Canadian Happenings: New Website and Upcoming
Conference
Mona Gleason, Editor
Get to your Homeroom!
Since 1997, one of the most useful websites for those interested
in the history of children and education in Canada, and in the province
of British Columbia in particular, is The Homeroom –
British Columbia’s History of Education Website (http://www.mala.bc.ca/homeroom/).
The secret to The Homeroom’s success is its appeal as both a
research and teaching resource. This year, the website was re-designed,
given a new style, new structure, and new search engine. Dr. Patrick
Dunae, an historian at Malaspina University College in Nanaimo, British
Columbia, and the designer and keeper of the site, understood that
the “homepage would serve as a reference and assembly point,
in the same way that ‘homerooms’ functioned in traditional
high schools.” The site was launched in 1997, which happened
to correspond to the 125th anniversary of the BC provincial public
school system (1872-1997).
The site offers historians valuable information in broad areas of
interest: topics (people, places, programmes, legislation, and the
teaching profession), resources (comprehensive bibliography and www
resources), schools (public schools, independent schools, and school
administration), post-secondary (materials on colleges, universities,
and adult education), timeline (a chronology of educational milestones
from 1840s to the 1990s), textbooks (searchable database of all books
approved for use in British Columbia public schools from the 1870s
to the end of the 1920s.) The work of students is featured prominently
on the site. This has been a quite deliberate goal for Dunae. According
to him, “whenever possible, I encourage students to take on
research projects that might connect to "our Homeroom."
Students know that only the best essays will be posted to the web
site! They tell me they feel all the more happy with their work if
they see it online. So, instead of writing a traditional essay, submitting
it to your prof, getting a grade and then forgetting about your work
-- students who contribute to the Homeroom are encouraged to polish
and revise their work for a much larger audience. And students report
that they are really gratified to see their work online - from anywhere
in the world!” Is Anybody Out there?
When asked about the “success” of the site, Dunae includes
a number of criteria by which The Homeroom might be judged: the number
of new visitors it attracts, the links it has achieved to other respected
sites and scholarly use, and by the comments from those who make frequent
use of the site.
According to Dunae, “nearly 44,000 new visitors have come
through the front door of the Homeroom in the past few years; and
our site server file indicates that the Homeroom is accessed by literally
hundreds of thousand of visitors each year -- that is, by visitors
who go directly to the Timelines page or some other internal point
within the web site, instead of going "through" the index
page. In that respect, it is successful.” Dunae also measures
the site’s success thus far by its linkages with other sites
and the scholarly input it has received from academics. Dunae is also
mindful of the positive responses from those with a general interest
in the history of schooling in British Columbia from historians, students,
and school administrators. He intends to build on the confidence users
have in the site, particularly in terms of its accuracy and authority
as a vibrant scholarly enterprise. “I want visitors to feel
as confident about material they read on the Homeroom site as they
would in a traditional hard-copy scholarly journal,” Dunae contends.
It is clear that The Homeroom has become one of the most valuable
electronic sources for information about BC educational past. With
Dunae currently planning options for the growth and diversification
of the site, the future promises even bigger and better things.
Upcoming Conference
The 13th Biennial Conference of Canadian History of Education
Association/L’Association Canadienne d’Histoire de l’Éducation
will be held in Calgary, Alberta between October 21-24, 2004. The
theme of this year’s conference is Interdisciplinarity in the
Practice and Theory of Educational Histories. The theme is intended
to encompass paper and panel sessions that discuss the histories of
education from a variety of academic fields, disciplines, methodologies,
comparative perspectives, theories, and arguments. Those interested
in attending the conference can visit the website at http://chea-ache.ucalgary.ca/.