Revolutions in Communication is primarily intended as a main textbook for communications students who need to understand history. However, it may also be used in any American or European history class as a supplementary textbook. It may also be useful in introductory courses for communication, information science and computer science majors.
Information about desk copies and class adoptions is available from Bloomsbury publishers.
Facilitating pedagogy
Instructors who adopt Revolutions in Communication for their history classes will be able to access quiz and test banks in MS Word and Desire to Learn formats by emailing Bill Kovarik (bill.kovarik at gmail.com) :
Lecture and guest speaker availability
Bill Kovarik is available for guest lectures, especially for instructors who adopt Revolutions in Communication for their courses. Since few history teachers (including the author) have the resources to fund travel, we can take advantage of new media and use Skype or other video-to-video links.
Also, it might be useful to list other instructors who have expertise in a particular phase of media history for Skype lecture exchanges. Possibly the AJHA / AEJMC Media History Exchange project is the best site for listing these resources, but they could also be listed here. Contact the Bill Kovarik for ideas about this.
Additional notes
The idea behind the combination book and web site was inspired by Vannevar Bush, who described the uses of a communications network in his famous 1946 “Memex” article.
… The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only on the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch. There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master [teacher] becomes, not only his additions to the world’s record, but for his disciples, the entire scaffolding by which they were erected.
One of the problems with teaching media history is that the structure of existing books tends to be heavily skewed toward transmitting the values of the media professions (particularly journalism) in one nation. The idea of this book and web site is to provide a larger scaffolding in order to provide structure for new paths through the common record.
About teaching history
Washington Post has a great article by Marion Brandy called The Right Way to Teach History, Sept. 25, 2013