history

Victorian Conviction, Victorian Tolerance

Sisters of Sinai book jacket
Random House
The Middle Eastern adventures of two remarkable sisters provide an instructive lesson about religious pluralism.
By Kitty Ferguson
Monday, August 9, 2010

“On 13 April 1893, the London Daily News brought an extraordinary story . . .” So begins Janet Soskice’s The Sisters of Sinai, an account of the adventures of Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson, two wealthy, indomitable Victorian widows from Cambridge, England. Twin sisters in their late forties, they set out on a private journey to Mt.

Anglicanism, Catholicism, history, Islam, Jerusalem, tolerance
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History in Real Time

Re: History in Real Time
A new twitter account gives you real-time updates from 200 years ago.
Friday, July 30, 2010
education, history, Twitter

We assume that because Twitter enables us to update the world on our lives in real time that real time is the only time worth tweeting.  What if we used it to send updates from 200 years ago?  That's exactly what @PatriotCast is doing.  For the next eight years, they will be sending real-time updates from the Revolutionary War.  It's a virtual, day-by-day, moment-by-moment reenactment.  If Twitter had been around in 1775, you'd be seeing tweets like, "American militia have taken the lighthouse on Thacher Island. Tory Captain Kirkwood was the caretaker of the lighthouse before the attack."

This is only the beginning of many ways in which new technology can be used to teach history (augmented reality is next up to bat).  And not just history.  I once followed an account that teaches Spanish.  I didn't quite stick with it, but I'm convinced the theory is sound.