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Digital Humanities is all about creating “. . . new ways of thinking about how academic work might be done in the coming years.”

Kathleen Fitzptrick

A few short weeks ago I had no idea that Digital Humanities (DH) was its own field of study. In fact, I’d never heard the term before. As a high school English teacher, I’d watched as texts and other teaching resources found their way to the Internet over the last fifteen years. I had no idea who was putting them there, or how. All I knew was that it became increasingly easy to locate lesson materials and connect them using more and more sophisticated tools. The entire world and all its history of literature, art, music, and philosophy came together and were at my disposal to broaden the scope of what students could learn.

With these resources cam new ways to conduct research. 3X5 index cards and hours spent in the library combing through its limited supply of printed texts were replaced by search engines and curating complete texts to the cloud. The entire world’s texts were now at students’ fingertips, instantly available to read, cross-reference, and compare with diverse points of view from other texts. Hyperlinks, search filters, wikis, and online publishing led to new and avenues for dynamic sharing and collaboration.

And the teaching resources! Images of primary documents, original artwork and maps, video and audio files, complete biographies and pictures of authors and places where they lived and wrote. These evolved into mapquests and webquests and students curating diverse artifacts to paint interactive presentations representing their learning and their unique interpretation of texts.

All this and much, much more seemed to happen overnight. Teachers couldn’t keep up, and almost every day someone shared a new tool we could integrate into lesson plans and student driven projects. Many of us were excited by the possibilities and experimented on our own, attended workshops, and worked to incorporate as much technology-driven learning as we could handle. Technology standards were added to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). Testing began to move online.

The K-12 school system is not even the focus. Higher education and scholarship was where the real DH has really made its mark. And the ingenuity and hard work started well before most people’s lives began to change. I am just beginning to learn what Digital Humanities is all about, just beginning to learn what is and is not included in the discipline (apparently there is some debate concerning “makers” who code the programs and “interpreters” who use them to study the humanities in new ways). Already though, as a teacher who has experienced the proliferation of digital technologies in education and the fantastic impact they have on learning, I know DH is possibly the most important work being done in scholarship for scholarship. I can’t wait to understand more!