Games and Education

Recently in a few of our classes we have been reviewing online exhibits and games for their utility as historical or educational tools. Many games already use history as their base although these are usually solely for entertainment. They are not meant for educational purposes but could have the by-product of introducing players to new subjects, and getting them interested in history. This includes games like Assassin’s Creed, a game that has won awards for its historical details. Another example would be Victoria, a resource management game set in the Victorian age, in which players steer a country through the 19th century. (Full disclosure: I’ve never played either of these games but they sound interesting. I may check them out when I’m not in the middle of school.)

 Given the popularity of these games, more and more people are looking at games as a way of teaching historical skills or events. Making a game for educational purposes is different then making one for entertainment. A guest speaker in our class, Robert MacDougall, discussed how no matter what the background for a game is; it’s the core activity the players learn. So for entertainment games, people may pick up some historical information, but they’ll really be learning the mechanics of the game. So, to make a game educational, the developers have to make the mechanics of the game into what they want the players to learn. MacDougall did this with his pervasive alternate reality game, Tecumseh Lies Here. ARGs are played on and offline and usually take the form of large scavenger hunts. The game was based around the War of 1812, focusing on the controversy around the burial place of Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief who had a large role in the war. The game was designed to mimic historical research in order to teach historical research skills.

The game the last part of this blog will review is more of an app then a game. It is also meant for entertainment rather than education. Slate’s Interactive Game of Death is a spinner that lets you pick a different year from 1647 to 1990 (although mostly in the 19th century) to discover what your cause of death would be in each year. The mortality statistics are drawn from a different source for each year in the timeline. The sources include private casualty records, church records, bills of mortality, and Centre of Disease Control historical data from both the UK and Boston. The player can press the spinner as many times as they like, and it will display a likely cause of death for each spin depending on the statistics found in the sources. The purpose of the game is to describe how the nature of death has changed over time as our knowledge of medicine and health has changed. The spinner clearly shows how longer-term diseases such as cancer and heart disease took over as infectious diseases died out.

As an educational tool, it’s not that useful. There’s a short blurb preceding the spinner that serves to contextualize the tool, but it doesn’t have as much background material as other historical sites. For example, there are no definitions for some of the more obscure diseases, which would be helpful for further info. There are a few links to outside sources that could add information if people were interested, but they would have to leave the site to get it. Also, if the core activity is what the player learns, then really all you’re learning is how to press a button. However, as an entertaining app, which is really what it’s meant for, it’s great. It’s fun to bounce around the timeline and see what causes of death pop up at each year. The player can see all the different names for diseases that may or not exist anymore, as well as the changes in causes of death over time. Overall, the spinner is a fun little app that can waste a few minutes, with the benefit of perhaps interesting viewers enough to research different diseases and begin to understand how diseases have changed over time. Even if it’s not completely educational, that’s a pretty good result.

Review of the Canada Goose

For our last project for our Digital History class, we have to develop websites on a subject of our choice using the various tools we have learned about during the semester. If we wanted, we could build on our previous project, the Digital Doors Open, or work on something completely new. I decided to build my website around the sliders I built for Lansdowne Park in Ottawa. If I can figure out how to embed the sliders into the new website, they will be part of the final product. However, the main feature of the website is will be an interactive timeline describing the history of Lansdowne Park with a focus on the uses of Aberdeen Pavilion. This will expand upon the information I included with the original sliders. I may also include links to further resources on Lansdowne Park and it’s uses, especially the major redevelopment project that is almost finished on the site.

As part of the project, we had to present our progress to the class, and review someone’s website. I was assigned to review Emily’s website. She chose a completely new subject for her website then her last project. Her website is aimed at exhibiting the results of paper she wrote for her Environmental History seminar. The paper discusses the history of Canadian Geese in North America from the early 1900s until now, with a focus on how urbanization has affected the migratory patterns of the geese. She examines the vocabulary used to describe Canadian Geese in three major newspapers to trace changes in migratory patterns, and changes in attitudes towards the geese throughout the 20th century and early 2000s.

The website is powered by the paid version of Wordpress, which allows users to customize their site more then the unpaid version. Wordpress.org has more widgets, and layouts that users can choose from; allowing for a more professional look, than the simple blog format permitted by Wordpress.com. The whole website is nicely organized and easy to navigate. The title bar is complemented by a band of Canadian Geese silhouettes, but these do not detract from the legibility of the text. The main page is headed with a slider to showcase various pictures of geese. The pictures are well chosen to illustrate geese in nature and urban settings. All the pages also have a comment function, and social media buttons which add to the interactivity of the site.

Navigation of the site is easy. The main page has links to the top pages of the site. When a user hovers over the links, a description of the page appears over the picture. This is a useful feature to help users find which page they want to visit first. There is also a tab bar across the top of each page, which also allows for easy page-to-page navigation. Finally, to reach the main page, all users have to do is click the title bar.

The tabs include information on the project; Canadian Geese; the sources used; textual analysis; strategies to deal with geese in urban settings; and a contact page. Not all the pages are filled yet, as the project is not due for another week. The two that are filled are the sources page and the textual analysis page. The sources page is well organized now, but may get a little cluttered when all the sources are added. The textual analysis page uses word bubbles to illustrate changes in vocabulary over time. Word bubbles are an interesting feature that allows researchers to visually display the frequency of words in any given text. They are similar to tag clouds in that the more frequent words are displayed in larger text, while the less used words are shrunk to fill in smaller parts of the display. Each individual bubble can tell a story, while across a whole series, the viewer can see the shift in vocabulary as some words shrink and others grow. The project is not finished yet, so this will probably be included, but it would be useful to include small explanations for each bubble, so the viewer has a little more context to explain their significance. This could also be done as an overall explanation at the end of the series.

Overall, the site is well organized, easy to navigate, and will probably be very informative once finished.

Aberdeen Pavilion and How to Make a Before/After Image Slider

Aberdeen Pavilion has had many uses since its construction. Standing in the center of Lansdowne Park, on the edge of downtown Ottawa, the building has a long history of agricultural fairs, conventions, and military uses. Built in 1898 for the Central Canada Exhibition, it was designed by Moses C. Edey, and named for the incumbent Governor General, Lord Aberdeen.(Hofley, Chris. “Aberdeen Pavilion set to make more history in new revamped Lansdowne.” Ottawa Sun, August 2, 2014; Canada's Historic Places. "Aberdeen Pavilion National Historic Site of Canada." Accessed October 14, 2014) The redevelopment of the park caused a large amount of controversy over the plans for the site. Many were concerned about how the existing heritage buildings would fit in with the plans for large new shops and restaurants. The park went under construction in 2012 and just recently opened to the public, although many of the new shops are finished yet. Deachman, Bruce. "Elephants, Pandas, and Pigs, oh my! An Illustrated History of Lansdowne Park." Ottawa Citizen July 31, 2014) The park and Aberdeen Pavilion have gone through many changes since their establishment, and yet there are constants as well. The pavilion rests in the same location as it always has, with its purpose remaining much the same as ever. Meanwhile, the uses and form of the park around it have changed with time. This state of change and continuity provides the perfect subject for a series of sliding before/after images. These images use code to layer two images on top of each other, and then slide back and forth to show the differences from one time period to the next. (Zurb University. “jQuery TwentyTwenty Plugin.”) This post will explain the method used to create these images, as well as discuss the historical significance of the Aberdeen Pavilion.

I chose images that would best illustrate the variety of uses and changes the site has experienced since its construction. The images used were drawn from Creative Commons, Library and Archives Canada, and photos I took myself. The images depict pavilion’s use as an exhibition hall, while the land around it has changed from fair grounds to a military base, to sports and shopping grounds. Gathering the sources was the easy part; putting them together proved more difficult.

Before starting this project, I had no knowledge of html or coding. I learned early on in my research on tools, that coding would be essential to this project. Many of tools included templates for the images which you supposedly able to simply copy and paste the code into posts to publish them. (Northwestern University Knight Lab. “Juxtapose JS;” Flashxml. “Image Before and After FX.”) I tried various programs with little success at first. This is most likely because there were mistakes in my code, or I was missing steps the instructions assumed were evident. If I had a little knowledge of coding I may have been able to spot these errors and fix them myself. Another issue I had to deal with was website compatibility. I soon learned that the tool had to be specific to the site where the images were published. This meant that the original tool I settled on, TwentyTwenty, would not work on Blogger, as it was designed for Wordpress. This sent me on a search for a site that would work with Blogger. My first attempt was with Juxtapose JS from Knight Lab. The site produced good previews of images, but the code for publishing the images did not work on my blog. (Knight Lab. “Juxtapose JS.”) This was a common issue. My second attempt was with FlashXML, which would allow up to 3 pictures in a slider. However, the tools benefit of not requiring online links to images meant that the publishing site required file hosting, which is not allowed on Blogger. (Flashxml. “Image Before and After FX.”) These are the tools I spent the most time with, but there were a few others that I reviewed but dismissed due to code or site requirements.

I finally settled on a site specifically designed for Blogger called Helplogger. The blog provided instructions for creating sliders. I had tried this earlier but moved on to another site because the instructions called for a plugin, which I had difficulty activating. I also found the codes did not work where the instructions said to enter them. (Helplogger. “Before/After Photo Effect with jQuery.”) These problems were solved once I talked to a friend with coding experience. She told me that the code did not require any plugins. She also changed the instructions to enter the code as part of a post rather then a gadget as the original instructions required. Finally, she explained that the image links had to be public for the code to access them, something the instructions skipped over. Using these instructions I produced my first working slider. To complete the rest of the sliders I followed the same process. First, the images had to be the same sizes, so I modified them in Photoshop, another program I have not used before. I then uploaded the modified photos to the public file on Dropbox to provide the links for the code. Each slider required its own line of code in the template and the post of the blog, which I copied from Helplogger’s instructions. As I copied the codes over to my post, I made sure there were no extra symbols that would make the code malfunction. To finish, I filled in the links and dimensions into the code for each slider.

Aberdeen Pavilion and Lansdowne Park has gone through multiple uses throughout its history. Its use as an exhibition building has been constant throughout its history, with multiple conventions and fairs using the building to present their wares. It was also used as a military base during both the First and Second World Wars, and for basic training after that (Canada. Department of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada). Now with the redevelopment of the park, the site has undergone another major change. Many were concerned with the city’s process and plans for the redevelopment project. Major criticisms revolved around the City’s bidding process, and the plans for a large shopping complex on the grounds. Opponents argued that the plans would harm the heritage buildings on the site, as well as the businesses along Bank Street.(Friends of Lansdowne. “Backgrounder.” September 9, 2010) Legal challenges to the plans were defeated, and site development began last year. (CBC News. “Lansdowne Park legal challenge rejected.” July 28, 2011.) In the place of what was essentially a giant parking lot, there are now multiple shops, a skateboard park, a large field, paths and benches around the pavilion, and a revitalized stadium. Despite the changes, the park is still mostly public grounds that is still used regularly by the city and its residents.  Time will tell what effect the redevelopment has on the neighbourhood. In the meantime, the controversy propelled me to learn more about a site that is a large part of my neighbourhood. And that interest gave me a chance to learn a new tool that could be useful for many other sites in the future.

8 Images of Lansdowne Park, Past and Present

Aberdeen Pavilion has had many uses since its construction. I attempted to choose images that would best showcase this variety as well as the changing landscape around the Pavilion. The sliders track the site through its history as fair grounds and exhibition space, to a military base during the First and Second World War, to the shopping and sports complex of the newly redeveloped park. Despite the changes, the Aberdeen Pavilion remains the center of the complex, and will hopefully be put to good use in the new Lansdowne Park. Note: The sliders work best on Firefox and Safari.

Building Interior The interior of the building during construction, and modern day. The balustrade around the wall no longer exists. William James Topley/Library and Archives Canada/PA-027132

Restoration By the early 1990s, the building had fallen into disrepair, but a grant from the city restored the building to its original state. (Deachman, Bruce. "Elephants, Pandas, and Pigs, oh my! An Illustrated History of Lansdowne Park." Ottawa Citizen July 31, 2014) Lars Ploughmann. "Aberdeen Pavilion 1991" Originally posted to Flickr as 00097_n_7ab88k78v003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberdeen_Pavilion#mediaviewer/File:Aberdeen_Pavilion_1991.jpg

Princess Patricia Way During WWI, the site was used as a staging ground for soldiers heading to England. Now in the same street is the stadium that can be seen at the right, and out of view are the new shops of the plaza. The plaza, now named Princess Patricia Way, is named for the soldiers who were stationed there. Canada. Dept. of Mines & Technical Surveys / Library and Archives Canada / PA-034032

Exhibition Space A shot of the building in use and at rest. The pavilion has been true to its original purpose; there has been a long stream of various exhibits that have used Aberdeen Pavilion to display their wares. Many were annual exhibits, while others were one-time events. Now with the development of the area, the city is searching what to use the building for next. (City of Ottawa. "Lansdowne."http://ottawa.ca/en/city-hall/planning-and-development/transforming-ottawa/lansdowne) Canada. Dept. of the Interior / Library and Archives Canada / PA-045664

The Pavilion's Skeleton A view of the building’s frame during construction, compared to the finished product 115 years later. Photograph attributed to James Ballantyne/Library and Archives Canada/PA-132244

Fairs A shot of the exhibition grounds during a fair. The perspective is a little skewed because the stadium blocks the vantage point of the older photo. The image is similar to the crowds who fill the grounds for modern fairs or football games at the newly revived stadium. William James Topley/Library and Archives Canada/PA-009125

The Ex The SuperEX was an annual event at Lansdowne run by the Central Canada Exhibition from the 1880s until 2010 when development plans ejected the fair from the park. (Corbett, Ron. "SuperEx's long ride in jeopardy." Toronto Sun August 6, 2011) Skinner, James R. "Aberdeen Pavilion During SuperEx." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_SuperEX#mediaviewer/File:AberdeenPavilionDuringSuperEx.jpg

Soldier's Tents Following the example of the First World War, Lansdowne Park was also used as a base for soldiers during WWII. The same spot has changed from empty concrete to the newly installed paths, benches and lawns of the new Lansdowne. Library and Archives Canada

3D Models and Colourized Images

Our class on the uses of images was a couple weeks ago, but a related subject, colourized images, came up in our last class. Last week’s class involved the uses of 3D visualization for historical reconstructions. As we discussed the readings and videos, it became clear that the possibilities for this technology are almost limitless. 3D modeling has the ability to recreate almost anything, from single buildings to whole cities. This has been used to great effect in historical reconstructions, and museum exhibits. One great example is the Rome Reborn project. This project took existing records and digitally rebuilt Ancient Rome in 320 C.E. The researchers and builders on this project rebuilt the temples, houses, statues, markets, and foliage of Ancient Rome and filled it with people to produce a model that is almost alive. Other city projects have focused on Rouen, France or 19th century Newcastle, Australia.

Another advantage of these models is their ability to add colour to images and statues that we have only ever seen in black and white or whose colours have faded. Our view of historic events has been shaped by these images, as well as their lack of colour. Our professor mentioned that classicists are often criticized for this perception; they often picture monuments and buildings without colour, when in fact, the colours would have been vibrant while still fresh. However, with 3D imaging, black and white photos or faded statues can be replaced with or filled in with a riot of colour. These models are certainly amazing and versatile, but the large scale ones are complicated, especially for someone with little experience. A simpler method of obtaining colourized images is colourizing regular 2-D images. One of my friends linked me to a list entitled “20 Historic Black and White Photos Colorized,” which has a variety of photos from various time periods. The site provides a before/after comparison for most of the images, which allows viewers to clearly see the differences from colourization. The site also provides links to other sources of colorized images. My favourite of this list is the “View from Capitol in Nashville, Tennessee During the Civil War, 1864.” The artist restored the light of the sun through the clouds, which enhanced the mottled light of the day, and the reflection of clouds in the puddles.

The artists who created these images used digital tools to blend their own visions with historical research on the subjects. The most common program people use to colourize photos is photoshop, which allows digital artists to shade and add colours to their projects. Images like these could be used in exhibits to present events, people, or anything else that we may be picturing wrong due to the lack of colour. They allow for much more immersive experiences because the colour provides an extra layer of reality that the viewer is much more familiar with. Instead of looking at a black and white image that may be hard to imagine in its original setting, the colour adds a familiar touch, allowing viewers to see the images as they would now. Of course, colourizing images and building 3D models is largely guesswork for those sources that do not have a lot of documentation. This may mean that we are replacing one flawed perception of images with another, but it is definitely a great experiment to see what can be developed. And who knows, these photos, like digital models, may help us see gaps in our knowledge that can still be filled.

Tracing the History of Aberdeen Pavilion through Images

Our first project for Digital History is a Digital Doors Open or Digital Landscaping. For this project, we have to choose a building or a small landscape and show how the site has changed over time using whatever digital tools we want. Our professor emphasized that we should choose a tool that we have never used before to stretch ourselves and learn something completely new. The tool was easy to choose. I have seen images like the second one on this list on various sites, and I always find them fun to play with and explore. This project gives me the opportunity to learn how to make one of my own. Choosing a location was a little more difficult. I went through multiple choices before finally settling on the Aberdeen Pavilion in Ottawa. 

                                                            Side View of Aberdeen Pavilion

Aberdeen Pavilion, or the Cattle Castle, is at the center of Lansdowne Park, a complex of buildings at the outer edge of downtown Ottawa. Modeled after the Crystal Palace in London, England, it was built in 1898 for the Central Canada Exhibition. ¹ It was designed by Moses C. Edey, a local architect, and named after the Governor General at the time, Lord Aberdeen. It is the oldest and largest surviving example of this type of exhibition building. ² The pavilion and Lansdowne Park has gone through multiple uses throughout its history. Its use as an exhibition building has been constant throughout its history, with multiple conventions and fairs using the building to present their wares. Unlike the Horticultural Building, another historic building on the site, the pavilion has not been moved, although it was threatened with destruction in the early 1990s. Fortunately, the Ottawa city council provided funding for the building’s restoration. Recently, there was controversy over the re-development of Lansdowne Park. Many were concerned about what would happen to the existing buildings amidst the building of large new shops and restaurants. The site went under construction last year and just recently opened to the public, although many of the new shops are not open yet. The site is interesting because it is important to study how heritage buildings can fit in to new landscapes while not diminishing their status. The Lansdowne Park re-development project is a good case study for this type of transition.

For this project, I will trace the history of Aberdeen Pavilion and the way Lansdowne Park has changed around it. To illustrate this, I will use a series of before/after photos sliders like the one below to compare how the building and the surrounding landscape have changed through time. Slider tools allow the user to easily compare two photos in the same location from vastly different time periods. This highlights features that have changed dramatically, or remained the same in ways that cannot be done in other formats. The final product is aimed at anyone interested in the history of Lansdowne Park, and what the re-development of the area means for the pavilion.

For the modern day pictures, I will use a combination of photos I took myself onsite, as well as images pulled from various newspapers. For historic images, I have found some good sources at Library and Archives Canada, and plan to search other repositories, such as the Ontario Archives as well. Among other things I plan to include photos sets contrasting modern and historic uses of the building and blueprints from the construction of the pavilion, and the modern re-development project. Depending on the sources I find, this list will probably expand. In particular, I would like to search for historic and modern aerial pictures of the site. From my review of various tools, the best one for my purposes seems to be Zurb’s TwentyTwenty plug-in. This tool allows users to create sliders by stacking two pictures on top of one another, and then trimming one side of the picture to make the opposing picture clearer. The tool will require me to learn the code used to layer the images. As well, if I want to embed the pictures on my blog I may have to adjust the code to allow me to insert the sliders. This type of project is completely different from anything I have ever tried before, but after admiring other people’s work for a while, I’m ready to make my own contribution.

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1 Hofley, Chris. "Aberdeen Pavilion set to make more history in new revamped Lansdowne."Ottawa Sun August 2, 2014. 
2 ^{Canada's Historic Places. "Aberdeen Pavilion National Historic Site of Canada." Accessed October 14, 2014. ↩}

Digitally Mapping the Spread of Epidemics

Today, we are surrounded by maps. GPS makes directions much easier, whether it is for long road trips or just meeting people somewhere you have never been before. (I have a horrible sense of direction, and am always very glad when GPS can point me in the right direction, even with any flaws.) Aside from geographical maps, infographics float around the web in different forms. These depict relative sizes of countries; demographics; people’s perceptions of countries and many more. Susan Schulten’s work discusses the development of the second type of map in the United States during the 19th century. She explains how governments drowning in new statistics from multiple sources began to organize all this information into images, thus allowing patterns to form in ways that would not be seen if the information was left in text form. Advances in printing and lithography allowed for these maps to be published and edited cheaply, giving a boost to the new industry. New sources such as census and climate data were used to predict weather patterns and plot demographics. Schulten’s blog on 11of the most influential infographics of the 19th century provides a few examples of these types of maps. One shows the distribution of religions, another the origins of residents, and another the average precipitation across the country.

The type of map I am most interested in is not on this list, but is mentioned in Schulten’s book, Mapping the Nation. In her chapter on "Disease, Expansion and the Rise of Environmental Mapping," she discusses how doctors, and other medical professionals of the 19^th century began developing maps to help them explain the spread of epidemic diseases. To understand the full importance of these maps, we need to understand the debate that raged over the causes of epidemic diseases. On one side was the then reigning concept of miasma theory, in which diseases were caused by bad air. And on the other side was the current concept of germ theory, in which diseases are caused by microscopic organisms. Up to the mid-19^th century, miasma theory held sway, with most doctors dismissing germ theory as false. While polluted air can cause disease, it is only half the puzzle, or in other words a cause of disease, but not the right cause for the disease being examined. Schulten argues that medical maps were useful in this context because they provided a method to plot out outbreaks and search for their causes. She explains how these maps often stressed environmental factors, which strengthened belief in miasma theory. American examples include the Brigham map, which depicted how cholera followed trade routes, while another focused on the statistics of outbreaks. The most famous of these maps was by a British doctor, John Snow. His map used statistics from household deaths, streets, and drinking water to trace cases of cholera back to a single pump in Broad Street. His map linked the spread of the disease specifically to the water from that pump and helped prove the validity of germ theory over miasma theory.

 Snow's Cholera Map

Image taken from Wikimedia Commons

Digital mapping tools offer a range of options to enhance Snow’s and other medical maps for interpretation. Miriam Posner's blog provides links to instructions on how to develop these types of projects. The map itself could be made into part of an online gallery, with the addition of any available images or texts from the era to contextualize the period. Wider issues involving city planning and public health initiatives could also be discussed. With more research on the spread of the disease, a time-lapse map could be developed to illustrate how fast the disease spread from its epicenters. Maps could also be overlaid onto modern day maps to show the differences in housing between then and now. This could also be used to explain the factors involved in the spread of the epidemic. A flaw in this approach would be that many of the structures from that period are probably gone. In this case, a 3D model could be built to represent neighbourhoods or buildings that have disappeared. Any of these projects could be useful in depicting the period in greater, more immersive detail, in order to help visitors better understand how people lived during the outbreak of epidemics.

Pictures and Narratives

This week's readings for my Digital History class discuss how photos shape our memories and our understandings of historical events. The theme reminded me of an article I read awhile back about photos adding different perspectives to historical events. One of the readings pointed out that the first photo was probably faked, so who knows how accurate the rest are, but it was interesting, so I thought I share it anyway.

8 Ordinary Photos Hiding Mind Blowing Details
http://www.cracked.com/article_19894_8-ordinary-photos-hiding-mind-blowing-details.html

Twitter Diaries and Historical Webcomics

When I saw the title of Suzanne Fischer’s article, “Historic Diaries on Twitter,” it reminded me a book series that got me interested in history when I was younger. The Dear Canada series is a set of fictional diaries written by young girls in different periods of Canadian history. Even though I have not read them for years, I still have them on my bookshelf. With Fischer’s article, I was interested to see how historic diaries were translated to the web. Her short article discusses how Twitter is being used to post actual entries from historic diaries. She points out that the diary entries were often very short, meaning that these documents translate perfectly into Twitter’s format of 140 characters per post. The threads are posted by historic organizations, or sometimes the descendants of the diaries’ authors. These posts allow readers to follow the lives of people who lived long ago, just as they would follow their friends, or other threads. Fischer argues that these tweets create an emotional connection with the past, by allowing readers to get a taste of the person writing them and the events they lived through. The short texts also force people to come back for more if they are interested in the story as a whole.  

Beyond creating a connection with the past, diary projects are a great method of encouraging readers to dig deeper into the subject. 140 characters does not allow for in-depth information, but it does provide a starting point for readers to research events, people, or society further if they are interested. Off Twitter, there are many other publications with this same power to get readers to dig further into the subject matter. A good example would be Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant, a webcomic, which includes entries on people and events ranging from Medieval Europe to 19^th Century Canada. Beaton usually accompanies her entries with a blurb discussing the comic’s contents. This permits readers who are unfamiliar with the comic’s subject to fully understand the jokes, as well as providing specific information to use in personal research if they wish. I once chose an essay topic from a comic of hers’ that I particularly liked. Another example of this type of publication is CollegeHumour’s “News Feed History of the World.” This comic used Facebook as a template to tell the history of WWI to WWII. The comic is able to form a connection because it uses a format many readers are already familiar with. Like the twitter diaries, there is not a lot of text in each blurb, but it outlines the subject matter fairly comprehensively. These are only a few examples that I’ve picked up; there are plenty more to explore.

Tweets, webcomics, and Facebook are all great tools to use to attract people who are not usually interested in history. All of the creations mentioned above provide a connection to the past in a format that is already familiar to many people, providing a connection to their daily lives, while introducing them to a subject they may not know much about. And maybe, once they are interested, they will dig deeper into the subject matter to learn more for themselves.

How do I see digital tools and approaches affecting my current and future practice of (public) history?”

During my undergraduate degree I used multiple digital research tools for school and for my own purposes. For school purposes, I would always start a paper by searching the library catalogue (usually at home with the off-campus website) for books related to my topic. If I couldn't decide on a topic, I would see which topic had more available sources. The next step would be to search the school’s online journal databases and bookmark anything that could be useful. In my upper-year seminars, when I started using more primary sources, my first stop would usually be the historic newspaper databases. These databases contained digitized copies of newspapers from the US, the U.K. and Canada. Accessing all these resources was done at home in my bedroom at my computer. And all of it was possible due to the increased accessibility allowed by the Internet and digitization projects. My best example of this phenomenon is how I once found an article in a British newspaper database that perfectly fit my arguments. It was almost as if the author written an editorial 200 years in the past just to help my paper, and it was available to me online without having to cross an ocean. 

Digitization projects allow for document collections to reach far wider audiences then they ever could without the web. One of the best examples of this is one we discussed in class: an increased interest in genealogy among the general public. Online genealogy websites have links to resources that allow people to do research from home after work, rather then visit archives they may not have access to. These sites help increase people’s interest in history because they provide starting points from which users can do as much or as little research as they like depending on how much time they have available. Other sites use digitized sources for exhibition purposes rather than research. Sites like Buzzfeed allow users to create articles about any subject they like, which will then link to similar subjects already available. Recently there have been multiple articles comparing photos from the two World Wars to their modern day counterparts. Museums and government archives are also following this trend. By publishing online exhibits as stand-alones or as companions to current exhibits, they hope to attract wider audiences then their physical exhibits alone. 

However, like all things, digitization does have its downsides. Large projects take a large amount of resources in both time and labour. There are too many artifacts, and/or documents for everything to go online; meaning that choices have to be made on what should be digitized, and what shouldn’t. When considering which documents to publish online, the project must consider among other things, the funding available, and selection bias. As well, if the project involves personal information, such as genealogical records, the project must consider the ethics surrounding putting a deceased person’s personal information online. Another flaw involves the status of a collection’s accessibility. Despite the increasing accessibility of multiple sources around the world, not everyone has the same access. For example, my access to all the databases mentioned above is due to my student status, most people don't have this access, and I won't either once I’ve finished school.   

Despite these flaws, the possibilities and accessibility offered by digital tools are amazing tools to be used by public historians to present information in multiple different formats to wider groups. Following this trend, there is a good likelihood that I will be working on digitization projects or be involved in developing online exhibits in the future. This course will allow me to learn the skills I need to follow this path. I am especially looking forward to the mapping and web design portions of the course.