Introduction
Say you want to know what is available on the Internet on Canadian
history for use in your classroom. You type "Canadian history"
in the Google search engine, one of the more "intelligent"
search engines, and you get more than 1,100,000 pages. You may want
material in French, so you try "histoire Canada." You "only"
get 280,000 pages! Of course, you then try to be more specific: you
type "Riel Rebellion" and you still get nearly 4,500 pages;
"Confederation" produces no less than 215,000 pages, and
"Louisbourg" a mere 19,000. You are also looking for something
in French on New France, so you type in "Nouvelle-France"
and restrict the search to French-language pages: you get a paltry
25,000 pages. You are not getting anywhere this way. You need help.
"Who are you gonna call?"
The Canadian History Portal (http://www.canadianhistory.ca
or http://www.histoireducanada.ca)
will help you find appropriate material on the Web for use in your
classroom. It offers something you cannot find anywhere else: thoughtful,
thorough descriptions and assessments of Web sites in Canadian history,
written by history specialists and edited by prominent professional
historians. The sites are classified according to chronological period,
region, type of producer, and of course by theme. So you try your
queries there: out of the over 700 sites currently (early September
2001) described in the Portal database, you get only 8 "hits"
when you type "Riel rebellion", but each site reference
comes with a summary description and assessment, keywords under which
the site is indexed, and a hyperlink to the site itself. You can then
see at a glance whether the site contains the sort of material for
which you are looking. Similarly, you get 11 hits on "Confederation,"
2 on Louisbourg, 32 on "New France" and 9 references to
French-language sites on "Nouvelle-France". You soon appreciate
how much of a blessing it is to retrieve less than 50 "hits"
when you do a query!
Why a Canadian History Portal?
The Canadian History Portal is a joint project of the Canadian Historical
Association (CHA) and Chinook Multimedia Inc., an Edmonton-based producer
of digital material in Canadian history that is owned by two professional
historians. It came about out of the concern that as more and more
material on Canadian history appeared on the Web, it would become
increasingly difficult to find and evaluate. While useful for very
specific searches, automated indexing mechanisms, such as Google and
others, are useless for broad, abstract themes and fail to discard
the "chaff." One such automated list, for instance, includes
the electronic phone book "Canada 411" as a Web site on
Canadian history! The CHA and Chinook simultaneously came to the conclusion
that only a team of subject specialists could properly describe and
assess Web resources on Canadian history, much as libraries have their
cataloguing done by professional librarians trained in specific subject
areas.
More broadly, both the CHA and Chinook Multimedia wanted to overcome
the Web's main weakness - the fact that anyone can "publish"
anything on the Web, from the sublime to the ridiculous, and from
the thoughtful to the hate-mongering or the pornographic. We also
wanted to take advantage of the tremendous potential digital technology
offers for learning Canadian history in a concrete, visual, and interactive
manner. Some of this promise was illustrated at the January 1999 McGill
University conference on history teaching, "Giving the Past a
Future." It was at this conference that members of the CHA Council
met with the principals of Chinook Multimedia and agreed that a joint
project would make best use of each group's strength: the CHA could
marshal professional historians across Canada to work on the project,
while Chinook Multimedia offered the scholarly, technical, and administrative
expertise required to carry it out. Building a Canadian History Portal
seemed an appropriate project for the coming Millennium celebrations,
and in May 1999, an application was made to the Millennium Bureau
of Canada for a financial contribution. A favourable response was
obtained in October 1999 and the funds became available in April 2000.
The Portal was officially launched at the annual meeting of the Canadian
Historical Association in May 2001.
The Canadian History Portal's main component is the Web site database,
accessible through the 'Search' button. The database was very carefully
designed to provide a number of access points convenient both to the
specialist and to the neophyte: by theme, by type of producer, by
producer, by period, and by geographical area. For each of these fields,
a bilingual thesaurus was constructed so that queries in French would
retrieve the same material as queries in English. The thesaurus is
based on the National Library of Canada's Canadian Subject Headings
but is expanded to include more specific keywords than are available
in the Canadian Subject Headings, such as "Compagnies franches
de la Marine," or abstract analytical concepts, such as "acculturation,"
that do not appear in the Canadian Subject Headings.
Lists of Web sites to be described were compiled (with the best sites
receiving priority) and site description and indexing was assigned
to the Portal's French- and English-language assistants, all graduate
students in history. Their work is reviewed by Chinook staff and by
the Portal Editorial Board, made up of more than a dozen prominent
Canadian history professionals (historians, archivists, education
specialists). CHA members work with Chinook to translate the annotations
from one language to the other. The result is a reliable, authoritative,
and systematic series of Web site assessments that you can use with
confidence.
Other components of the project
The Canadian History Portal also includes other sections, some of
which are still in the development stage for financial reasons. To
demonstrate the power of Web technology, Chinook is including in the
portal the five narrative history timelines from their CD-ROM publication,
Canada: Confederation to the Present. You scroll through the
timeline with your mouse and click on a particular event to get a
thumbnail description. Or you can select a particular decade for viewing.
The women's history timeline is already available in English with
others (Regional Dynamics, Politics/Economy, Society/Culture, Native
history) to follow in the coming weeks. Eventually, all timelines
will be translated to French.
The History Resources button leads to examples of
history-making using digital resources. The Immigrant Voices
section showcases a particularly efficient navigation structure,
which always provides the user with context; primary sources illustrate
the many themes of Canada's immigration history. The Primary Sources
section will show how documents can be viewed and annotated in electronic
form to lead the reader directly from the historian's account to
the sources used in constructing the account. The Digital Technologies
section will familiarize users with crucial issues related to digital
media as well as providing tips to improve productivity in using
such media. It will include sections on:
Using the Canadian History Portal in the classroom
As resources allow, the Teachers part of the Canadian History Portal
will cater specifically to primary and secondary school teachers,
offering them a careful selection of Web sites suitable for classroom
use, as well as activities and lesson plans that draw on this material.
For now, you can for example make use of the women's history timeline
and have students locate the women's suffrage movement in time, then
have them search the database for "Women." Using the records
retrieved by the query, they should identify which sites are likely
to contain material on the suffrage movement; this procedure is much
more efficient than surfing the Web with search engines and, for the
teacher, more reassuring: the search will not fetch extraneous, offensive,
or unreliable material. Then, if you like, you can have your students
try Google and Copernic (http://www.copernic.com)
to compare results ... but in their spare time!
The Canadian History Portal and You
Would you like to help out with the Portal? We are especially interested
in contributions to the Teachers section of the Portal. We are looking
for qualified volunteers who can help us evaluate sites for age appropriateness
as well as curriculum fit in particular provinces. If you have lesson
plans, web quests, descriptions of successful Web activities you have
used in teaching history/social studies, or other activities or ideas
you want to contribute, please contact webmaster@canadianhistory.ca.