Educators Workshop: World War I Centenary: Continuations and Beginnings

Do you teach the First World War in any discipline at at Further or Higher education level? On Thursday 6th September we will be running a workshop to introduce a new digital project with resources for teaching: World War I Centenary: Continuations and Beginnings. 

World War I Centenary: Continuations and Beginnings brings together a range of innovative digital resources intended to reappraise the War in its historical, cultural, social and geographical contexts. The resources include digitised primary sources, e-books, images, interactive maps and simulations, and are organised into cross-disciplinary themes such as medicine, politics, and the topography of the War. At the heart of the site is a showcase of new academic perspectives on the War by leading scholars, presented in blog format so that readers can contribute comments of their own.

A distinctive feature of the resources and commentaries is that they have been licensed as open educational resources, so that they can be used, with or without adaptation, for teaching and learning in both formal and informal contexts.

The website has been developed by the team at the University of Oxford responsible for the acclaimed First World War Poetry Digital Archive and Great War Archive (http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/) and funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) World War One Commemoration Programmes (http://jiscww1.jiscinvolve.org/wp/).

The workshop will explore the usefulness and relevance of the thematic collections for teaching and studying topics related to World War I . It will begin with an introduction to the thematic collections and academic commentaries. You will then investigate the collections yourself, select resources that might enhance your students’ learning and plan how you might use them. Members of the project team will be on hand to help out, and there will be ample opportunity for feedback and discussion.

Your contribution will help us not only to assess the value of the collections in encouraging students to consider different ways of approaching the War, but also to extend our understanding of how academic staff engage with open educational resources.

The workshop will take place at the University of Oxford IT Services, from 10.00am to 4pm on the 6th September 2012. Coffee and lunch will be provided, and reasonable travel expenses will be reimbursed for participants from outside Oxford. Places are limited. Please contact ww1centenary@oucs.ox.ac.uk if you are interested in attending.

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