T OWARDS S UPPORTING THE T EACHING OF H ISTORY U SING AN I NTELLIGENT I NFORMATION S YSTEM THAT R ELIES ON THE E LECTRONIC R OAD M ETAPHOR Manolis Wallace 1, Mary Stefanou 2, Kostas Karpouzis 1 and Stefanos Kollias 1 1 Image, Video and Multimedia Systems Laboratory, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Greece 2 Department of History and Archaeology, School of Philosophy, National Kapodistrian University of Athens

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 O UTLINE Goals of the teaching of history Accessible historical sources Digitized data Existing information systems Searching and browsing The electronic road metaphor Correlating historical sources Architecture Electronic road analysis Conclusions

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 T EACHING OF H ISTORY – G OALS - I compare historical facts or phenomena find similarities and differences among them comprehend the credibility of the historical narration it relies on the proper use of the sources approach different kinds of historical sources compare important historical figures based on their actions their total offer

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 T EACHING OF H ISTORY - G OALS - II associate and correlate facts, periods, ideals and civilizations of different periods and areas

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 T EACHING OF H ISTORY - G OALS - III comprehend the correlation of historical elements synchronically diachronically historical facts with contemporary facts All are related to access to large amounts of diverse historical sources

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 T EACHING OF H ISTORY – S OURCES - I Text book Photocopies by the teacher Library - recommended by the teacher Library - own search Electronic libraries Internet

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 T EACHING OF H ISTORY – S OURCES - II Recommended sources Limited numbers of sources Teacher’s bias Simple summarization Own research Huge numbers of sources Selection is critical Prior knowledge is needed to select sources

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 D IGITIZED D ATA Anytime – anyplace access Reusability of resources Cost effective approach Storage Duplication Transport Automated search and retrieval

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 E XISTING I NFORMATION S YSTEMS - I General purpose search engines: google, yahoo, lycos, etc. and encyclopedias Only keyword searches are possible  Knowledge needed to form proper queries Numerous unrelated documents  Knowledge needed to filter results Unreliable sources  Knowledge needed to evaluate sources

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 E XISTING I NFORMATION S YSTEMS - II Topic specific search engines: argos, perseus, etc. and encyclopedias: TLG, PHI, etc. Search based on keywords and metadata  Little knowledge needed to form proper queries Documents are not cross-related  Knowledge needed to locate related sources  Knowledge needed to identify source correlations

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 S EARCHING AND B ROWSING - I Expert users Need to locate specific sources Are able to describe the documents that satisfy their needs Need to perform a search Pupils Need to locate sources about some subject Are not able to describe the documents that are related to their needs Need to browse through documents

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 S EARCHING AND B ROWSING - II Documents are related to terms and metadata Users specify queries System selects matching documents Only used for searching Not applicable for pupils - they cannot search efficiently

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 S EARCHING AND B ROWSING - III Documents are related to terms and metadata Documents are related to each other Similar documents are automatically estimated Knowledge needed to select among similar documents Pupils can utilize this structure if supervised

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 T HE E LECTRONIC R OAD M ETAPHOR - I Documents in a browsing session specify a context Context can be used to filter similar documents Context can be used to propose other documents

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 T HE E LECTRONIC R OAD M ETAPHOR - II Browsing forms a “road” in the document space Only documents in the right “direction” are proposed to the user when browsing This recommendation may substitute teacher’s supervision

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 C ORRELATING H ISTORICAL S OURCES - I Location Time (of content) Time (of creation) Location (of content) Location (of creation) Author Etc.

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 C ORRELATING H ISTORICAL S OURCES - II Historical term (revolution, treaty, etc.) Participating figures and people Conditions and factors Causes and consequences Etc.

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 A RCHITECTURE Digital library Documents Metadata Relations Electronic road analysis module Context Document recommendation module Interfaces, document similarity estimation module, search module

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 E LECTRONIC R OAD A NALYSIS Exact topic of user quest is never known with certainty Fuzzy algebra and fuzzy weighting of features is applied Topic may shift as a result of system feedback Document importance lessens with distance from current document Distance is measured in count of steps in the electronic road

ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece Wednesday, July 9, 2003 C ONCLUSIONS Handling of historical sources is of major for the achievement of the goals of teaching history Access to digitized sources is imperative Pupils do not possess the knowledge / experience to use existing systems unsupervised The electronic road metaphor is proposed to support pupils in browsing historical documents without the need for supervision

T OWARDS S UPPORTING THE T EACHING OF H ISTORY U SING AN I NTELLIGENT I NFORMATION S YSTEM THAT R ELIES ON THE E LECTRONIC R OAD M ETAPHOR Manolis Wallace 1, Mary Stefanou 2, Kostas Karpouzis 1 and Stefanos Kollias 1 1 Image, Video and Multimedia Systems Laboratory, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Greece 2 Faculty of History and Archaeology, School of Philosophy, National Kapodistrian University of Athens