Virtual Worlds for History

John BonnettMcMaster UniversityNovember 8, 2012

Why am I – a Historian -- doing this?….

• Being a Grad Student in the 1990s

• The Topographic Revolution

•These instruments will have a bearing on how we express, analyze and teach content

Pedagogy

•Different Expressive Forms have Different Capacities

•The Gershwin School of Historiography

•The Fundamental Relationship between Model and Referent

Pedagogy

•The 3D Virtual Building

•One, provides more opportunities for students to reconstruct the past themselves – deepen understanding nature of historical reconstructions via

•Source translation

•Model construction

Pedagogy

•Two, use visual forms of representation, and limit them to three…

Photographs

Fire Insurance Maps

Pedagogy

•Three, provide a concrete referent as opposed to an abstract historical process – use buildings

•Through these measures, it is possible to:

•Visually demonstrate challenges historians face when reconstructing the past

•Visually demonstrate that historical models cannot be identified with historical objects

•There are always things historians will get wrong

•There are always things that they will not know

James Hope, Stationer, Ottawa, 1878

Pedagogy

•Insights become clear as students go through process of translating information from sources into numeric information prior to model construction

•With maps, process of translation effected through

•Observation

•Direct Measurement

•Inference from Two or More Sources

Pedagogy

•Insights become clear as students go through process of translating information from sources into numeric information prior to model construction

•With maps, process of translation effected through

•Observation

•Direct Measurement

•Inference from Two or More Sources

Pedagogy

•Insights become clear as students go through process of translating information from sources into numeric information prior to model construction

•With maps, process of translation effected through

•Observation

•Direct Measurement

•Inference from Two or More Sources

Pedagogy

•With photographs, students isolate a façade of Interestwith photo-editing software such as Adobe Photoshop, and then:

•Distort It

•Determine Scale for x and y axes

•Determine coordinates of objects

Pedagogy

•With photographs, students isolate a façade of Interestwith photo-editing software such as Adobe Photoshop, and then:

•Distort It

•Determine Scale for x and y axes

•Determine coordinates of objects

Pedagogy

•With photographs, students isolate a façade of Interestwith photo-editing software such as Adobe Photoshop, and then:

•Distort It

•Determine Scale for x and y axes

•Determine coordinates of objects

Pedagogy

•With photographs, students isolate a façade of Interestwith photo-editing software such as Adobe Photoshop, and then:

•Distort It

•Determine Scale for x and y axes

•Determine coordinates of objects

Pedagogy

•During process of translation, the project visually demonstrates five characteristics of primary sources

•Characteristics that mediate and obscure the past

•Characteristics that reveal challenges associated with historical reconstruction

•First Characteristic – Evidence is subject to misinterpretation

Pedagogy

•Second Characteristic – Evidence is incomplete

Pedagogy

•Third Characteristic – Evidence is absent altogether

Pedagogy

•Fourth Characteristic – Evidence can be interpolated

Pedagogy

•Fourth Characteristic – Evidence can be interpolated

Pedagogy

•Fifth Lesson – Students learn historians make guesses, that historical works mediated works

Google Earth

G.I.S.

Virtual World

ABS

HPC

In Brief, In Prospect, New Platforms for History