Ian Milligan

The Rise and Fall of Ideas: Having fun with Google N-Grams

May 23, 2011

We need to make sense of large quantities of information in order to do ‘big history’ and provide a context into which we can write our smaller studies. In this post, I’ll tell you what an ngram is, show some cool pictures, and hopefully drive you to have some fun with this.

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May 12th Public Lecture: “Understanding Slavery Past and Present”

May 5, 2011

A reminder to our readers that you are all invited to the final lecture in the Mississauga Library System’s ‘History Minds’ series, co-hosted with ActiveHistory.ca. This talk will be on Thursday, May 12th at 7:30PM in Classroom 3 at the Mississauga Central Library (see below the cut for directions). “Understanding Slavery Past and Present” With [...]

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Using Word Clouds to Quickly See the Political Past

April 11, 2011

This is a demonstration by Ian Milligan of how word clouds can be used to visually display textual documents, with possible applications in the educational field, media field, and elsewhere. It also has lots of pretty pictures.

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Left History Theme Issue on ‘Active History,’ Launching a New Paper

March 17, 2011

ActiveHistory.ca and Left History are delighted to announce the launch of Left History’s theme issue on Active Histories. We are also delighted to launch our sixth short paper on our website, “Disappointment, Nihilism, and Engagement: Some Thoughts on Active History” by York University SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow Stuart Henderson.

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Twitter in the Classroom

March 3, 2011

This post discusses the potential uses of Twitter in the classroom, from the position of somebody who was once a skeptic.

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New Book Review: Gord Barnes on Ken Leyton-Brown’s The Practice of Execution in Canada

February 23, 2011

Today, our sixth book review by somebody from outside of academia of a book written by a professional historian. Amnesty International volunteer, activist and fieldworker Gord Barnes, from Regina, SK, reviews Ken Leyton-Brown’s The Practice of Execution in Canada.

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Step by Step: Zotero

February 22, 2011

In this post, I’ll explain to students how to install Zotero on their home computers. As a teaching assistant, I’ve found this to be the most useful technological skill that I’ve taught undergraduates – many have confirmed this by noting how they now use it.

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Laptops in the Classroom

January 17, 2011

Do laptops have a place in the lecture hall? An ongoing debate has raged over whether they do. I believe that we need to reframe our teaching approach as adult education and adapt to the use of technology.

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Step-by-Step: Looking Up an Ancestor’s First World War Record

November 29, 2010

This is a step-by-step guide to accessing military records both through LAC’s website but also on-site.

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“Come On Over”: Call-In Collaborative History in Northeastern Ontario

October 18, 2010

When up in the Sudbury and Manitoulin areas for a quick research trip in mid-September, driving several hundred kilometres, I became well-acquainted with CBC Sudbury. On Morning North, there was a regular program by two Laurentian University professors conducting research for their upcoming book Come on Over: Northeastern Ontario A-Z. In what sounds like a [...]

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