Online Contribution Reflection

In the words of Tamwar Lewin “in a digital future, textbooks are history.”¹ Websites such as Blogspot and Twitter are essential media tools that enable historians to freely share their ideas to a worldwide audience over the internet. They have also been essential tools in the undertaking of my ‘Digital History’ module. Blogspot has given me a platform to voice my musings on certain subjects and alongside this Twitter has allowed me to ‘tweet’ to my followers whenever I have updated my blog. Twitter has also been effective in keeping up to date with any advances within the ‘Digital History’ community both inside and outside the class. With each person on the course starting a blog we were able to comment on each other’s blog posts and voice our own views.

Prior to week one of my ‘Digital History’ course I had never even written in a diary, let alone a blog. Writing on Blogspot has not only enhanced my writing and knowledge of digital history but has also changed the nature of my writing in academic essays. By writing on Blogspot I have begun to push the boundaries of artistic license in my academic essays. For example, as Blogspot is available to the public I have had to take into account the readability of my writing and I feel that this has improved throughout the module. To some extent I have also incorporated some of the skills of “blogging” into my dissertation. When faced with a difficult theory to explain in the opening chapter of my dissertation I was able to break the theory down and describe it in a way that would be engaging and easy to understand to any person who read it. Reading history on blogs and Twitter has arguably been much more accessible, insightful, and more engaging than any journal article or book.


^{1. T. Lewin, ‘In a digital future, textbooks are history” Published in New York Times, August 8 2009, found on http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/education/09textbook.html?pagewanted=all accessed 24 April 2012 ↩}