Overview of Connexions and TIMEA

What is Connexions?

Connexions is an online repository and set of software tools for collaboratively developing, freely sharing, and quickly publishing educational content. The Content Commons contains educational modules that can be grouped together into larger courses. You may freely use and reuse content under the Creative Commons "attribution" license, which requires only that you cite the source. By making all content open, Connexions encourages collaboration and community-building, as scholars work together to create and use educational resources. Whereas a traditional textbook presents ideas in a fixed sequence, typically from a single discipline, Connexions allows instructors to break knowledge up into “chunks” that can be rearranged. Modules can contain links to related concepts both inside and outside of the Connexions environment, enabling students to see the relationship among ideas. Instructors can create their own custom courses drawing from the Connexions Content Commons.

Connexions advances three core principles:

1) “Content should be modular and non-linear”

We learn by building on what we already know, linking together old and new knowledge. Therefore Connexions’ modules focus on a key concept and can be organized in different ways, illustrating the relationships among ideas.

2) “Sharing is good”

Connexions enables authors to share their work and receive attribution for it by adopting the Creative Commons open-content licenses. Connexions is built on Open Source technologies and uses XML to ensure that content can be exchanged and used on different platforms.

3) “ Collaboration is encouraged”

Through its workgroup and communication tools, Connexions makes it easy for people to author modules jointly, suggest edits, or adapt modules for their own purposes.

Connexions serves three categories of users:

Connexions has an international audience of over one million people from more than 150 countries. As of August, 2006, Connexions contains over 3000 modules and 170 courses covering topics from music to computer science to history. The TIMEA community in Connexions has contributed over 25 modules and has built 5 courses covering topics such as conducting historical research and analyzing visual culture.

For more information about Connexions, see http://cnx.org

What is TIMEA?

The Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA) is a digital archive that focuses on Western interactions with the Middle East, particularly travel to Egypt during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. TIMEA brings together:

Through TIMEA’s research and teaching modules, we are pursuing two related goals:

1) To improve research skills and information literacy by exploring how to conduct research, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. We use materials in the TIMEA archive as case studies to examine topics such as conducting library research projects and investigating material culture.

2) To build understanding of TIMEA resources through topics such as the history of the satirical Egyptian Red Book, the cultural significance of stereographs, and identifying and analyzing the features of the “Souvenir of Egypt,” a decorative silk.

We encourage you to join TIMEA’s efforts. To provide a framework for collaboration, TIMEA has established an online community in Connexions. This set of web pages contains a forum for discussing ongoing efforts, a list of TIMEA content, a description of current activities, and information about TIMEA’s objectives and approach.

There are many ways that you can contribute:

Among the topics covered by TIMEA modules in Connexions are:

History through the Stereoscope: Stereoscopy and Virtual Travel

 Building up One Empire while Tearing Down Another: Scholars, Missionaries and Spies in the Ottoman Middle East

 Placing History: Introducing Geographic Information Systems in the Context of Current Humanities Research

TIMEA GIS Map Interface Tools

 Understanding Material Culture: Deciphering the Imagery of the "Souvenir of Egypt"

 Studying Political Satire: "The Egyptian Red Book"

 Conducting Historical Research: The Case of "Oriental Cairo"

Conducting Research with the British Parliamentary Papers

TIMEA is funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Computer and Information Technology Institute (CITI). Please email timea@rice.edu with any questions.