Many of our students, especially but not exclusively those in professional programs, come to us with little background in or appreciation for the humanities. Perhaps in consequence, they also have little facility with the resources, tools, and techniques of humanistic scholarship. As teachers, our challenge is to guide these outsiders through the codes and practices of an unfamiliar culture, inviting and equipping them to be responsible citizens - or at least congenial neighbors.

All of us in this session, as historians, philosophers, religious scholars, and sociologists, have found digital resources and strategies to be of at least some help in this project. In the process, like our students we too are adapting reluctantly or eagerly, partially or comprehensively, to a world in which virtually all historical thought and knowledge can fit on a device in our pockets; where memory has become almost seamlessly prosthetic, and the skills of discovery and interpretation are more than ever decisive. And like our students we ask how much of this stuff has real value and how much is a waste of our time and energy. Our knowledges and practices are unsettled - we are experimenting, it seems permanently. Variously we blog, wiki, and tweet; construct mind maps; build virtual histories; access digital archives and databases; flip the classroom with video and e-research teams; draft and peer review papers by electronic submission.