HISTORIANS AND CAUSAL OBSERVERS alike will most certainly remember the decade of the 1990s for the euphoric expectations that accompanied the introduction and development of the personal computer and Internet technologies such as the World Wide Web. Pronouncements of a technology revolution echoed through the decade and have followed us into this new century. The hyperbole associated with the assertions of the “digital age” has had an effect on a wide range of educational activities. Evidence of the influence of technology can be seen in the classroom where nationwide there is one computer for every five children.[1] An ERIC search on the subject of technology will literally yield tens of thousands of articles, papers and monographs.[2] Economic activity associated with the development of new technologies also demonstrates the depth of the impact of technology on education. The United States Congress for fiscal year 2001 appropriated $872 million in the area of educational technology and the E-Rate (a federal tax on telephone usage) has, as of February 2001, generated $5.8 billion dollars for wiring schools to the Internet.[3] Given the overwhelming sums of money being spent and the public attention that recent technological innovations have received, it is no surprise that researchers expect technology to invigorate many aspects of education.[4]
One educational area that has greatly benefited from the growth of technology is historical studies. Since the initial development of the World Wide Web in the early1990’s, tens of millions of historical documents have been placed online. During that time the quality and range of historical documents available on the Web steadily increased.[5] The Web has made primary source documents available to students at all levels in almost all places.6 These newly available documents are significant because they allow for learner-centered experiences.[7] By shifting the focus from the teacher to the learner, web-based digital historical resources empower students to construct a more personal understanding of history. Through the World Wide Web, learners have a level of direct access to the raw materials of history that educators could never have imagined.
The instructional use of digital historical resources represents a unique opportunity to alter dramatically the character of social studies and history instruction. Although K-12 history teachers have always used primary source documents, evidence suggests that their use has been limited.[8] Social studies and history teachers and students now have opportunities to use digital historical resources in much greater numbers. In order to understand the possibilities, social studies and history educators need to answer several questions. These questions include:
What is digital history and where can some of the best examples be found?
How do digital historical resources differ from non-digital primary sources?
How is digital history affecting college and K-12 history and social studies education?
This article represents an initial effort to answer these questions and in doing so the literature on digital historical resources will take center stage. Essentially, this article will function as a literature review, but will take form around the three questions listed above. In addition, an effort has been made to highlight high quality digital historical resources in the context of theoretical, descriptive, and empirical research.
Digital History: Some Good Examples
Digital history is the study of the past using a variety of electronically reproduced primary source texts, images, and artifacts as well as the constructed historical narratives, accounts, or presentations that result from digital historical inquiry. Digital historical resources are typically stored as electronic collections in formats that facilitate their use on the World Wide Web. Arguably one of the most comprehensive efforts to create and preserve digital historical resources can be found in the United States Library of Congress’ “American Memory” project.[9] Each collection within American Memory includes four components, a framework, access aids, reproductions, and supplementary programs.[10] One example of the work being done at American Memory is a collection of ex-slave interviews and narratives from the Works Project Administration (WPA). This digital body of documents titled “American Life Histories: Manuscripts From the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1940,” is freely accessible through the World Wide Web, is arranged around single topics, and is searchable. The collection includes 2,900 documents from over 300 WPA writers who worked in twenty-four states. The documents were written in a variety of styles including narratives, interview transcripts, and case histories. Individual documents run between 2,000-15,000 words in length (including drafts and revisions) and include information on family income, occupation, political views, religion and mores, medical needs, diet and miscellaneous observations. These documents can be a valuable source for numerous historical activities including identifying bias, comparing sources, and validating historical theories.
Low barriers to publication have resulted in an amazing proliferation of digital historical resources, however, and as a result, educators and historians must closely evaluate digital historical resources before using them.[11] When making these evaluations it is important to have relevant and meaningful criteria. Bull, Bull, and Dawson have identified four criteria for evaluating the products of organizations that create and maintain digital collections.[12] In the form of questions, these criteria ask about their products: 1) are they able to transform teaching; 2) are they able to withstand peer review; 3) do they have an internal champion committed to scholarship and K-12 education; and 4) are the resources they provide related to the K-12 curriculum? Writing for the American Historical Association’s Perspectives Online, Andrew McMichael has suggested that content, clarity, and communication are useful criteria for measuring the usefulness of web-based historical materials.[13] Several colleges and universities have developed guides for evaluating website quality. The University of Purdue’s “Comprehensive Online Research Education” (CORE) is a particularly good guide for assessing the quality of online resources. The CORE project includes detailed questions for researchers to consider before using online resources in three areas including, the reliability and credibility, the perspective, and the purpose of the website.[14]
Teachers and students of history should use a mix of strategies when assessing the quality of digital historical resources. Using the criteria referenced above in addition to criteria relating to the historical veracity of the content on the sites, I have identified several high quality resources developed at colleges and universities and at K-12 schools. See Table One for some examples of these projects.
Table One: Digital Historical Resources
Institution URL Name of the Collection
University of Virginia http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow2 Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
George Mason University and the City University of New York http://historymatters.gmu.edu History Matters
Rutgers University http://fas-history.rutgers.edu/oralhistory/orlhom.htm Oral History Archives of World War II
University of North Carolina http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/fpn.html First-Person Narratives of the American South
University of Michigan and Cornell University http://moa.umdl.umich.edu Making of America
Yale University http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/major.htm The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School
Duke University http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess/index.html The Ad*Access Project
Illinois Institute of Technology http://columbus.iit.edu The World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893
Amherst, Hampshire, Mt. Holyoke, Smith and University of Massachusetts at Amherst http://clio.fivecolleges.edu Five Colleges Archives Digital History project
Cleveland State University http://web.ulib.csuohio.edu/SpecColl/cdl Cleveland Digital Library
The mid-Wales county of Powys http://multiweb.ruralwales.net/~history Powys Digital History Project
Rocky Gap High School in Southwest Virginia http://www.bland.k12.va.us/bland/rocky/gap.html Bland County, Virginia Historical Archives
South Kingstown High School, Providence, Rhode Island http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WWII_Women What did you do in the war Grandma?
Pennsylvania Commonwealth Libraries, Bethlehem http://bdhp.moravian.edu Bethlehem Digital History ProjectArea Public Library, and Moravian College
The potential of digital history at all levels has been recognized and realized by the Virginia Center for Digital History (VCDH) at the University of Virginia. VCDH is the home of the “Valley of the Shadow,” an on-line collection of materials relating to two communities—Franklin County, Pennsylvania and Augusta County, Virginia—before, during, and after the American Civil War. The materials include letters and diaries, newspapers, images, maps, census records, and military records. Although the Valley of the Shadow is not an interpreted resource in the manner of a secondary text, the archive intends to raise questions related to conventional research on the Civil War. The archive explores the Civil War in the context of the people who made up the communities of Franklin and Augusta as a mechanism for challenging these conventional historical interpretations. [15] The site is one of the most heavily visited history related web sites on the Web, receiving traffic from students and non-students alike in countries across the world. [16] Numerous K-12 schools, as well as higher education institutions, have used the Valley of the Shadow. Galgano reported on his use of the site in an undergraduate history methods course in which students analyzed newspaper articles, letters, and diaries and completed exercises on historical bias, document verification, and statistical analysis. In addition, students used the archive to research a paper relating to some issue or problem from the period. In reflecting on the work accomplished by his students, Galgano suggested that the Valley of the Shadow had “virtually unlimited research potential.” [17]
Digital history is not just being created at colleges and universities, however. Local communities and school systems are also beginning to create their own original digital historical resources. Much of the work being done in these communities is tied to local history. Often, students in K-12 settings do the work themselves. This was the case with the Bland County, “Virginia History Project.” This “digital archive” began as a high school United States history class project and has blossomed into an archive with over 1000 images, documents, and maps.
In addition to historical archives such as these, numerous organizations are making teaching strategies and guides available for use with their collections. Notable among these efforts is the work being done at American Memory (http://memory.loc.gov), the Virginia Center for Digital History (http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vcdh), the National Archives and Records Administration (http://www.nara.gov/), and George Mason University’s History Matters (http://historymatters.gmu.edu).
Beyond the electronic storage and presentation of historical materials, digital history is also about the construction of narratives and the presentation of historical research findings. In the digital genre of history, students stand side by side with professional historians generating an infinite number of interpretations from the electronic archives of the Web. Digital history encourages a view of the past that is tentative and process orientated. In addition, the Web’s hypertexuality encourages alternative narrative forms. Historian Edward Ayers has suggested that the nonlinear complexity supported by the Web is a means to deal more effectively with the multiple sequences, voices, outcomes and implications of historical narrative.[18] Students writing historical narratives in hypertext will have the ability, through the construction of links, to exercise a greater sense of control over the narrative and particularly the structure of arguments within the narrative.
Digital Historical Resources Differ from other Primary Sources
Despite the obvious similarities, digital historical resources are distinctly different from non-digital materials in several ways: 1) digital historical resources are more accessible; 2) they encourage increased archival activity; 3) they promote the development of social networks: 4) they are easier to manipulate; 5) they are searchable; 6) they are more flexible; and 7) they include an organizational strategy related to the content of the collection.
Digital historical resources are first and foremost more accessible than non-digital primary source documents and artifacts. Students and teachers have until now had limited access to historical documents. The typical way to access historical documents prior to the Web was to visit a physical archive. Obviously, there are serious time and place limitations to such ventures. Consequently, the vast majority of historical resources and artifacts have been unavailable to K-12 and (to a lesser extent) college students. The increased availability of historical resources resulting from digitization and publication on the Web has made possible the consideration of subject matter that prior to the Web was impossible. One example of this phenomenon can be found with the WPA ex-slave narratives. For almost forty years the collection was housed in various physical archives and was relatively inaccessible. In 1972, Greenwood Press published the narratives in a seventeen volume edition edited by George M. Rawick, but the excessive cost (today over $1,000 for the entire set) meant that they went mostly unused in public schools. Today students can access this material for free from American Memory. This opening of access is the most valuable of the differences between digital and non-digital historical resources.
In addition to the inability to get to physical archives, some resources are unavailable because they have not been archived. Amateur and professional historians as well as families, trusts, and small organizations own many of these un-archived resources. The cost associated with the development of physical archives and/or the publication of these materials has limited their availability. Ease of publication on the Web has lowered economic barriers to creating historical archives. Tom Costa’s “Virginia Runaways Project” is an example of a low cost, high quality digital historical collection.[19] The collection includes thousands of slave runaway and capture advertisements that have, to date, never been available to students of history.
Beyond access and availability are other issues that more clearly represent the uniqueness of digital historical resources. The most important of these issues is the capacity for digital resources to make possible the creation of social networks, and the development of social networks around digital historical collections is transforming the teaching of history in profound ways.[20] Students are able to use email to contact other students and teachers or professors. Teachers and collection curators are able to take collections with them to students in remote locations. Collections can be designed and presented for specific groups of users. These characteristics among others are enabling students and historians to communicate and interact in ways never before possible.
Four structural characteristics of digital historical resources present additional advantages for digital historical resources over non-digital resources. One of these differences is the ability to manipulate digital documents in ways that enhance the document’s usability. For example, a user can cut and paste material from an electronic document or view a document in a different language. Individual digital documents might also be in hypertext format and almost always are portable.
The searchability of digital collections is a second structural difference between manuscript and digital collections. Facilitating not only finding documents but also information within documents, enables students to more easily locate and use meaningful information. The Library of Congress has gone to great lengths to provide American Memory documents in searchable form.[21] The advent of XML (extensible markup language) will make searching even more efficient and meaningful.[22] Even collections or documents that are not ostensibly searchable can be searched using end-user technologies such as the “find” command on web browsing software.
The third structural difference between digital and non-digital materials is the flexibility of digital historical resources and narratives. Digital presentation provides students with a means to explore alternative representations of their findings. Non-linear hypertext narratives can be used to connect arguments to evidence, and hypertexts give readers a greater deal of autonomy.[23] Some radical thinkers see hypertext as a freeing mechanism that will function to displace traditional narrative. Others suggest that hypertext is oversold and not substantially different than other forms of non-linear text such as encyclopedias.[24] At minimum, hypertext puts interpretative tools at the disposal of students and historians and enables a type of connective meaning that is often buried in traditional narrative.[25]
The ability to organize digital historical resources in a manner that reflects the characteristics of a collection is the fourth structural difference. The Web allows for the organization of individual documents and collections in logical and easy to use formats. As is the case with hypertext, students who are constructing digital collections can arrange collections in a non-linear fashion that might reflect some of the idiosyncratic characteristic of the documents.
Digital historical resources are unique for all of the above reasons. Obviously, the difference is greater in some instances than in others. If an online document is linear, not searchable, and out of context, it may not seem to be any different than a print version of the same document, but there are still important differences. The digital document is different because it has a set of portable characteristics that make it available in a way that a print document would not be. For one thing, an online document can be made use of through online social networks in ways that non-digital documents cannot be used. Imagine making copies of a printed historical document and mailing it to thousands of high school history teachers. Remarkably, this is exactly what is done everyday when social networks such as the National Council for the Social Studies’ listserve is used to send a message about a collection or document that might be of use to teachers and students of history. This important difference is often overlooked when evaluating the value of digital resources.
The Effect of Digital History on History and Social Studies Education
It is of practical importance to ask about the effect of digital history on college and K-12 history and social studies teaching. If history and social studies teachers are to use digital historical resources, they will need some guidance about how this use will impact instruction and learning. Determining the extent of the current impact of digital history is somewhat difficult. There is no direct research on the number of teachers using digital historical resources in K-12 history and social studies classes, but evidence does suggest that usage is limited. The hands-on historical activity that is associated with digital history is often eschewed in K-12 history and social studies classes. The 2001 “National Assessment of Educational Progress in United States History” found that eighty-seven percent of students in the 4th grade, seventy percent of students in the 8th grade, and seventy-seven percent of students in the 12th grade used primary source documents just once a month or less.[26] Furthermore, K-12 history and social studies teachers have been found to be less than likely to use computers in their instruction.[27] By comparison, possibly because of their predisposition to historical research, college and university history professors and students have been found to use digital historical resources in much greater numbers.[28]
Although we can deduce that digital history’s overall impact on K-12 history and social studies has to date been limited, anecdotal evidence does suggest that some teachers are making meaningful use of digital historical resources.[29] Most of the literature on digital history is in the form of descriptive reports of classroom practices using history-related resources on the World Wide Web.[30] The authors of these descriptive reports on classroom practice were typically very positive and almost always use utopian language, claiming that the Internet appears to offer “promise” or “potential” unmatched in educational history.
However, concern has been expressed that the use of digital historical resources can create information overload. David Shenk has referred to this phenomenon as “Data Smog” and suggested that the overwhelming amount of information and the lack of organizational structure on the Web may initially be detrimental to instruction.[31] Several institutions are actively addressing this problem by organizing material for both scholarly and K-12 academic use. Singleton and Giese have described a model framework for using primary sources with students developed for the Library of Congress by the Social Science Education Consortium.[32] This framework includes suggestions on using primary source documents for focusing instruction, guiding inquiry into historical problems, facilitating the application of knowledge, and assessing student learning. Institutions such as the Library of Congress are maintaining web sites with the type of primary source documents necessary for this type of inquiry instruction.
Numerous efforts have been made to substantiate the pedagogical worthiness of digital historical resources. Published accounts of individual digital history lessons and projects have varied in pedagogical quality, but in general web-based materials appear to be shifting the focus of instruction from the teachers to the students. Wilson and Marsh have reported that the use of computers and, specifically, the Internet could better engage students and “stimulate an interest in the written word as students search for documents in remote libraries.”[33] Rehmel has described a lesson in which advanced placement students worked in teams using the Web and reference CD-ROMs to conduct historical inquiry on a self-selected topic.[34] In this case students completed their work but ran into several problems, including poorly operating hardware and uninterested peers. Student distractions included time spent viewing web sites unrelated to the research. This latter problem may have been a product of a poorly constructed inquiry. Rehmel concluded that maintaining student interest and focus in inquiry is just as important as in a lecture.
Much of the literature on digital history has focused on the constructivist character of the educational experience that occurs when using digital historical resources.[35] In order to make authentic use of digital historical resources, students have to engage the materials online themselves.[36] In this environment teachers become facilitators. When students make decisions such as which document to use and how to use that document, they are constructing their own knowledge. Furthermore, as students begin to put together discrete parcels of historical data they are constructing history. Although this process may be very similar to what a student would do with non-digital materials, the digital characteristics of the documents allow students additional flexibility that is not possible with printed materials. This flexibility may enhance the quality of students’ constructed historical findings. The digital presentation of findings is thought to offer students opportunities to expand on traditional print media. The question of whether the digital presentations resulting from digital historical inquiry are real or serious history will be left to debate by academicians, but the initial indications are that the digital domain has much to offer.[37]
To turn now to college and university level instruction. Here evidence indicates that history instructors are facilitating their students’ construction of history in increasing numbers as they begin to use digital historical resources.[38] In a survey of members of the American Historical Association (AHA), Townsend has reported that college history teachers were using the Web and that such use was deemed “somewhat important.”[39] In another survey of 485 college history instructors, Trinkle has found that almost half required their students to use the Internet in doing research.[40] Trinkle did not explicitly ask about the nature of the “Internet research,” but anecdotal evidence supports the contention that college students are using digital historical resources to construct historical arguments and that these arguments are presented in a different way than print narratives.[41]
In addition to the shifting focus of instruction, digital historical resources offer many pedagogical and methodological advantages over traditional historical resources at all levels. In a study of college history students, Kelly found that students engaged in a higher level of recursiveness (returning to the same document) when they used digital historical resources as opposed to print resources.[42] The author also found that students developed a stronger sense of the interconnectedness of history and a better understanding of causation when using digital historical resources.[43] Advantages in the use of digital historical resources in middle and high school history classes have also recently emerged. Warren found that both pre-packed and originally constructed web-based primary source exercises are an invaluable means of injecting authenticity into high school history classrooms.[44]
The movement of the student to the center of historical instruction portents a larger issue related to digital history. Wynne has argued that the Internet (and more properly the World Wide Web) has decentralized knowledge and democratized access to information.[45] In an environment where such a wide range of materials is available, pedagogy is also democratized. The pedagogical implications for using digital historical resources are very different than what might be possible with traditional print based materials. Teachers cannot control the type of interaction a student has with the material the way they can with printed material. In addition, the sheer volume of information available on a site such as American Memory dwarfs anything available in print. Wynne has suggested, further, that although the Web can be said to encourage activity that approximates the work of a historian, the debate over whether this is a good idea is dualistic and discouraging.[46] However, she suggests that instead of focusing on the either/or question of whether students are ready for serious historical inquiry or technology deskills students (two arguments she presents), researchers should be focusing on the pedagogical worthiness of subject and age specific activities that are emerging from the democratic landscape of the Web.[47]
The Web and technology in general are also, in a sense, a representation of how students think in a post-modern world. Trask has suggested that students might find traditional historical tasks such as reading texts and footnotes antithetical to their technological experiences.[48] He sees students living in a world where an infinite body of web-based information confronts them, but history teachers continue to present the world as finite and fixed.[49] The dissonant nature of this student experience should prod teachers to alter their approach to teaching history toward a style that includes inquiry, questioning, and what Trask calls “resonance” or what other might refer to as authenticity.
Conclusion
The use of digital historical resources is changing the character of historical studies. Digital technologies (particularly the World Wide Web) are providing historians and social studies and history students and teachers with expanded access to primary historical sources. In addition, digital technologies are facilitating new methods for presenting both primary-source historical materials and the narratives that result from historical studies. The availability of these new resources and methods make for a unique and powerful opportunity to shift the locus of history and social studies instruction from a teacher-centered transmission model to a model that encourages student’s inquiry. These new forms of inquiry must focus on genuine historical problems whose consideration will enhance not only our understanding of the past but our ability to negotiate the present and progress into the future. In order to ensure this progress, digital historical resources must adhere to the academic demands of historians as well as the pedagogical demands of teachers. Given the body of research relating to the methodological and pedagogical use of digital historical resources we are on our way to meeting these demands.
Notes
1 According to the Office of Educational Technology at the United States Department of Education, as of Fall, 2000 the student to computer ratio was 5 to 1, 98% of schools had Internet access in the school, and 77% of instructional rooms were connected to the Internet. U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology, Internet Access in U.S. Public Schools and Classrooms: 1994-2000, (May, 2001), (8 August, 2001).
2 A search of the FirstSearch ERIC database on May 22, 2002 using “technology” as a keyword yielded 66,769 matches.
3 President Bush’s FY 2002 and 2003 budgets requested $700 million for educational technology. This was a slight decrease from the FY 2001 expenditure of $872 million. Office of Management and Budget, Fiscal year 2003 budget (May, 2003), (22 May 2002).
4 Michael J. Berson, “Effectiveness of computer technology in the social studies: A review of the literature,” Journal of Research on Computing in Education 28 no.4 (1996): 487-499; Lee Ehman and Allan D. Glenn, “Interactive technology in the social studies,” in Handbook of research on social studies teaching and learning, ed J. P. Shaver, (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1991); Cheryl Mason, Michael J. Berson, Rich Diem, David Hicks, John K. Lee, & Tony Dralle, “Guidelines For Using Technology to Prepare Social Studies Teachers,” Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education 1, no. 1 (2001), (22 May 2002
5 William Tally, “Up against authentic history: Helping teachers make the most of primary source materials on-line,” Electronic Learning 16 no.1 (1996): 40-41.
6 Edward L. Ayers, “The Pasts and Futures of Digital History,” (1999), (22 May 2002).
7 Elizabeth K Wilson, and G E. Marsh, “Social studies and the Internet revolution,” Social Education 50 no. 4 (1995): 198-202.
8 The 2001 National Assessment of Educational Progress in United States History found that 87% of students in the 4th grade and 70% of students in the 8th grade and 77% of students in the 12th grade used primary source documents once a month or less, (22 May 2002).
9 As of summer 2002, American Memory had over 7 million individual documents in over 100 collections.
10 Carl Fleischhauer, “Digital Historical Collections: Types, Elements, And Construction,” (1996), (22 May 2002).
11 Jeffery G. Barlow, “Historical research and electronic evidence,” in Writing, teaching, and researching history in the electronic age, ed. Dennis A. Trinkle, (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe Inc., 1998), 194-225.
12 Glen Bull, Gina Bull, & Kara Dawson, “The Universal Solvent,” Learning and Leading with Technology 27 no.2 (1999): 36-38.
13 Andrew McMichael, “The Historian, the Internet, and the Web: A Reassessment,” Perspectives Online (February 1998), (22 May 2002).
14 For more detailed information on the CORE project see their website at http://core.lib.purdue.edu/.
15 William G. Thomas, “In the Valley of the Shadow: Communities and history in the American Civil War,” (1999), (22 May 2002).
16 William G. Thomas, “Remarks at the Presidential Sites and Libraries Conference at the George Bush Presidential Library, College Station, Texas,” (1999), (22 May 2002).
17 M. J. Galgano, “The best of times: Teaching undergraduate research methods using The Great American History Machine and The Valley of the Shadow,” History computer review 15 no. 1 (1999): 13-28.
18 Edward L. Ayers, “History in hypertext,” (1999), (22 May 2002).
19 Access Tom Costa’s Virginia Runaways Project at http://www.uvawise.edu/history/runaways
20 Thomas Thurston, “Building social networks with computer networks: A new deal for teaching and learning,” Paper presented at the American Historical Association, 2000 Annual Conference, Chicago (22 May 2002)
21 See http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/techdocs/amdtd.html for more information about the search technology being used in the American Memory project.
22 XML is a markup language that allows the author of a web document to assign meaning to sections of text within that document. When searching XML documents users are able to search these meanings opposed to just the words contained within the document.
23 Roy Rosenzweig, “Crashing the system?: Hypertext and scholarship on American culture,” American Quarterly 51 no. 2 (1999): 237-246.
24 David Dobrin, “Hype and hypetext,” in Literacy and Computers, eds. Cynthia Selfe and Susan Hilligoss, (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1994): 306-318.
25 Graeme Davison, “History and hypertext,” The Electronic Journal of Australian and New Zealand History, (August, 1997), (22 May 2002)
26 For more information see http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ushistory/results
27 The 2001 National Assessment of Educational Progress in United States History found that 84% of students in the 4th grade and 85% of students in the 8th grade and 85% of students in the 12th grade use computers once every few weeks or less, (22 May 2002). In a 1998 national survey by Henry J. Becker 12% of social studies teachers reported frequent (more than 20 times) use of computers by students during at least one of the classes they taught that year. The full report can be accessed at http://www.crito.uci.edu/tlc/findings/computeruse/.
28 T. Mills Kelly, “For better or worse? The marriage of the Web and the classroom,” Journal of the Association for History and Computing 3 no. 2 (2000), (22 May 2002).
29 For examples of how teachers are using digital historical resources see The Digital Blackboard at History Matters
30 The following references represent a sampling of reviews of history Web sites from 9 different journals and magazines. L Baich,. & J. Loving, “Judicial history on the World Wide Web: An annotated guide,” Organization of American Historians Magazine 13 no. 1 (1998): 56-57; P. Hammett, “WebWatch,” Library Journal 123 (1998): 33-34; G. Junion-Metz, “Black history highlights,” School Library Journal 45 no. 1 (1999): 43; K. McCollum, “Web site features motion pictures from the Spanish-American War,” The Chronicle of Higher Education 44 no. 31 (1998): 36; M. S. Newmark, “Navigating the Internet for sources in American history,” The History Teacher 30 no. 3 (1997): 283-192; R. H. Pahl, “Ancient Egypt,” The Social Studies 89 no. 2 1998: 91-92; C. F. Risinger, “African Americans, U.S. history, and the Internet,” Social Education 62 no. 6 1996: 354-355; J. P. Shawhan, “The Civil War online: Using the Internet to teach U.S. history,” Learning and Leading with Technology 25 no. 8 (1998): 22-27; P. J. VanFossen, “I found it on the web: Technology resources for teaching elementary economics,” Social Studies and the Young Learner 11 no. 2 (1998): 30-31.
31 David Shenk, Data smog. (San Francisco: Harper Edge, 1997).
32 L. R. Singleton, & J. R. Giese, “Using online primary sources with students,” The Social Studies 90 no. 4 (1999): 148-151.
33 Wilson & Marsh, 1995: 190.
34 S. Rehmel, “That’s a good quote—What’s the source?: Integrating media technology research and presentation skills in a high school social studies class,” The Social Studies 89 no. 5 (1998): 223-226.
35 See Cameron White, “Relevant social studies education: Integrating technology and constructivism,” Journal of Technology and Teacher Education 4 (1) (1996): 69-76; M. L. Rice and Elizabeth K. Wilson, “How technology aids constructivism in the social studies classroom,” The Social Studies 90 (1) (1999): 28-33.
36 William Tally, “Up against authentic history: Helping teachers make the most of primary source materials on-line,” Electronic Learning 16 (2) (1996): 40-41.
37 See Carl Smith, “Can you do serious history on the Web,” Perspectives Online and Edward Ayers, “The pasts and futures of digital history,”
38 See the following for examples of college course that include the authentic student use of digital historical resources. T. J. Brown, “The purposes of course web sites: A case study,” The History Teacher 31 (1) (1997): 62-68; N. Fitch, “History after the web: “Teaching with hypermedia,” The History Teacher 30 (4) (1997): 427-441; E. Zarate, “Cyberspace, Scholarship, and survey courses: A prototype for teaching world history” The History Teacher 32 (1), (1998): 57-65.
39 Robert Townsend, “AHA survey indicates growing acceptance of Internet,” Perspectives Online, February 1999, (22 May 2002).
40 Denise A. Trinkle, “History and the computer revolutions: A survey of current practices,” Journal of the Association for History and Computing 2 no. 1 (1999), (22 May 2002).
41 For some example college and university history students work with digital historical resources see Edward Ayers and William Thomas’ course at the University of Virginia, History 403 “Digital History and the American Civil War” http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow2/projects/projects.html; Roy Rosenzweig’s course at George Mason University, History 615 “Clio wired: An introduction to history and new media” http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/rr/f01/cw/samples.html; and Peter Wood’s course at Duke University, History 119 “Native American history” http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/native-am/
42 Kelly, 2000.
43 Ibid.
44 Wilson J. Warren, “Using the World Wide Web for primary source research in high school history classes,” Journal of the Association for History and Computing 2 no. 2 (2000), (22 May 2002).
45 Anne Wynne, “History instruction and the Internet: A literature review,” in History.edu: Essays on teaching with technology. ed. D. A. Trinkle and S. A. Merriman, (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2001),25-37.
46 Ibid
47 Ibid
48 David Trask, “Did Sans-culottes wear Nikes? The impact of electronic media on the understanding and teaching of history.” Paper delivered at the annual conference of the American Historical Association, Chicago, 2000 (22 May 2002).
49 Ibid.