Active History

Is it time for the dinosaurs to go extinct? A response to “A Brief History of the Laptop Ban”

August 7, 2014 4 Comments

By Gregory Kennedy

Mark Garlick, “The Dinosaur Extinction Event”

Last week, as I was sitting down to write my regular contribution to ActiveHistory.ca, Sean Kheraj’s brief history of banning laptops in the classroom was published. It really struck a chord. I had been planning to write yet another piece about the commemoration of the First World War and how historians have a unique opportunity to be leaders in a national narrative. But this question about laptops, and their place in the classroom, struck me as a fundamental question for those teaching history in universities. The debate that has developed around this issue is, in my view, not only a proxy for larger questions about what universities are for and the nature of learning, but it also has far broader implications beyond the university classroom.

For those of us interested in history and historical practices, discussion over the place of technology in the classroom points to four issues that regularly affect the culture of teaching and learning history. First, the pace of transformation matters. People fear change. They especially fear change that threatens their reputation or livelihood. Second, change is not benign. The social sciences and humanities are under significant pressure today and technology has been a significant factor eroding its influence. Third, especially for those of us teaching history in universities, the ease with which information can be accessed has changed both the skills and behaviour of not only our students but – increasingly – the demands of our profession. Finally, and relatedly, we need to ask whether a wholesale embrace of teaching digital skills should be a task for the university history classroom. There are definitely areas in which we should integrate technology, but are we equipped to teach these skills well? And are the students adequately prepared to receive this teaching? Continue reading →

New Paper: Travel and Access to Abortion

August 6, 2014 No Comments

With the Abortion: The Unfinished Revolution Conference beginning tomorrow, ActiveHistory.ca is proud to publish “Travel and Access to Abortion,” a paper written collectively by Nancy Janovicek, Christabelle Sethna, Beth Palmer, and Katrina Ackerman.

On July 18^th, the Morgentaler Clinic in Fredericton performed its last abortion. Without government funding, and the generous support of Dr. Henry Morgentaler, the clinic is no longer sustainable financially. The closure of this clinic is a reminder that although abortion is legal in Canada, there are still significant disparities in timely access to abortion services. The closure of the clinic is part of a long history of the undermining of women’s access to abortion services at the local level before and after the legalization of abortion in 1969 and the decriminalization of abortion in 1988. The lack of access at the local level has a major impact on access to abortion services in much wider contexts because women have tended to travel to other jurisdictions for pregnancy termination. Travel is one of the main barriers to access to abortion. Yet travel is often the only way women can access abortion services. In this essay, we use four responses drawn from an article we published in Labour/Le Travail that examines Canadian women’s transnational travel to access abortion services as well as their attempts to defend access in their home communities. [read more]

In addition to our group blog, ActiveHistory.ca strives to provide timely, well-written and researched papers on a variety of history-related topics. If you have a paper that resonates well with our mandate please consider submitting it to us. For more information visit our Papers Section or contact papers@activehistory.ca. All of our papers are peer reviewed to ensure that they are accurate and up-to-date.

Call for Blog Posts – Canada’s First World War: A Centennial Series on ActiveHistory.ca

August 4, 2014 66 Comments

Harold H. Piffard, His Constant Companion. Originally appeared in Canada in Khaki, no. 2 (London: The Pictorial Newspaper Co. for the Canadian War Records Office, 1917).

By Sarah Glassford, Christopher Schultz, Nathan Smith, and Jonathan Weier

August 4^th is an important day in the centennial of the First World War. It was on this day a century ago that Britain declared war on Germany, committing Canada to the “Great War” as a British Dominion, confirming its alliance with imperial France and Tsarist Russia, and making enemies of imperial Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The decision was itself a link in the chain-reaction of responses to a conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary that began weeks earlier. The escalating conflict would later draw in the Ottoman Empire, Italy, Japan, China, and the United States, among others. August 4^th was the crucial step towards global war.

The meaning and impact of the war that began in 1914 are still being contested in the media, at academic conferences, by official commemorative projects, and in many other sites. In Canada, we can expect to see the war presented as a foundational narrative of a nation in its infancy maturing and persevering through hardship, but nation-building is only one way to interpret the war’s meaning and impact. ActiveHistory.ca hereby invites blog posts that draw different conclusions about the war’s social and political effects on Canadian society, its legacy in culture, and how these mixed with the problems of demobilization and reconstruction after the war. We especially invite posts that recognize the transnational currents flowing through Canada, the significance of non-national contexts for war experience, and the war’s global dimensions, all of which can tell us important things about local communities, Canada, and the nature of our world.

Since ActiveHistory.ca wishes to contribute informed and engaging work on the war and the centennial, we seek blog-posts that expand perspectives, deepen insights, and challenge assumptions. Our project is Canadian-based, but its outlook is thematically and spatially broad. Our unifying theme of “Canada’s First World War” should be understood to include a multiplicity of experiences and stories, not limited to those having taken place in Canada or involving Canadian actors. Blog post contributors will help complicate, demystify and diversify the history Canada’s First World War. Continue reading →

Podcast – A Scholarly Tribute to Bettina Bradbury: Feminist Historian of the Family: A Roundtable Discussion

August 1, 2014 2 Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

On May 26^th, a group of historians gathered as part of the 2014 Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting to discuss the work of historian Bettina Bradbury.

Chaired by Magda Fahrni (UQAM), the panel featured Dominique Marshall (Carleton), Mary Anne Poutanen (Concordia), Liz Millward (University of Manitoba) and Jarrett Henderson (Mount Royal).

ActiveHistory.ca is pleased to feature a recording of the roundtable.

A Brief History of the Laptop Ban

July 31, 2014 12 Comments

“Laptop Toss” by The B’s

By Sean Kheraj

In recent years, several scholars have expressed a desire to ban laptop computers and smartphones from the classroom. This urge to prohibit the use of computing devices, however, may be a reflection of our own shortcomings as educators. It may also be a future liability for higher education. What are the implications of excluding technologies that have revolutionized information gathering, analysis, and communication from our teaching?

As a historian, I am all too familiar with the sentiments expressed in a recent article on NewYorker.com, “The Case for Banning Laptops in the Classroom,” by mathematics and computer science professor Dan Rockmore. To support his case, Rockmore points to a handful of studies of student performance, comparing students with laptops to students without. For example, he looks at an often-cited 2003 paper in Journal of Computing in Higher Education titled “The Laptop and the Lecture: The Effects of Multitasking in Learning Environments” [PDF], which found that students who multitasked on laptops during a lecture had poor performance on subsequent quizzes. A 2013 study by a team at York University found similar results. According to their conclusions:

We found that participants who multitasked on a laptop during a lecture scored lower on a test compared to those who did not multitask, and participants who were in direct view of a multitasking peer scored lower on a test compared to those who were not. The results demonstrate that multitasking on a laptop poses a significant distraction to both users and fellow students and can be detrimental to comprehension of lecture content.

Some university faculty have since relied on these kinds of studies as scientific evidence that proves that computing devices are detrimental to learning. Their solution? Ban computers from the classroom! Continue reading →

Podcast: Nutritional Research and Human Experimentation at the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School in Historical Context

July 30, 2014 No Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

On September 18, 2013 Ian Mosby delivered an invited lecture at Acadia University and the Millbrook First Nation. Activehistory.ca is pleased to feature a recording of his talk “Nutrition Research and Human Experimentation at the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School in Historical Context.”
Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Forty-Eight: Ian Mosby and History in the Media

July 29, 2014 3 Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Sean Graham

Just over a year ago, Canadian news outlets started to report on nutritional experiments that had been conducted on First Nations kids at Residential Schools. For a couple of weeks the stories continued to appear on the front pages of newspapers and on nightly newscasts across the country. Featured prominently in many of these stories was Ian Mosby, the historian who wrote the article for Social History/Histoire Sociale detailing the experiments that spawned the media frenzy. As I wrote at the time, it was particularly impressive how Ian navigated the media attention. It would have been easy for him to attempt to take centre stage and use the exposure to further his career. Instead, he was steadfast in ensuring that the story remained the focus.

In the year since, Ian has continued to shed light on the experiments and their long-term ramifications. (Check back tomorrow for a podcast of a talk he delivered in the fall at Acadia). As he wrote in his wonderful piece “Of History and Headlines: Reflections of an Accidental Public Historian”, the stories that have emerged in the past year from survivors of these experiments have been powerful and serve as a reminder of the humanity that can occasionally be lost in studying the humanities.

For as much as Ian stayed in the background during the story, however, I was curious to know what exactly the experience was like. After all, it’s not every day that an article you write spawns front page stories across the country. Dealing with the media (I’ve done some radio interviews on my research on the CBC) can be difficult, time consuming, and intimidating. At the same time, however, it can be fun and rewarding.
Continue reading →

Where have all the censuses gone? A Problem with Digital Data

July 28, 2014 6 Comments

By Thomas Peace

This post is a little late in coming, but hopefully it will be useful for those of us working in pre-twentieth century North American history or with online resources. About a year ago, I discovered that one of the most useful reference resources I use, Statistics Canada’s E-Stat tables of the Censuses of Canada, 1665-1871 had been removed from their website. Living in a country where the current federal government has a bit of a history mucking around with censuses and data collection (for good examples see here, here and here), the removal of this resource upset me. Why had I not heard about E-Stat’s impending demise? Where could I retrieve the valuable and accessible data formerly available for download through this website? And (of course) what type of subtle political purpose could be behind the removal of data from Canada’s early censuses?

Stats Can - 2014
Continue reading →

Parental Rights, Reproductive Rights, and Youth’s Sexuality in Alberta, Then and Now

July 25, 2014 No Comments

The Lethbridge Birth Control and Information Centre Photo

The Lethbridge Birth Control and Information Centre, 1974. 542 7th Street South, Lethbridge, Alberta. Photo courtesy of the Galt Museum and Archives, 19901067001.

By Karissa Patton, MA Student, University of Lethbridge

The struggle for reproductive rights and justice are often associated with women’s activisms of the past, specifically the activism of the late 1960s, the 1970s, and the 1980s, leading to the 1988 Supreme Court decision that fully decriminalized abortion in Canada.[1] Authors such as Catherine Redfern and Kristine Aune have highlighted a post-feminist argument that claims that feminism does not exist anymore or that feminism is no longer needed. This is based on the premise that we have achieved reproductive justice. With several birth control options widely available, the decriminalization of abortion, and sex education required by provincial curricula, those downplaying the relevance of feminism argue that victory was achieved in the fight for reproductive rights. This argument that we live in a “post feminist society” stems from a lack of understanding, or misunderstanding, of feminism and reproductive rights.[2] The misconception that reproductive rights have been achieved is concerning, as it encourages society to ignore the social barriers and the issues of access that remain prevalent today.

Technological and legal strides have been made since the 1960s and 1970s and yet social, economic and political barriers remain, or are reinvented, based on changing political contexts. Today, we are witnessing important similarities with the 1970s in the social barriers to education about sex, birth control, and abortion. Specifically, with the moral panic around youth’s sexuality, we have seen significant retrenchments in the adult control of sex, birth control, and abortion education.

While I use contemporary examples to illuminate a current need for reproductive rights and justice on a national scale, my research focuses on the history of reproductive rights activism in Southern Alberta during the 1960s and 1970s. Therefore, this essay examines one contemporary and one historical case study of adults’ attempts to control youth’s sexuality via youth’s access to sex education as well as birth control and abortion information. Continue reading →

Abortion: The Unfinished Revolution comes to PEI because of unsafe abortion practices

July 24, 2014 1 Comment

Colleen MacQuarrie, Associate Professor and Chair Psychology Department, UPEI

A surgical abortion is a simple 10-minute procedure that once was available to women on Prince Edward Island. In 1986, a strong anti-choice lobbying group shut down this service and for the past 28 years their actions have continued to deny women access to this health service in PEI.[1] Instead, most island women have traveled to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and further to attain abortion services. Recently, we exposed that despite the ability to offer a more cost effective service in PEI, the province refused to repatriate the service, preferring to keep women in a state of exile as medical refugees.

PEI stands alone in refusing women any provincial access to this service, but that doesn’t mean that abortions don’t take place here. An examination of the provincial billing records over the past 18 years tells the real story. Those records show that without legal abortions on PEI, unsafe abortion practices resulted in up to two illegal and/or failed abortion attempts each year.

Complications followed many of these attempts, which suggests that those undertaken without complications were unreported. This finding has historical precedence; research indicates that when illegal abortions were performed, only those that went wrong came to the attention of medical and legal authorities.[2] In addition to the illegal and failed abortions, between 6 and 80 unspecified abortions were recorded each year. An unspecified abortion is an artifact of the coding used to report on procedures for billing purposes and reflects the coders’ level of knowledge about the cause of the abortion. Among these unspecified abortions there may have been illegal or failed attempted abortions. Continue reading →

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