My name is Allison Snobelen. I’m from Thamesville which most people have never heard of. It’s a tiny little town outside of Chatham, and if you haven’t heard of that either, then it’s about halfway between London and Windsor. I’m a third year student at Brock University, and this year my program is actually a bit different. I was previously in Concurrent Education until now my primary teachable being English and my second being history. I decided to make the change from this program to just general English Language and Literature because I want to explore my different options. If I want, I could apply to teacher’s college at Brock still. If not, I would like to explore the potential of teacher’s college in another country, preferably England.
Outside of school, my life pretty much consists of work. This past summer, I worked two full time jobs. The first half of the summer I worked in a field planting tomatoes as well as full time at a pizzeria. When the field work was don’t for the season, I finished the summer working full time for a call centre as well as, still, the pizzeria. Now being back to school, I work at two different places. I am working for a pizza place here as well as the Meridian centre. I enjoy to go to concerts and shows as much as I possibly can. Some of the favourites I have been to were Guns n Roses last tour and Motley Crue. I listen to a wide variety of music but I find that rock bands have more of a dominant stage presence and high energy.
I found an interest in digital history only when selecting courses. As I said before, I have been in history courses since first year and thoroughly enjoy it. When I saw that digital history was offered at a course, it seemed to much different from the typical history courses I have taken. I also want to learn about how technology is incorporated into history and how it has changed the society we live in from a historical standpoint. I didn’t know much about it until I decided to take this course, and I think that is why digital history is so interesting to me. Reading the first selection for the course and seeing the different advantages and disadvantages highlights a lot about the importance of the internet in studying history and using technology as a way to help understand the past.
The selection discusses the interactivity of history through technology and using distal media. I found the most important part was to talk about how the internet and publishing historical works can bring light to less influential historians and many different aspects of history. The example of this given in the text was of a retired history teacher that enjoyed putting his work on the web. This is important because it allows readers to see a different perspective and different explanations of things that happened. I find personally that sometimes it can be very difficult to read certain historical secondary sources because they’re very dry, but something else on the same topic could grab my attention. Also, the internet has tools that allow historians to take a look at things they may not have been able to before. There are so many different tools and programs that can do virtually anything on the internet. Using these system to analyze historical documents can bring new information to light that we may have never seen.
The selection also discusses authenticity however. This is probably the main peril of digital history. Something like wikipedia, where anyone can edit the page, is very dangerous. It could give false historical fact that is then used to draw her incorrect conclusions. Questioning authenticity is important for everything on the internet. Vigorous research should be done on any topic being researched on the web as it is something easily edited.
Overall, I am very excited for this course. There is a lot to be learned about digital history and what it has and can do. There are many aspects that I have not thought about that will be helpful not only in university research papers, but future research that could be done as well.
HIST2P26 