Clio Wired (History 696)

As usual, the rest of you are ahead of me. I’ll try not to be redundant about the websites, but my perspective is (no surprise) the experience of the ‘stupid user’ or in this case, the general audience. I tried unsuccessfully a couple times on my computer to access the websites with all their bells and whistles, but I got caught in the vicious cycle of “plugin-downloads.” Each time I thought I managed to get all the downloads I needed, the websites or my computer would not comply. To add to this, my husband thought it would be a good idea to switch from Comcast to Verizon DSL because it’s cheaper. So everything slowed down to a crawl, and I finally gave up and went to campus to use the library computer. (We will be switching back very soon!) I have perused each website, but with no audio (and no time), I opted to look at the text only versions.

I looked at each website with the view of effectively presenting the past to a general audience. I agree with the consensus about the Deerfield website being the most effective in portraying history, especially from different perspectives, but I think the History Channel website will appeal to and inform a larger audience. It’s hardly a fair comparison because historychannel is broad, and Deerfield has a smaller slice of history. Kurt and I have just read several books about the Deerfield time period for our Colonial Origins class, including a couple about the Native Americans specifically. As a newly informed historian, I would say the site does an excellent job portraying history from different perspectives as well as provide an excellent teaching tool for practically all levels of education. When Comcast is restored at my house and the plug-in problem resolved, I look forward to returning to the audio/visual version of the site. Even a text only version was informative and entertaining. The History Channel is much larger, and a user should have a specific topic or goal in mind or lots of time on their hands to ‘enter the site.’ They are both fairly accessible and clickable, and I could find the maps or background information I was looking for.

Moving on, the Julia Child website is definitely for Julia fans, and should not be imposed on someone with no interest. (Unless they take Scott’s suggestion and add in some SNL spice) I love to cook, when I’m not grading HIST 120 tests or wandering through websites or reading the book of the week, but I thought the site was boring. Without the audio/visual, it could have been done in book form. I suppose that helps support the Vergo article’s premise of “less clicking, more watching.” Does it effectively portray the past to a general audience? Yes, for an interested audience, it is a wealth of information. I was most frustrated with the historywired website though. It’s just a box of boxes with pictures so small you can hardly appreciate the object – at least I couldn’t click to make them bigger. As a research tool to support other information, the site is useful, but I don’t think it had enough what Steve Dietz would call “telling a story.” I refer to the Deerfield or Who Killed William Robinson sites that challenge the user to explore the website to form their own opinion. The historywired site is definitely object driven. I really enjoyed the Devices of Wonders website (again in text only), but I was looking for the idea of “objects in a larger historical context.” What a great teaching tool though. I would love to have had Devices when I was teaching middle school science. Those types of websites serve a purpose for someone’s historical research, but as a “portrayal of history” they are lacking.