Reading passage 3 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14
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DAY 9 PASSAGE 3
1 READING PASSAGE 3 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14, which are based on Reading Passage3. Digital communication has revolutionised the way we teach and study history as well as virtually all other academic disciplines. Students and teachers have access to huge amounts of electronic resources. Those like myself, studying the early modern period of European history, can now download a quarter of a million relevant, original, printed works published between the invention of printing and the end of the eighteenth century. Many national libraries and historical archives have very helpful, searchable, online catalogues, and historical journals are increasingly available in electronic as well as print formats. All this facilitates learning and research, and reduces the advantages once enjoyed by prestigious and well-funded international universities and centres for historical research. Yet how far has the digital age transformed how the individual historian works? There is a stereotype of the scholar alone in his or her workshop, crafting a publication destined for a bookshop or library. Indeed, this is how many in the profession probably still think of themselves. The solitary researcher searches through an archive or library – even it thisprocess is now made easier by technology – and then compiles the results into a book or article which probably has a severely restricted readership. However, the communication revolution has changed all this. I want to explore the use of two pieces of technology which my colleagues and I are using in a historical research project I am currently involved in, which is examining language in early modern European history. These pieces of technology will undoubtedly have significant implications for future study and research in history - and indeed in most other academic subjects as well. The first is web-based video- conferencing. The software we are using in our protect allows us to link any number of individuals together simultaneously. It is possible for us to bring together for discussions scholars who have a tremendous range of special interests, from historians with different specialities, to literary critics, to political scientists. They may be geographically far-flung. Indeed, our project connects academics in over a dozen institutions. Time zones permitting, there is no obstacle to collaboration with colleagues anywhere in the world, so that conversations, and the sharing of information, ideas and opinions, can occur more regularly. Virtual meetings can be recorded to create an archive of debates that can be viewed or listened to subsequently by others, creating a history, if you will, of a historical research project. This is especially important for future historians trying to validate or replicate the original research. The video links can project presentations, including accompanying slides and other electronic images, and participants at one site can even control a computer at another. In addition to its use in research projects, video-conferencing can encourage interchanges among students from different universities, so that the isolation felt by many, especially PhD students, will probably be reduced if they feel part of a international community, rather than of just one institutional body. Video-conferencing can also allow several universities to combine their scarce resources to present joint classes in minor or simply very specialised 2 subjects (perhaps a seminar on the ancient history of the Vlach people in southeast Europe) and thus keep such subjects alive. The second technology we are employing in our historical project is an extension of the web-based teaching tools that are now common in most universities for the purpose of giving students access to course documentation. This technology is an interactive website which enables an advanced research group like ours to plan activities and share documents, including copies of important original historical documents, and other resources. The website can also use a ‘wiki', which allows multiple users to edit shared documents, whilst significantly also retaining all previous versions. The wiki principle means that texts can be jointly authored, amended and revised. Moreover, it offers a different type of publication because its publishing output is not static; rather it can be altered by authors or even by readers. Of course the use of technology in historical research is not without its problems. Our project has had difficulties with the quality of sound and pictures in video conferencing. Institutional technical support may be required. Conservative scholars may be uncomfortable using the website or video-conferencing and may need more guidance: a set of informal social rules is necessary when discussing issues with people with whom you cannot make direct eye contact! For some, the idea of being recorded or filmed can be disconcerting. Other issues centre on copyright - of the resources and of the intellectual work of participants. Will such work encourage the pirating of primary resources that are currently 'owned' by companies that have invested money in making them available? To whom does the product of a collaboration belong? And who can claim to have had an idea when it emerges from a group discussion? With many scholars working together, how can a level of excellence be maintained? And what of research ideas which are controversial or incorrect or even offensive? Yet the advantages of the new technologies for history and other academic fields surety outweigh any problems and, in any case, their development is probably inevitable. Indeed, the potential of routine technologically aided collaboration in the arts and humanities has barely been explored. But just as Wikipedia took an old idea - the print encyclopedia – and transformed it, so our old methods of research and teaching may well be reshaped by collaborative technologies. Download 98.77 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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