http://www.historyofinformation.com
The visitor to the website can choose either an era (from 2,500,000 BCE to 2013) or one of 89 themes (ranging alphabetically from Accounting/Business Machines to Writing/Paleography/Calligraphy). The thematic areas include business, technology, engineering, arts & culture, humanities, popular culture, etc.
I had my students scan the themes and choose one to focus on. They chose Computer/Internet culture. The time span of this theme is from 1305 to November 2013. I told them to look for "firsts" in this area that interest them. For the following lesson they had to prepare a short summary of the information they found, to present to the rest of the class. The texts for each entry range from extremely short (a couple of sentences) to much longer (a few paragraphs); but are easy enough for an intermediate group to read.
The information that the class found very interesting was from the entry, First use of "bug" in the context of computing (September 9, 1945). They were surprised that this term was so "old" in this usage, and had not realized that its origin was so literal. The entry reads:
"Grace Hopper, testing Aiken's Harvard Mark II Relay Calculator, found that a large dead moth, trapped between points at Relay #70, Panel F, caused the relay to fail. She removed the bug and entered the dead insect into a log book with the note, 'First actual case of bug being found.' This was the first use of the term 'bug' within the context of computing, and also perhaps the origin of the concept of 'debugging' within the context of computing."
Other topics the students found interesting:
- The @ in Email (March 1971)
- The invention of the word "internet" (circa 1973)
It's hard to imagine any student or group that wouldn't find something interesting on this site! So it lends itself to many classroom activities using any or all ofl the language skills.
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