Teaching historians in the 21st century
The nature of historical studies is changing rapidly in the early 21st century in response to new challenges and technological developments facing human societies around the globe. The environmental crisis that humanity is experiencing requires perspectives from history in order to understand how we got here and how people have interacted with the environment in the past. In addition the development of computing technology and in particular the World Wide Web (hereafter the Web) is changing the ways in which historians conduct research and disseminate their findings. The web has opened up an enormous wealth of material and put it at the fingertips of historians, creating what has been dubbed “the Infinite Archive”.1 In addition the Web and related technologies make it possible for historians to disseminate their findings to more people than ever before and engage them directly in the historical debate.
These developments require new approaches to teaching the next generation of historians and equip them with the skills needed to deal with the challenges facing historical studies. These skills include a deeper understanding of the sciences and how to apply this to historical research. In addition historians need to learn how to use the new possibilities and opportunities that are provided by the Web for disseminate their findings and engage with the wider public by means of blogs, video and audio, geographical visualization tools (e.g. Google Maps) and collaborative tools (e.g. wikis), to mention only the most obvious.
This website presents the results of two teaching innovation projects exploring how scientific knowledge can be integrated into historical studies and the use of audio blogging, better known as podcasting, in the classroom. Both projects were carried out in the context of an environmental history course, hence the title of this website. This type of history is particularly well suited for experimentation because it is dealing with the challenge facing historians of how to provide historical perspectives on environmental change and the web provides a means of disseminating findings in new more engaging ways.
The menu provides easy access to the project's resources, including project reports, bibliographical information on related themes, on-line resources and how-to guides.
If you have any comments, questions or suggestions regarding this website please use the contact form to send a message.
1. See: William J. Turkel, “Towards a Computational History”, History News Network, 20 July, 2008. http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/52500.html. Accessed: 11 August 2008.