Educational Design and Function

As Spencer and Ben have discussed, we spent the first part of this semester reviewing the educational sites constructed at CHNM, from the most dated to the most current, in a way that clearly demonstrated the effort that the Center has put into creating useful sites for educators. What this exploration of the Center’s past has also revealed, however, is the purpose of many of the tools we’ve begun to explore in the second half of the semester. The development of the education department has been an evolutionary process, one that not only streamlined the user interfaces and content presentation on these sites, but also led to the creation of tools that make the construction and use of educational sites more accessible to institutions and even individuals who need to design interactive and intelligent experiences for their members and students without access to the resources and resourceful individuals of CHNM.

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Legacies and Sources

There have been some interesting discussions in the last week or so re: maintaining legacy sites and making sure 404 errors aren’t the most common decoration on your site about the history of cats during the French Revolution. The thing is, this problem has been around since…well, since Oregon Trail was the most well-known form of digital history scholarship, and there really isn’t a solution.

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