Storea

Latin n., a plaited covering, straw mat, rush mat, rope mat

Demo

How is history 'put together'? How are the stories, and accounts of the past interwoven to form a representation of the past? What kinds of decisions do historians and historical scholars make on a regular basis that shape our views of the past?

Storea is meant to help students think through the problems of choice and prioritization in understanding the past, and how time and narrative relate. By working together in a shared environment, users select historical events (what is an 'event' anyways?!) that are meaningful to their timelines, and can see their work in relation to those of their colleages. Historical narrative and accounts emerge as the plaiting or interweaving of various voices and points of views, decisions that each user has made to help build a representation of the past based on historical evidence and research.

Storea was prototyped in 2013, and is beta testing for Fall 2014. It uses the TimelineJS coupled with a custom MySQL backend for handling multi-calendrical and queryable event data for multiple timelines.

Storea leverages a long tradition of using timelines to map out historical events and interactions. For some thoughts on timelines, see the Prezi below which traces some of the issues Storea wrestles with.

Storea is built on a fairly simple, and easy to implement, MAMP stack. In addition to Php, tt uses the TimelineJS coupled with a custom MySQL backend for handling multi-calendrical and queryable event data for multiple timelines. Behind the scenes, the Storea also provides for basic course-management integration with student lists, marking and admin sections for instructors, and a guide for students on how the tool handles core datatypes which make up events - people and organizations (agents), places, and references (evidence etc).

Prezentations