This Week in History

This is Sherston’s latest offering in their usual triple format and packed in a hard-wearing video case. I especially like the thin plastic and card CD-ROM cases that Sherston use. They take up much less room than the hard crystal CD cases used by everyone else, and are lighter for posting too.

The program has been put together to meet the requirements of unit 6A of the QCA’s scheme of work for IT. Nevertheless, it would be suitable for all kinds of general history or humanities work, both in Primary and lower Secondary schools. It might also be a very useful starting point and stimulus for teachers and student teachers themselves in planning a scheme of history work for their own teaching. The overall artistic design of the program is functional rather than aesthetic. I am bound to say it comes across more as a vehicle for clipart than any kind of threat to Encarta.

The CD contains nine topics, but the most intriguing aspect is the calendar. When you choose this option, you get a picture of a wall calendar with your current weekdate outlined in red, and two or three events on a list of things that happened in history during that week. By clicking on the description, you are taken immediately to a page with details and clipart etc, for the event. So, for example, when I reviewed this CD on April 24th, I had a choice of the 1971 Space Station being launched, or Shakespeare’s birthday in 1564.

It is possible to save out each illustration separately, and to save the text as a textfile. Thus it would be very simple for pupils to put together their own multimedia applications, say in Multimedia Textease, using the readymade pictures and text. Teachers would, of course, ensure that they both edited the text and chose other pictures as well, in order not to be entirely derivative. However, for pupils with limited talents, this could give them a lot of confidence to get started on something more creative later.

As an approach to history, the CD is both arbitrary and eclectic. I tried to look up a number of things that I wanted to find out and they were not there. However, I admit that this is inevitable with such a limited production. Each page has tabs labelled Clip Art, Events, Topics, Calendar and Index. A good way to start browsing is to use the Index tab which brings up 13 subjects at a time. There is a total of 507 subjects in alphabetical order although, to be fair, some are in there more than once under different linked subjects. Still, it is a goodly resource, and the pictures are up to the usual Sherston Clip Art standard, with many, of course, taken from their own clipart CD collection. A small niggle is that the JPEG photos are smaller and often not as clear as the drawfiles. By dropping them into Textease, they can be stretched, but when photos are available, I believe they should be as large and as clear as possible. Sherston tells me that photo libraries charge around £300 per image, and the price increases with size, so perhaps we should be grateful to have any photos available at all for schools. I noticed though that, in True Blue spirit, Wellington’s JPEG was twice the size of Napoleon’s, hurrah! But then the drawfile of Hitler is so impressive that it puts both to shame.

This Week in History costs £40 plus £3 p&p from Sherston, and this includes site licence.

Christopher Jarman, quilljar@argonet.co.uk