Increasing access to historical materials – looking forward to hearing about new research emerging from this:

Cengage’s plans to digitise the 19th century could open up a whole new world, finds Matthew Reisz

Described by its provider as “the most ambitious scholarly digitisation and publication programme ever undertaken”, Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) was launched last week.

Created by educational resources provider Cengage Learning, the project builds on the success of its ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online) programme.

Abigail Williams, Lord White fellow and tutor in English at St Peter’s College, Oxford, believes that ECCO has “transformed 18th-century studies across the world…It has been exciting and liberating in opening up the arcane, the ephemeral and the neglected, and allowing us to read way beyond the confines of the canon. The searchability of the text enables us to retrieve words and references from among millions of pages in a few seconds.”

The only key downside of ECCO, adds Dr Williams, is its creation of “a two-tier system among universities”, since “no serious 18th-century scholar would now think they could do research without it, yet not every institution can afford it”.

Read full story or visit the site.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=418343

As someone who was involved in early digital humanities research (building a database of wartime propaganda posters in order to be able to identify themes/patterns in the posters), this story is really interesting:

We are now witnessing what Martin Wynne, Oxford University Computing Services liaison at the Oxford e-Research Centre, describes as “a move from research leave to research grants, with academics required to hire staff and manage teams”. This is obviously more congenial to some people than others, and critics argue that it is a trend driven far more by financial than scholarly goals.

But there is widespread agreement that the developing discipline and funding regime have overcome some of the teething problems. “Digital resources and infrastructure are developed to solve scholarly problems, not as ends in themselves,” says Hotson, “to serve our own projects and interests on the assumption that other scholars have very similar projects.” This avoids the danger of what amounts to academic “deskilling”. And while some earlier initiatives by researchers may have produced obscure and sometimes self-indulgent resources that helped them but were of no use to anybody else, Wynne argues that “reusability, sustainability and visibility” are the guiding principles today.

So how should we regard some of the more grandiose claims that are made for the digital humanities? Open-access projects, we are constantly told, democratise knowledge by making it available to anyone with a computer. “Far from being geared solely to academic questions,” says the website for Linguistic Geographies: The Gough Map of Great Britain, a chart that is thought to date back to the 1370s, “the project team was keen to ensure that our research findings reach the widest possible audiences, not least because maps are enduringly popular objects and always capture the imagination.”

New resources are also said to enable us to interrogate data in different ways and to ask fresh questions, including some that were previously not even imaginable. Since we can never tell what the scholars of the future are going to be interested in, almost anything might turn out to be useful. And if an academic discipline is in decline, digital tools can provide a way of reviving interest.

Such arguments are almost incontrovertible in the abstract, and are amply justified in particular cases, but often seem to be accompanied by very sketchy notions of what might constitute success or failure. Is it too crude to expect a database requiring x thousand pounds of research funding to generate so many thousand hits, five monographs, three spin-off radio programmes and 20 newspaper articles? And when does it become a dubious use of public money to create ever-more-sophisticated resources for disciplines that seem to be in terminal decline?

Read full story.

A really inspiring video which echoes much of what I end up saying (wonder if I could sneak this into my Soc Med for Scared courses… makes a chance from ‘Guess the date of the quote’ – which usually sounds like something people say about social media, but was about e.g. the printing press or the telephone!):

Here’s my ‘live notes’ from David Puttnam’s opening keynote for the JISC Online Conference:

Old fashioned concept of ‘wisdom’ has disappeared., as e.g. we have ‘professional’ politicians, who’ve experienced nothing else.

Creative advisor in China re digital industries. Started with 5000 years of Chinese history used to set the context for the next 10 days, in order to ensure that the mistakes of history were not repeated.

We’re becoming too complacent, as Chinese not just producing low cost goods, but large numbers of cultural outputs. Renewed investment in ICT and Education are core to ensuring that remain relevant to modern society.

Creativity – builds on history, experience, social needs of the society.

We’ve been looking to the West for inspiration for too long, whereas we should have been looking to the East, whereas those of us thinking we can ignore it living in a fantasy world.

Oxford Economics Report (6 weeks ago) for most stats.

Digital developments. 1911 – a lesson then would be entirely recognizable today – as technology has not been allowed to make changes to pedagogy that it should.

Mind, Brain and Education – studies on absorption, retention & application of knowledge. We wouldn’t go to visit a Dr who we didn’t think was up to date with the latest developments, but within education, few are prepared to engage with the digital world in the way that many (younger) have already experienced – hence why we have lost trust of the 16 year olds, etc.

Debate – digital natives, etc…

Dangerous to think that formal learning is the only way – why are making such heavy weather of technology, when most carry them everyday in their pocket.

robbiepixelman: Students are not just learners but collaborators and facilitators of their own learning, and can often learn at a faster / more effective manner than ‘traditional’ teaching can provide. I think we need to recognise and develop the ‘learner’ as the central focus and contributor to peer learning.

David Kernohan: Not sure we need a digital pedagogy so much as a pedagogy. If we properly understood how and why learning happens we could use technology in a thoughtful way to enhance this.

Education needs proper investment, with staff given PAID time every year to develop appropriate skills (pedagogy/technology).

We need a world class education system to inform world class NHS, pensions, etc – the reverse can’t be possible. Where are the leaders in modern day education? The issues that students are protesting about are not just student issues, but e.g. the irrelevance of much of modern day education.

Digital – ability to use entire suite of assets (video, audio, text, etc.) – the ability to use each tool for the right issue… Students do much informal learning, how do we help them make the most of this?

HelenBeetham: ‘Digital pedagogy’ is perhaps the range of pedagogies we need in a digital age – not a special approach.

Younger generation – the notion of being articulate is not necessarily ‘mainstream’.

Lindsay Jordan: Practice what we preach as educational developers – stop trying to ‘tell’ people what to do. Show them. Conceal the message in the medium.

Sally Graham: Yes we’re often simply using technology to tell and to test!!

Sarah Ashley: Slowly and surely wins the race, I think you have to ease teachers/learner into change, don’t go in full throttle throwing your weight around. Perhaps suggest one small change, and facilitate this, help them as much as possible, then other things will come. What we also forget is teachers are very busy and so it has to be small steps, which are less timely.

HelenBeetham: @MaryAnn yes but when to teaching staff have time to reflect in a scholarly way on their own ideological/pedagogical position Sometimes technology can help with that self-recognition by giving new ways of thinking/seeing

David Baume: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

Clare Killen: Learners don’t necessarily want to be called customers or consumers – some feel this denies their role as co-developers/collaborators in their own learning is expensive, try ignorance.”

Huge problem of changing the notion of students from ‘collaborators in learning’ to ‘customers’ with ‘rights’. Also an issue with the government thinking that a current elite group of universities will be enough to get the British to sail into the future.

Your job is to provide compelling content, and scream if don’t have the tools to complete the job.

Looking forward to @AaronPorter talk tomorrow re value of higher education.

http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/jiscel11

The most recent WikiLeaks disclosures, consisting of tens of thousands of reports and analyses made by US embassies and diplomatic missions around the world, may or may not lead to greater public scrutiny – and hence democratic accountability, as Mr Assange hopes – of the conduct of foreign policy.

The most vociferous criticism of the disclosures has come from those most embarrassed by them, although others charge that they have put the lives and security of confidants at risk. But historians and international-relations scholars have been contemplating the wider consequences of WikiLeaks, looking beyond the content of particular cables to consider the ramifications for their own craft and the future study of the early 21st century.

Some fear that the disclosures, rather than catalysing increased transparency, may constrain the future ability of scholars to understand how decisions were made.

Daniel Drezner, professor of international politics at Tufts University, Massachusetts, believes that the leaks will result in less being written down, with communications conducted more informally where possible.

“Governments do not respond to security breaches by surrendering themselves to the fates,” he said.

He predicted that the circulation of information through government will be tightened and narrowed, making it more difficult for academics to assess the inputs and contours of decision-making.

Read full story.

A funny thing happened to us on the way to the future. The internet went from being something exotic to being boring utility, like mains electricity or running water – and we never really noticed. So we wound up being totally dependent on a system about which we are terminally incurious. You think I exaggerate about the dependence? Well, just ask Estonia, one of the most internet-dependent countries on the planet, which in 2007 was more or less shut down for two weeks by a sustained attack on its network infrastructure. Or imagine what it would be like if, one day, you suddenly found yourself unable to book flights, transfer funds from your bank account, check bus timetables, send email, search Google, call your family using Skype, buy music from Apple or books from Amazon, buy or sell stuff on eBay, watch clips on YouTube or BBC programmes on the iPlayer – or do the 1,001 other things that have become as natural as breathing.

The internet has quietly infiltrated our lives, and yet we seem to be remarkably unreflective about it. That’s not because we’re short of information about the network; on the contrary, we’re awash with the stuff. It’s just that we don’t know what it all means. We’re in the state once described by that great scholar of cyberspace, Manuel Castells, as “informed bewilderment”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/20/internet-everything-need-to-know

Two history professors are hoping to shake up the academy and academic publishing with a project that in a single week has generated more than enough “crowd-sourced” content for a new book on academia.

Dan Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt, directors of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, Virginia, launched a website, “Hacking the Academy”, on 21 May. They gave users seven days to submit articles, blogs, videos and comments on topics relating to the academy.

Professor Cohen said he and Professor Scheinfeldt planned to compile the best submissions in a book, to be published by the University of Michigan Press, for the benefit of members of the academy who are less comfortable with digital media.

But he admitted that the one-week submission deadline was intended to be provocative and express academics’ frustration with the “calcified” structures of the academy in the digital age, such as the “years and years” it could take presses to publish edited volumes.

Read full story in Times Higher Education.

An interesting experiment in using Twitter with a class of 50 history students. The best comment on the YouTube video: “Education isn’t a product/service like milk or car repair. What you are paying for is the opportunity to apprentice with someone who knows a lot more than you. What you get out of it depends upon what you put into it.”

Full Title: Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How online social networking will transform your life, work and world
Author: Matthew Fraser & Soumitra Dutta
Publisher: Wiley Publishing
Date: 2009 (corrections)

“MySpace. Facebook. YouTube. Wikipedia. Twitter. Social networking sites are a global phenomenon boasting hundreds of millions of members. Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom is the first book written for a wide audience about the powerful trend that is reshaping your life: the Web 2.0 social networking revolution.

Refreshingly original, often unexpected and always insightful, Matthew Fraser and Soumitra Dutta examine the powerful forces behind the social ‘e’-revolution, detailing often absurd and powerful reactions to it as well as making predictions about its long-term consequences.

The book argues that whilt the Web 2.0 revolution has reached a tipping point socially, especially among young members of ‘Generation V’ who feel completely at ease in the online world, it is facing powerful forces of resistance inside organisations – especially corporations and government bereaucracies. Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom makes the case that everyone involved in senior management must understand the dynamics of the Web 2.0 revolution before it’s too late – before it will be sweeping through their corridors and into their boardrooms.”

Buy on Amazon.