  For those that want specific information in the form of a question, his H-Bot site makes more sense than having to search for the wanted subject then having to scan all the sites for the exact question you are looking for.  Using natural language to find an answer makes much more sense like phrasing "When was the Empire State Building erected?"  Instead we have been trained to first search for "Empire State Building", then look for the answer within the search results.  The potential for this kind of research is exciting and should be looked at seriously.  If a search engine of this kind were to grow, it has the chance to become bigger than Google or Bing.  There is a great need for a simpler and more productive way to search for information on the Internet, and there is no doubt that this type of query system would become the leader in academic research.

Tweeting the Past

I found an execellent article in the NY Times that is a great example of how history is being re-lived and taught on Twitter.  The article, The Tweets of War: What’s Past Is Postable (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/arts/re-enacting-historical-events-on-twitter-with-realtimewwii.html?_r=0) Explains how one man decided to tweet some events during WWII in real time as though they were occurring in the present.  The project focused on Germany's invasion of Poland and how people would have felt during the time.  The uncertainty and stress about the war are meant to felt through the tweets as if the invasion was occurring in your own backyard.  The author of the  the Twitter feed RealTimeWWII, Alwyn Collinson would tweet up to forty times a day about what was happening at the exact same time 72 years earlier.  This project attracted many new followers to his Twitter feed, proving how interested followers are in history being represented in a new interactive way.

Some historians say this a novel way to represent history even though it lacks what readers can find in a " coherent narrative and analysis only books can provide".  That being said I think this represents a great way to get people, especially younger people, interested in history.  New media sites, especially social media opens the door for many new ways of learning about a particular topic other than through boring textbooks and sitting in a classroom where they may not be so engaged with the subject.  Everyone can remember reading through textbooks being bored out of their mind and not absorbing anything the authors had to say.  When people experience and learn through new and inventive outlets such as the one mentioned in the NY Times, people are more likely to learn and absorb more than through traditional techniques.

Collison's twitter feed is just one of the few who are taking this new approach to history.  Others such as @PatriotCast, about the Revolutionary War (although it no longer exist) and Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed 1911 polar expedition, have also taken this approach to a new way of enveloping people in history as if they were there themselves.

Historians and Technology

Many people might believe that historians are always in libraries, searching archives, and going to do field research, all of which omit technology.  However, more and more information is being gathered to offer new ways to approach history, whether it be teaching tools, ways to research, or sharing information to a wider audience.  The American Historical Association is loaded with information for historian on new research tools and offers opinions on how to approach history in the digital age.

One article,The Digital History Reader: Teaching Resources for United States and European History (http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2007/0705/0705tec3.cfm), offers incite into a new tool that can be useful to professors, teachers, and students.  It is based around specific questions in history and how to answer those questions, instead of like many websites that only offer an overview of the event.  The Digital History Reader is based on argument questions in history and each module pertaining to a specific topic follows guidelines to teach students how to answer the question.  Each module contains an introduction, context, evidence, assignments, conclusion, and resources tabs, related to the question allowing the student to look at different angles of the topic.  The article also states that it "focuses on individuated, compact questions, but these questions have been carefully chosen to introduce students to a wide array of historiographical trends and historical methodologies."  The Digital Reader's goal was to teach students that history is not fixed, rather it is constantly evolving, requiring the student to think creatively about a particular topic or theme in history.  The site is also very easy to use and offers many ways to learn about a topic either from essay writing or taking a online quiz.  

Another article, Blogging for Your Students (http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2007/0705/0705tec7.cfm) offers incite to the uses and advantages of student and teacher blogging.  Blogging of course, has many benefits for teachers and students by allowing assignments to be posted in such a way where there can be discussions, open communication between the teacher and class, as well as opening to students up to a new ideas.  Personally, I enjoy blogging because it allows me write in  a stream of thoughts and ideas, which leads to a building onto those thoughts and ideas.  It is can be viewed as a more restrained brainstorming session, allowing the creative process to flow.  Of course blogging does not replace lectures or research papers, but it does create a more self-conscious student.

Technology is coming whether us book lovers like it or not, so we need to get used to it and embrace it, plus lots of it is very helpful and awesome to explore.