This week in class, we’re discussing some of the technological developments that change and present new challenges for the field of digital history. The readings this week got me to think about how can we utilize the tools coming out of digital development and digital history initiatives while still maintaining the scholarly and research aspects of the study of history?
What Does it Offer to the Discipline?
A theme echoed in multiple of the readings for this week, like in Blevins’ “Digital History’s Perpetual Future Tense,” and Dr. McClurken’s “Waiting for Web 2.0: Archives and Teaching Undergraduates in a Digital Age,” is that digital history hasn’t actually realized some of its goals beyond things such as creating the tools required to digitize what sources already exist.
Blevins’ article in particular stuck out to me because I’m currently in the process of proposing an alternative project for HIST 485, a course that’s sort of a senior capstone project at UMW. Typically this is done by writing a 30-40 page paper, but I’m currently in contact with the Waterford Foundation about doing a digital exhibit they could host on their website that tells stories about the African American community in the 1860s-70s. I have my list of reasons for proposing my alternative project, and I have confidence I can get it approved by the department, but during the process of writing my proposal, one of the things a professor told me to think about was what is the question I’m asking in this project. I connected this to Blevins’ article beacuse he points out that digital history projects as a whole aren’t really making arguments or bringing new arguments and research to the table. It’s going to challenge me to consider what exactly do I want to try to say about digital history through my project.
Digital History and AI
Taking a look at the AHA’s guidelines for AI in History Education, I felt a bit of a sigh of relief in the sense that I felt some of the thoughts I’ve been having about the use of AI were sort of reflect back to me in this. I think like with many things, there are two extremes to the debate about AI and while I entirely disagree in using it for anything and everything, I do think that we have to come to terms with it’s not going anywhere any time soon. While I respect the stance of absolutely zero use of AI, and I particularly feel as though I hardly ever use it (espcially when compared to some of my peers) in my school work, I can be honest with myself and admit that as a future educator it’s very likely going to be one of my many many responsibilies to teach the next generation how to use AI in an ethical way, and that means having to use and understand it myself.
This sentiment can be seen in section III of the guidelines where it talks about AI literacy and how we can see uses for AI as a collaborator, and I think for me “collaborator” is the key word here. I fear that there are some people out in the world who use AI with their critical thinking caps turned off, and this is where I’m a big no when it comes to AI. It’s important that we learn for ourselves and then role model for younger people how to be critical consumers of AI and that means 1) being able to discern fact from AI generated information and 2) recognizing what can be done using AI and what needs a human hand.
Like many things, AI is constantly changing and evolving, so I think the sentiments expressed in section IV about policies about constantly being open to revising the rules and regulations we give our students is key here. We don’t have all the answers to AI and how to use it. I understand the desire for wanting answers to the unknown, but by trying to put a tight lid on AI, I fear we lose some opportunties to see what we could potentially gain from it.
