Canada's History Forum 2013: Don't Fear the Technology

I just finished a couple of sessions on the Canada's History Forum 2013 and all I can say is: “Wow, what an experience!” I’ve never tuned into a live conference before so the experience was foreign yet highly enjoyable. Despite watching through a computer screen, I still felt connected to the speakers and the audience and I suspect that the ongoing Twitter conversations helped develop that bond.

Originally I planned to tune into the 2:30 session only but when I checked if the Livestream was working I ended up watching most the forum from the opening remarks.  Shortly after 1:00 p.m. the audience was introduced to the winners of the 2013 Young Citizens Video Project. Students, ages 11-14, were asked to create videos on the history of northern Canada and Aboriginal people. One video that was particularly jarring was by an eleven year old girl who discussed residential schools with a frankness reserved for adults and included an oral history component. The section in the program was called “Are Our Kids Better at This Than We Are?” Based on these videos, I would say they are better than me, maybe not so for some of my colleagues who build entire penitentiaries in their spare time but impressive none the less.

Abandoning chronology to make a point, later in the day at 2:30 pm Daniel Davis and Shawn Graham discussed how technology has changed the way we present history. More importantly, they discussed the significance of being engaged with technology. Shawn Graham stated that he experienced a “glorious failure” by asking students to play Civilization 4 and create a game diary, only to realize that students needed to write their own game to understand the “world view” and logic of the game they were playing. Daniel Davis echoed the necessity of people’s involvement in the creation of technology and doing things first hand when discussing crowd sourcing. One particularly interesting examples that he used was “SmithsonianMobile”, an app that allows visitors to post information about the museum themselves whether it be experiences or events. From Shawn Graham’s and Daniel Davis’ presentations we should be able to see that individuals, young and old, are able to learn more about history through technology by being involved in its production.

The involvement of individuals in the creation of technologically driven history isn’t just a benefit to students and visitors of museums who are trying to learn it but to those individuals who are attempting to reconnect with their heritage. Earlier in the day, keynote speaker Kate Hennessy discussed the role of Aboriginals of the Inuvialuit group helping name and rename artifacts part of the MacFarlane Collection. Traveling up north, Hennessy and the rest of her team discussed with elders of the community what particular artifacts were called and what purpose they had. The pieces were then digitized and made part of an online exhibit where anyone could view the artifacts. Teachers of the North West Territories could access lesson plans to incorporate the exhibit into their curriculum. The inclusion of the Inuvialuit was critical for reconnecting the people with artifacts that had been taken from them and acknowledging the power of the people when developing exhibits.

However, what I enjoyed the most about Hennessy’s presentation was a quote she made.

“People, not technology, change history.”

The focus of the forum today was to discuss how technology is making us change the way we present history and how we teach it. We made it appear as if technology had taken on a physical form and was holding a gun to our heads while telling us to conform to the ever changing twenty first century. We are forgetting that without you or I embracing its ability to reach wider audiences and engage people in the process of history, technology has no purpose. We are the vehicles of change and technology is but a tool to make those changes. Deborah Morrison said earlier in the day that teachers are often behind the times when using technology and they should not be afraid to use it. This goes double for historians. We should not be intimidated by the foreign land of technology but rather we should jump in feet first, get messy, and learn from ourselves and from others. After all, if an eleven year old can produce a video on the trauma of residential schools why can’t we?

Bonus: Another meme because they went over so well last week.

The Benefits of the Inaccurate Videogame

“But it needs to be accurate otherwise people won’t learn anything from it.”

This is a rough quote of myself in an undergrad seminar called “Doing Canadian History”. We were learning about film and everyone in that course, including myself, sat aloft in our ivory towers, looking down our noses at the peasants and their silly little movies where the historical clothing, events, and accents were fabricated and false. Since I uttered that ignorant statement my perspective has changed but there are still historians out there who feel that historical films, television shows, and videogames need to be accurate otherwise they are useless or damaging to the progress of knowledge.

What they don’t realize is a videogame that represents history in a different way is doing exactly what they feared it would stunt. It is often forgotten that videogames are similar to controversial books in the realm of historiography. Adam Chapman in his article “Privileging Form over Content: Analysing Historical Videogames” discusses how a gamer approaches a game is just as important as the content it presents. Specifically, the way the gamer interacts with the game can create an opportunity “for engaging with discourse about the past” [1]. Gamers can interact with the ideas present with the game and make critical decisions based on this engagement. It could be as simple as determining that a fictional character probably did not assassinate the archbishop of Pisa but it is still a critical analysis of a source.

This sort of engagement is crucial for children in particular. Susan Engel notes that children do not need facts and figures stuffed into their heads but rather they need to “develop ways of thinking and behaving that will lead to valuable knowledge and skills later on”[2]. Is that not one of the purposes of studying history? To force people to critically think and be able to use that skill later on in life regardless of the situation? If that rhetorical question is false, pardon me for misinterpreting the point of my undergraduate career and disregard everything I've said thus far. Otherwise I hope you agree when I say that it is a good thing if a videogame is “inaccurate” or represents history in a different way so that these sorts of skills can be nurtured.

However, what I appreciate the most about Chapman’s article is the question of what is considered proper history. Why must we compare a historical video game to a book? They are of a different structure, media, and purpose. It is as if we are comparing apples to oranges or- as Diane Carr states- “…disparaging a map for not being life-size”[3]. As historians and public historians we need to be aware that videogames have their place in educating the public about events and trends in the historical narrative. If we are so concerned about the accuracy of the game- although by now I hope you agree that accuracy is not a necessity- we should become more involved in game development.

It is not as if game developers do not want us there. In fact, they seek people like you and I out. For the third installment of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed a professor at the Université de Montréal by the name of Francois Furstenberg was called into action as a collaborator for the game. He said: “In a class, you can teach 30 students, sometimes 200. With a videogame like this, you have the opportunity of getting tens of millions of people interested in history”[4]. Videogames and other forms of digital gaming should be taken seriously by us historians. For the most part, it is an uncharted land for those in academia and we need to make ourselves viable resources to gaming developers, lest the gravy train rolls out of the station without us.

[1]. Adam Chapman, "Privileging Form over Content: Analyzing Historical Videogames", Journal of Digital Humanities http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-2/privileging-form-over-content-by-adam-chapman/.

[2] Susan Engle, "Playing to Learn", New York Times 1 February 2010.

[3] Diane Carr, "The Trouble with Civilzation," in Videogame, Player, Text ed. T. Krzywinska and B. Atkins (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), endnote 6.

[4] Dominique Nancy "Historian Francois Furstenberg works on the video game Assassin's Creed III" U de M Nouvelles December 10, 2012.

Pinning History: My Experiences with History Pin

In last week’s class we discussed the power of digital photographs and audio clips in history. We were tasked with the assignment of “pinning” historical photographs onto modern maps using the website “History Pin.” The site is a community of shared glimpses into the past with pictures, audio clips, and video. Anything can be pinned to the map and help communities across generations come together and learn about the past.

Last week I was feeling particularly nostalgic and homesick and I decided to focus my interests on Saskatchewan when pinning. First, I wanted to show the construction of the Delta Bessborough in my hometown of Saskatoon. The hotel began construction at the beginning of the Depression and due to the financial downturn of the decade it was several years later that the hotel was official opened. It has become a landmark in Saskatoon’s downtown core and a site for many conferences, music festivals, and weddings since.

I had some issues with pinning the image using street view. First, the street view image of the Bes had a fish-eye filter on it, warping the turrets at the top of the hotel. Second, after I thought I was finished and saved my image I went to check my work and found the image nowhere near the location I was certain I had pinned it. After a little fiddling I was reach a final product I was happy with.

Delta Bessborough 1931

Faded out Historical Image

Despite how handy it is to have the ability to see how a building has changed over the course of its construction, I believe that History Pin is fair more beneficial for monuments, buildings, or locations that no longer exist. I decided to pin the Weyburn, Saskatchewan Mental hospital to the map. Bear with me while I get a little sappy. I grew up in Weyburn and one of the coolest and creepiest places I ever went was the old mental hospital there. While I lived in Weyburn, the mental hospital was converted into a number of things, including an old folks’ home. It was a rich part of Weyburn’s heritage but it was becoming a financial strain. In 2008-09 the massive building was torn down. It broke my heart to see that eerie place knocked to the ground. For the Weyburn Mental Hospital, History Pin provides an opportunity to see what it used to look like in its glory days, if you could call them that.

Pinned Image on the map

Street view of Weyburn Mental Hospital today.

However, was bothered me the most about History Pin was that it relies too heavily upon the street system of Google Maps. You can pin an image out in the middle of a field on the map but you won’t be able to pin it to street view because it is not on a street. This is incredibly limiting when considering military historians could greatly benefit from recreating battle fields on modern day landscapes for people to better understand the terrain.

But, I must remind myself that this isn’t necessarily meant for the academic crowd. It’s intended for the general population to interact with each other, to engage with their personal history and their community’s past. All the things I pinned meant something to me and perhaps they mean something to others as well. This is a prime example of digital history become public history and inspiring the public to become part of making history.

To say the least, I have an infatuation with History Pin now and I suspect I’ll be doing a considerable amount of pinning in the future.