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.