Twitter in the Classroom

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Many people use Twitter for personal social/professional pursuits: finding links, having communication with a broad audience, self-promoting your blog on making history relevant (“follow us,” we cry). But you can use twitter in the classroom to create a sense of community, facilitate communication out of class, and hopefully open students’ eyes to the enormity of the world and the role that digital communication plays in ongoing events. As a long-term skeptic about the utility of twitter – and somebody who continues to avoid Facebook – I hope to reach the digital skeptic here.

When I first heard of Twitter in mid-to-late 2006, it sounded inane. 140 characters seemed restrictive for text (SMS) messaging, let alone as a means to communicate over the internet. We have e-mail, I probably snidely dismissed, and then went back to predicting the eminent end of Facebook. It wasn’t really until 2009 that I realized I had been wrong. Continue reading →

Nature’s Past Canadian Environmental History Podcast

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Book Cover

By Sean Kheraj

Podcasts are yet another digital medium for historians to reach new audiences and communicate their research findings. Elisabeth Grant at AHA Today recently surveyed some of the history podcasts available online today. Since 2008, the Network in Canadian History & Environment has produced a monthly audio podcast called Nature’s Past. Through interviews, round-table discussions, and lectures the podcast explores the environmental history research community in Canada.

A new episode of Nature’s Past, the Canadian environmental history podcast, is now available for download. This month, we take a look at the 1918-1919 influenza epidemic and its impact on Winnipeg. Continue reading →

Quite the World, Isn’t It? Why Wisconsin Matters to All of Us

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Cover of the June 1914 issue of The Masses by John French Sloan, depicting the Ludlow Massacre

By Scott Martelle

The unfolding of the absurd events in Wisconsin hasn’t had the same drama as the revolutions sweeping across North Africa, but it could have a longer-lasting effect on America’s (growing) working and (shrinking) middle classes. Below is an op-ed I wrote last week but couldn’t find a home for. It still deserves an airing, I think:

It’s one thing for a political leader to take a principled stance against the power of public employee unions in state and local politics. It’s another thing entirely when you threaten to unleash a military force against them. And in raising the specter of calling out the National Guard in a possible showdown with public employees in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker has touched one of the most painful scars in American labor history.

No wonder union supporters have reacted with so much anger. Continue reading →

March 10th Public Lecture: “A Brief History of Canadian Utopias: Is There a Canadian Utopian Tradition?”

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A reminder to our readers that you are all invited to the inaugural lecture in the Mississauga Library System’s ‘History Minds’ series, co-hosted with ActiveHistory.ca. The first talk will be on Thursday, March 10th at 7:30PM in Classroom 3 at the Mississauga Central Library (see below the cut for directions).

“A Brief History of Canadian Utopias:  Is There a Canadian Utopian Tradition?”
 With Professor Colin M. Coates.

Since the arrival of European settlers, various ethnic, religious and political groups have attempted to establish self-consciously utopian communities in different parts of the country.  This talk examines some examples of these utopian communities as well as some of the literary expressions of utopian literature related to Canada.  It assesses the range and coherence of utopian thought in Canada from the 17th century to the late 20th century. Continue reading →

Want to Write With Us? We’re Looking for More Bloggers!

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The ActiveHistory.ca team is looking for more contributors for our collaborative blog on how history and historians actively engage communities and contribute to current debates.  This blog has a growing readership – last month we had nearly 4,000 distinct visitors – and it provides potential contributors the opportunity to reach a wider audience. If you’re interested in contributing, please read more to find out what we’re looking for! Continue reading →

Call for Papers – History on the Grand: People and Place, Local and Public History Symposium

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The City of Cambridge Archives Board invites you to join them on Saturday October 22, 2011 for History on the Grand, a one day local history symposium being held at Cambridge’s City Hall in Downtown Cambridge Ontario. Continue reading →

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

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Today, we feature 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. Please read the full review HERE.

As always, if you’re interested in reviewing a book for ActiveHistory.ca please send us an email at info (at) activehistory.ca.

Step by Step: Zotero

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This is part of the ongoing ‘step-by-step‘ series which aims to guide users through online research tools and teaching aids. For Monday, stay tuned to a discussion about Twitter in the classroom.

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. The explicit inspiration for this comes from William Turkel’s ‘Going Digital in Two Hours,’ a fantastic workshop that he ran for York University’s Graduate Programme in History last year. Kudos to him!

Why Zotero? In short, it will properly format footnotes/citations (critical if you’re taking courses amongst several disciplines) and keep a research database in the ‘cloud’ (i.e. you can log in on any computer and it’s all there). For graduate students and faculty working on large documents, it can also streamline referencing and make sure that you have perfect footnotes.

Continue reading →

Canadian petition to save the Historical Archives of Hungarian State Security

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By Christopher Adam

The Government of Hungary faced widespread international criticism last December, after it introduced legislation that curtailed press freedoms. The outcry came from all corners of Europe and North America, and Budapest had little choice but to bow to European Union pressure and amend the ominous law. But journalists, political analysts and foreign politicians paid far less attention to an announcement by Bence Rétvári, the secretary of state at the Ministry of Justice, when he noted that his government would enact legislation leading to the removal and possible destruction of original archival documents currently stored at the Historical Archives of Hungarian State Security (ÁBTL).

Continue reading →

The Revolution Will Be Rubbernecked

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Egypt Revolution (edited)..
Picture remix by Emad Raúf; original photograph by Yannis Behrakis of Reuters. Tahrir square, Cairo, Egypt, 29 January 2011.

While the recent protest movements in the Middle East reveal much about the present state of civic community among the people of those nations — Iran, Tunisia, and Egypt (and a growing list of others) — our reaction to them reveals more about ourselves than we should perhaps find flattering.[1]

I will explain.

Consider the Egyptian “revolution” that started with a few demonstrations on 25 January 2011 and snowballed into a national movement that came to demand the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak and his thirty-year reign — and succeeded in securing it by 11 February 2011.[2]

And Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolution” that also ended a presidential career — the twenty-four year rule of President Ben Ali — with Ali’s resignation on 14 January 2011, some few weeks after protests broke out in December 2010.

And, of course, Iran’s “Green Revolution” that raged into 2010, long after the initial fury over electoral fraud during the June 2009 presidential election — now, admittedly, less successful by Egyptian Tunisian standards (since President Ahmadinejad has yet to resign) but presumably still simmering.

These revolutions belong to their respective peoples and nations and no one else; yet, they are being championed as proof of the inevitable march of history — aided by technology — toward progress. Continue reading →