What I have to contribute this week is a new Google Earth tool, Ancient Rome Reborn. I have a lot to say about it, but you can probably safely skip that part, since it's not about the words this week. For the article review, skip to the bottom. The YouTube movie really says it all:
Check out this great video, also about collaboration on the Web.
I spent many hours in college attempting to read ridiculously above my frustration level in ancient languages, and eventually was rewarded by standing on the plains of Troy with the sea pounding at my back, wondering if I would ever see my home again. The occasional hankering to visit the place again led me to the Perseus Project, based at Tufts University. A team of people with cross-disciplinary skills I cannot imagine have digitized and digitally annotated a huge number of classical texts. The image below is an example of this extraordinary learning tool.
The project has spread and expanded since I first found it. They now have a gallery section with digital exhibits, movies, and stories of athletes and heroes in English. This area is rich with information about the ancient world in very accessible formats. Alas, they have not airbrushed out the male private parts, so use your discretion in presenting this material to your students.
Move over, Perseus. Google has just released Ancient Rome Reborn on Google Earth. Scholars and the demi-god tech people at Google have digitized a representation of Ancient Rome. Imagine having your students do a jigsaw on the gods of Rome, the major civic buildings, daily life, law, etc., and accompany it with a tour on Google Earth! The director of Rome Reborn, Bernard Frischer is also writing about the possibility of including interactive people in the representation.
The release of this project was accompanied by an article by its director, Bernard Frischer. He describes the evolution of the project and the transformation of scholarship in the Humanities in the Information Age. Until recently, scholars have conducted research in very much the same way since research became possible at the Library of Alexandria thousands of years ago. Scholarship and the transmission of knowledge depended upon the efforts of individuals using the process we know and teach: reading widely, synthesizing, and writing. The tools--pen, paper, and printing press--set the limits. With the advent of the Digital Age of computers, the internet, searchable databases, etc., we have almost instantaneous access to much more than a single mind can process in a lifetime. Using keywords and our knowledge of reliable sources, we can quickly narrow a search, make cross-disciplinary connections, or conduct research through databases like the U.S. Census reports. Collaborative software facilitates collaboration by teams. Although print is still very much a part of our lives, it is losing ground quickly to electronic resources.
Although lagging far behind science, the study of the Humanities is being transformed both in method and content. Visual representation has become an increasingly important form of thinking and research. It allows a different type of thinking and investigation, quite standard now in science. The 3D visual representation of Rome has already answered one question hotly debated for years by archaeologists with a quick look, and has answered questions that were not even asked.
The scope of the Rome Reborn project is quite ambitious. Its goal is to create a 3D visual model of the transformation of Rome from its Bronze Age beginnings around 900 B.C.E. to its collapse around 552 C.E. Frischer describes briefly the rigorous scholarly standard used in creating this project.
"It bears all the marks of the Digital Age in which it was started. It is built on a foundation of information technology, the Internet, and collaborative teams doing holistic research. (p.2)"
The project has been relatively closed up to this point, and only one year has been modeled. It is the author's hope and purpose to open the project to qualified contributors and move forward rapidly.
Frischer, Bernard. "The Rome Reborn Project: How Technology is helping us to study history." November 10, 2008. Rome Reborn Project. Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. The University of Virginia. http://www.romereborn.virginia.edu/rome_reborn_2_documents/papers/Frischer_OpEd_final2.pdf