After a week in Digital History, I would define it in my own words as ‘Using digital tools to help better understand and preserve history’. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, but after doing a bit more research and spending two class periods in Digital History, I’m excited at the prospect of learning more. The most interesting idea I’ve seen brought forward, is the idea of copying and transcribing old texts, documents and stories, taking pictures of old artifacts or other ephemera, and digitizing them into online archives so that one day if the original does for some reason disappear, we would still have the information contained. The idea of looking at documents from for example the time of the Roman Empire, and transcribing them into a digital form so we have the knowledge forever sounds like a rewarding career for someone like me. I expect a lot more hands on activities in class going forward, I find myself glad i took my PC to my dorm room instead of just my laptop this semester as it seems I’m going to really be using it a good amount. The only bit of experience I did have with any form of digitization or digital history before joining the class was admiring mapmaking or recreation of historical settings in video games or YouTube videos. I see there’s going to be an entire section dedicated to recreating history in Video Games which is something I’m very excited for as someone who plays a lot of historical video games. A side note is I really do hope to learn more about map making to recreate old historical maps and boundaries, along with podcasting and interviews, which is a big way I consume my history content.
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