I remember the first time I heard that the history department where I was working on my PhD was going to offer an introductory course called “World History.” Several of us in the TA office had a good chuckle over that one…After all it was hard enough to teach the first or second half of…
When Students Assess Scholars
What happens when students assess the work of scholars in a public, i.e. online, forum? To what degree to student assessments have an impact on professional reputations, on promotion decisions, or on resource allocations? I’ve been mulling this question over for the past week because about a week ago I received a somewhat testy email…
History Collages and Image Mining
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about how students can begin to sort through the huge databases of historical images now available online. Image mining is still in its infancy, although already we are starting to see some interesting work being done in the field. This work promise to eventually let us do…
Really? Really, Really?
How many “reallys” does it take Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales to describe how he feels about Edward Owens? Three. In an interview on a recent edition of the podcast Tech Therapy, Wales (who admitted up front he hadn’t heard of the work my students had done), said, “Things like that really, really, really annoy me.”…