INTERAKTIVITET OG HISTORIEBEVIDSTHED - DEN DIGITALE HISTORIEFORMIDLINGS DIDAKTISKE POTENTIALER

Resumé

 INTERACTIVITY AND HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS. THE DIDACTIC POTENTIALS OF DIGITAL HISTORY RESOURCES | This article examines the interactive and participatory potentials of digital web resources such as the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Danish history web pages www.danmarkshistorien.dk and www.kulturhistorier.dk, which are both designed as didactic tools for grammar and high school teaching. I argue that digital web resources can be used to engage students and users in authentic collaborative learning activities and facilitate an interactive engagement with the past. Our sense of the past has – at least since Gutenberg – been dependent on mediated symbolic forms: Books, Radio, TV, Newspapers and, recently, the Internet. The question is if different media shape our appropriation of history in different ways. My argument is that new digital Internet based history platforms can play an important role in sharpening our sense of historical consciousness since they require an active and creative contribution from the interpreter when creating a historical narrative. An interactive engagement with the past facilitated through digital and online resources focuses on history as a lived experience. It is linked to an increased awareness of historicity and identity and thereby challenges traditional historiographical views of history as a reconstruction of the past.