UWO History 9808A Digital History Fall 2009

History 9808A is a one-semester graduate course on digital history that emphasizes both the presentation of history on the web, and the use of computational techniques to work with digital resources. It is required for students in the public history program; other graduate students may take it with my permission. Digital history students may also be interested in the companion studio course History 9832B: Interactive Exhibit Design, offered in the winter term.

Schedule

We meet weekly on Wednesdays from 3:30 to 5:30 pm in SSC 4317. If you’d like to meet with me, send me e-mail at wturkel@uwo.ca to arrange a time.

(16 Sep 2009). 01. Introduction to Digital History
(23 Sep 2009). 02. The Infinite Archive
(30 Sep 2009). NO CLASS SCHEDULED
(07 Oct 2009). 03. Open Source, Open Access and Open Content
(14 Oct 2009). 04. Search and Information Trapping
(21 Oct 2009). 05. Social Search and Folksonomy
(28 Oct 2009). 06. Markup
(04 Nov 2009). 07. Links, Hypertext and Spidering
(11 Nov 2009). 08. Mashups and Collective Intelligence
(18 Nov 2009). 09. Digitization and Visualization
(25 Nov 2009). 10. Machine Learning and Data Mining
(02 Dec 2009). 11. Locative Technologies and the Internet of Things
(09 Dec 2009). 12. Histories of the Future

Course Participants

Arnott, Megan blog: http://meganarnott.blogspot.com | twitter: http://twitter.com/MeganArnott
Caughell, Catherine blog: http://catherinecaughell.blogspot.com | twitter: http://twitter.com/ccaughell
DiLoreto, Tasha blog: http://tashadiloreto.blogspot.com | twitter: http://twitter.com/tdiloreto
Goldstein, Jordan blog: http://historyjam.blogspot.com | twitter: http://twitter.com/goldsteinuwo
Herber, Sandra blog: http://sandraherber.blogspot.com | twitter: http://twitter.com/SandraHerber
Johnson, Dana blog: http://danajohnsonhist.blogspot.com | twitter: http://twitter.com/danajohnsonhist
Murray, Braden blog: http://bradenmurray.blogspot.com | twitter: http://twitter.com/BradenMurray
O'Grady, Tim blog: http://timogrady.blogspot.com | twitter: http://twitter.com/ogradytim
Rahey, Rebecca blog: http://beccarahey.blogspot.com | twitter: http://twitter.com/beccaraheyph
Sirianni, Sara blog: http://sarasirianni.blogspot.com | twitter: http://twitter.com/sarasirianni
Staunton, Shelagh blog: http://shelaghstaunton.blogspot.com | twitter: http://twitter.com/shelaghstaunton

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for the course other than a willingness to learn new things and the perseverance to keep working when you’re confused or when you realize that you could spend a lifetime learning about the topics and technologies that we will cover in class, and still not master them all. Students will come into the course with very different levels of experience and expertise. Some, maybe most, will be familiar only with the rudiments of computer and internet use. Others may already be skilled programmers.

Readings

There are two kinds of readings listed in the syllabus. “Readings for Discussion” must be done in advance by every student in the class, as they will form the basis of our seminar discussions. “Background Readings” provide some of the detail about particular methods, techniques or technologies. You should dip into these if you are especially interested in the week's topic or if you need more information for a particular assignment.

Evaluation

You will be graded on your participation in seminar discussions (20%), on your reflective blogging (40%; see below) and on a number of small assignments (40%). Your final grade will reflect how much you’ve learned or accomplished in this course, rather than any overall level of technical attainment.

Blogging

Every student in the class will have an academic blog and will be required to make regular posts to it. This use of blogging is to encourage you to engage in ‘reflective practice,’ that is, to force you to think about your learning and research as you are doing it. This process was described by Donald Schön in The Reflective Practitioner (London: Temple Smith, 1983):

In each instance, the practitioner allows himself [or herself] to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique. He reflects on the phenomena before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour. He carries out an experiment which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomena and a change in the situation… He does not keep means and ends separate, but defines them interactively as he frames a problematic situation. He does not separate thinking from doing… Because his experimenting is a kind of action, implementation is built into his inquiry.

If you have never blogged before, spend some time familiarizing yourself with existing history blogs. In the class you will have to write four blog assignments of about 1000-1500 words each. In addition to these, I will encourage you to post entries to your blog whenever you have something to say about history.

Setting Up Accounts

Before the first class (16 Sep 2009) you should go to Blogger and create an account and a blog. If possible, create the blog under your own name (e.g., http://janedoe.blogspot.com); if not, choose something professional sounding. Post an introductory message about yourself and then send me the URL of your blog so that I can add you to the course blogroll for History 9808A. You should also go to Twitter and create an account under your own name. Send me your Twitter user name.

Use of Computers

You will obviously be using computers for this course. If you don’t have one of your own, you can use a machine in one of the campus computing labs. Unlike many other courses, however, I also encourage you to use your own computer (if you have one) during seminar discussions. Take notes, look things up on the web, blog about the ongoing discussion, send tweets. To get the most out of the course, you will want to experiment with new forms of interaction and learning.

Wikipedia

In this class you will be exposed to a lot of technical terms and ideas which may be new to you. You should get in the habit of looking these up in Wikipedia whenever you come across something unfamiliar. You’ve probably heard that Wikipedia is an unreliable source. That’s true, but it’s true of any source. In this course we will discuss a number of strategies for reading Wikipedia and other online sources critically.

Required Texts

Cohen, Daniel J. & Roy Rosenzweig, Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2005. Full text available online; if you’d prefer to read a paper copy it can be ordered inexpensively from Amazon, Chapters, etc.

Gralla, Preston. How the Internet Works, Indianapolis, IN: Que, 2004 (7th ed.), 2006 (8th ed.) Unfortunately this is not available online, but can be purchased at the university bookstore or ordered inexpensively online. Either the 7th or the 8th edition is fine.

Schriebman, Susan, Ray Siemens and John Unsworth, eds. A Companion to Digital Humanities. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. Full text available online; the hardcover is prohibitively expensive, and we won’t be reading the whole thing.