Source: Kelly, T. Mills “Presenting: Capturing, Creating, and Writing the Past” (Chp. 4) in Teaching History in the Digital Age, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013.
“When we ask students to create historical work in a digital environment, we create the possibility for greater collaboration between the students in the course and, depending up the digital environment we choose, with others not enrolled in the course–students in other sections of the course, students enrolled at other institutions, or the the public at large (Kelly).” This quote was able to sum up the argument of this chapter in a matter of words. Writing is something that has been drilled into our brains in every subject, but especially history. This may be why so many students do not like it, because they resort it with boring work. Instead, the creation of a digital environment allows with students to collaborate more with one another and discover their own learning. This will propel students to work harder and create a better learning system for everyone involved. It is also important to see what other people in a similar field are doing and this digital environment allows for that to happen.
“In that database they not only had to create individual items for each source they collected using proper archival metadata (built on the Dublin Core standards), they also had to wrestle with all sorts of issues including the definition of fair use; how to resize photographs to dimensions that work on the web; how to geolocate their sources; and how to write descriptive text for the web that is brief, pithy, accurate, an useful to other researchers (Kelly).” I think the ability to have students troubleshoot technology issues and create strong items is very important in history education. This did, however, raise the question for me as how a teacher could help with that. If I am asking my students to work with technology, I should know how to work with it as well, but what about certain issues that can not be easily figured out. I think I would create a short assignment when working with digital resources where students would have to find resources online to help them with technology needs. This way, if I am not able to help, they will have other resources. I am curious how the author was able to troubleshoot problems as they arose.
” If the text can be written, rewritten, and rewritten again until some consensus is reached about what, exactly, it ought to say and how that ought to be said. In this way, students can take part in an ongoing conversation about the construction of historical knowledge–much as professional historians do, but within the space of a wiki (Kelly).” This quote was very important for me because I think it should the way technology people use everyday can be utilized and create a better learning experience for students. I wish, however, the author would have taken more time to explain how wiki can be a public use. I do not know a lot about wiki or other sites and so I had a hard time relating to this. If the students are working on it, are other random people collaborating as well? If something is public for the students to collaborate on then would it be public for all of the world? This is something I will have to explore on my own, but I felt like the author could have explained this a little more.
