<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"><head><meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"><meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 14 (filtered medium)"><style><!--
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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>Hello everyone,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Recent emails on the Knuth thread have broached the potential of a possible meeting or initiative to try to raise the position of history within computer science, particularly the use of history in regular CS courses.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Back in 2001-2 Bill Aspray raised some NSF money to explore this through the CRA, of which he was then executive director. I was a participant in both workshops, and developed the first version of what evolved into the SIGCIS history of computing resource guide (now in need of a new update). This was a valuable exercise, and has helped to inform what I write in my CACM columns in trying to explain historical thinking and scholarship to a computing audience. I hope that the other participants also found it useful.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The proceedings, <i>Using History to Teach Computer Science and Related Disciplines</i> edited by Akera and Aspray, are at <a href="http://archive.cra.org/reports/using.history.pdf">http://archive.cra.org/reports/using.history.pdf</a>. Bill sent me some spare copies when moving office a few years ago, so if anyone would like one mailed to them just ask. My own chapter “The History of Computing: An Introduction for the Computer Scientist” is now a little out of date, but tried to explain to computer scientists what historical scholarship is and how it is different from computing research. <a href="http://www.tomandmaria.com/tom/Writing/HistoryOfComputingIntro.pdf">http://www.tomandmaria.com/tom/Writing/HistoryOfComputingIntro.pdf</a> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>However, I must confess that the meetings also made me appreciate the scale of the challenge involved, even when dealing with computing educators who care enough about history to want to incorporate it into their teaching. I think the biggest issue is that people with graduate degrees in history and computer scientists with avocational interests in history tend to have a different sense of what the purpose of teaching history is. Historians focus on transferrable skills such as historical styles of thinking, reading of evidence, construction of a well-documented argument, working around contradictory or patchy sources, etc. These can be developed to a large extent independently of the particular topics or readings chosen for a course. In contrast, computer scientists are more likely to think of history in terms of factual material that should be assimilated. In a way that is the unsurprising inverse of the complaint from expert CS educators that most computing education, particularly for children and non-majors, is focused on specific technologies rather than the broader development of computational or algorithmic thinking. It is hard for someone who does not themselves have advanced training and deep immersion in a field to convey its core values to students.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Any future effort would do well to start with the Aspray & Akera volume as a starting point, and also to have realistic aspirations. A sequel might foreground the question of the history of computing, and information history more broadly, in information schools as well as in computer science departments since a number of us find ourselves in iSchools. The prospects for grant support for such a project should be relatively good, at least compared with trying to get a grant to do actual historical research.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Best wishes,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Tom<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>