While the struggles to make sure students use appropriate online sources, the benefits of online resources available the internet greater than the negatives. For one, as an educator, there are so many wonderful resources available and ready to go, which is such a time saver. I don’t like to use traditional text books in my class because students don’t really engage with them and they’re horribly expensive. However, there are great online resources such as the teachinghistory.org website. On this site I started with the “Causes of the American Revolution” module. The module was authored by a highly respected scholar in the field and provided both an interpretive essay and primary sources that help to illustrate this point. This module helps us move beyond the “no taxation without representation” cry that is just a single part of these complicated causes. I could have scoured the internet for these sources and explained them in class, but, hey, Rosemarie Zagarri already did. It allows me the time to focus on how to discuss the sources in class and create activities for the students to engage with the sources. It allows me to find content I believe is helpful in getting the students to think historically, and not just memorize facts and dates. In many ways, the content is secondary to the process of getting students to read sources, ask questions, and formulate interpretations.

Students like to read primary sources; they really do. This past spring I watched a group of 13 history majors get super into census data from one county in NH in 1850 and the same county in 1870. They made great observations and asked good questions. These were photocopies of the originals. Then they got the opportunity to search for an online archive that had information on a topic of interest. They had a really good time searching for and reading these sources. Some learned the lesson of why we study foreign languages as what they were interested in was written in Spanish or German. But they all got the experience of looking at primary sources that would not be available to them without the internet or a research budget. They really do enjoy getting to “do” history, and the internet allows students at a small, liberal arts school in upstate NY to do that. Even with the challenges, online resources open a whole new world to students, and to the professors too.