(Chairs: David BIBBY, Germany / Benno RIDDERHOF, The Netherlands )
The teaching of modern technologies (it-education) for archeology and cultural heritage management has for a long time been taken for granted. In this day and age computers and their applications are considered as natural as food and drink. Yet, as with all things, modern technologies in archaeology and cultural heritage start with learning the basics. What basics?
When we look closer we see that modern technologies-teaching programs are much less self evident than we may have thought. No international conferences are dedicated to this teaching, neither is there much mention of it at the established international computer archaeology conferences (Vienna, CAA). There is no consensus about the needs and there are no guidelines. Information technology for archaeology and cultural heritage as an expertise in its own right is hardly recognized. One can graduate internationally with a degree in a wide variety of specialized archaeological subjects, but not in it-archaeology. Yet we all want to work with the programs and the applications or at least confer with competent specialists in that field who will be able to aid us effectively. And we hope that the next generation will be able to do it better and faster. But what are the teaching institutions doing to make this happen? It is more likely that students and young professionals will have to “sort it out for themselves” even though or perhaps because they, at best, receive inadequate crash courses focusing on bare-bones using – and not quite understanding, rather than adequate it-education. Many people complain about the lack of a comprehensive and appropriate knowledge of it-techniques appropriate to archaeology and cultural heritage management – knowledge today often considered to be a prerequisite for a successful job-application and stated as such in job advertisements.
This session is one of exchange of information, clarification and criticism regarding basic it-education. We invite people to submit papers on such subjects as their own experiences – successful or unsuccessful – on it-teaching for archaeology and cultural heritage management, opinions on whether or not it-education should be part of the official curriculum, what needs to be thought of? What are the problems in it-education? Are the problems solvable? In fact anything at all related to this under-exposed but immensely important subject.