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I’m concerned for those who were left behind: scholars in their late 60’s and older, leaders in their field with valuable research & materials. Alot of these people avoided the digital revolution, muddling along without it because it was too much of a hassle and happened towards the end their careers anyway.

They’re the digital immigrants who came to the New World too late, even to learn the ‘language’.

But these individuals are a gold mind of information because they are (for want of a better word and with great reverence for native cultures) the digital aboriginals. They represent the last generation who experienced first hand what it was like to learn without digital tools. They offer a wealth of experiential knowledge which will help us technologists, developers, pedagogical experts, and so on, to be better attuned to the historical context of learning & scholarship, and to utilize and value their precious experience as we go forward.

But yet…. all we seem to want to do is bring them over to the Promised Digital Land. Instead, I wish we took the time to ask, “Gee what was it like for you? How is it different now? What is being lost, what is changing? Tell us your stories.”

Can we do this before its too late? They’re starting to die off….

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What do digital timelines offer us? We see their potential both as a vehicle for understanding complex events in history as well as a structure to which students can contribute materials and scholarship.  In this way temporal and topical interrelationships are highlighted to make the material more attractive and enlightening.

We’ve had some success with using a publicly viewable timeline to support undergraduate scholarship.  But we’ve also come up against some challenges: What are the processes and standards we should use when publishing student scholarship? What are the optimum visualization tools for our material? Are there several?

Our tool is built to separate presentation (through a Flash applet on the web) from content (stored in XML). We want to learn more about how the content could be used by other tools, or how our visualization tool could be used to display content from other institutions.

And, although we’re psyched about publishing student research (and the corollary benefits and motivators it offers), do we need to distinguish visually between student scholarship and the scholarship of senior researchers in the field?

Thinking towards the future, we want to initiate a conversation on how to network and connect with others doing similar research in other institutions. How can we build a community of scholars and students around digital historical timelines?

Molly, with Elizabeth Wood and Ben Brophy