VISHISTORY – Interview: Mike Cottam and Phil Holifield

Sep 5, 2009 by michelle-pauli

Mike Cottam, web developer at UCLAN, and Phil Holifield, head of enterprise and knowledge transfer at UCLAN, talk about the impact VISHISTORY could have on history studentsWhat is VISHISTORY and what problems/issues is VISHISTORY tackling?Currently history students display their final project work on large display boards but at the end of term they are taken down and often good work is lost. So the visual history project offers an online means to display and archive this work including audio and video assets, which provides visibility, longevity and reuse of information.How would you like other software developers and users to get involved in what you are doing?The users part we’ve got quite well covered – we have a history tutor on board and will be using this in a module with a second year group. It’s a continuing development. We’ve got quite a good user base at the university to trial this on. We’re looking at interface design for usability, building a repository of assets and there is lots of work going on with that, and quite a lot of work in mapping items as a lot of the projects will be based around geolocation. We’re sharing and gaining ideas.What developer communities have you been involved in and if none, why not?We’re fairly new to this kind of project so we’re just starting to discover them. This event has been very useful for meeting people and getting to know the projects and the whole JISC thing as a whole.What is the coolest or most exciting thing in educational software development?Being able to access learning information much more openly – that’s the key thing: using mobiles and laptops you can access and post information from anywhere. You can watch MIT’s lectures online…so much material out there that you can tap into a massive number of resources.