Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Connecting The Dots Of The Web Revolution - Publishing 2.0

As you may or may not know when I'm not blogging here I'm working away for The Beaver and Kayak magazine in the publishing world. I've been following a series of posts online by Scott Karp who has been examining newspaper and magazine publishing.

What this all has to do with Digital History Education is that Scott just put up a great post about how searching for sources and reading (i.e. learning) is changing online. If you have a chance I would suggest reading the entire post which I think captures in a nut shell what your students probably already know, but can't vocalize in opposition to old learning techniques.


"Nobody has really been able to conceptualize yet just how dramatic the change is in our traditional systems of information, media, publishing, reading, writing, relating ideas, and thinking itself. Nick Carr has come close with his recent writing, and he’s brave enough to try, but he gets too distracted by his nostalgia for a simpler age.

Nick argues that we are losing our ability to “read deeply,” e.g. read a whole book and contemplate it, without “distraction.” The problem is he’s using an antiquated yardstick to measure the quality of thought."

You have to keep reading for all of the details, but suffice it to say things have changed. We can't know how they have changed yet, or what all the results will be, but we still know that change is there.

I have to admit since publishing my little digital history package, which really is the sum of about two years worth or work, I've been searching for where to go next in the digital history world. As you can tell the last few posts have been a bit random.

I know there is more out there, but not sure how much more can be done from here. Will have to spend the next few months developing Digital History 2.0.


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