The History e-Learning Project

The History e-Learning Project (HeLP) is a history online learning product developed specifically for primary schools (Key Stage II). Using data from the Great Ormond Street Hospital Patient database (GOSH) and the Kingston Local History Project database (KLHP), supplemented with contextual historical material and visual resources, pupils will be able to reinforce curriculum requirements by looking at the 'Victorians' and comparing how they lived then to how we live now. The project will also encourage children to become familiar with their local/regional environment and to develop their ICT skills.

The Project is being created by Kingston University in partnership with The London Grid for Learning and in consultation with Great Ormond Street Hospital. The LGfL will handle the promotion and dissemination through their safe network services and common learning platform, both in London and nationwide, ensuring that all schools in the country have access to this product.

The Great Ormond Street Hospital Project was conceived to make the hospital's early patient admission registers from 1852-1914 accessible in electronic format to a wide variety of users and contains information on a child's name, age and home address, admission/discharge date, diagnosis, sponsor and outcome of treatment. The Project was funded by the Wellcome Trust.

The Kingston Local History Project is a comprehensive database detailing major aspects of Kingston's economic and social evolution during the second half of the nineteenth century. It contains Census Enumerators Records from 1851 through to 1891, plus Parish and Burial records covering that period. The material includes information on person, age, occupation, address and household.

The first stage of the project takes the form of an information source linking the particular - e.g. the children, their illnesses, their families, their situations, to the general - e.g. source material including Victorian life/childhood - living conditions, occupations, household structures, disease and treatment, morbidity and mortality, etc. A further stage of 'modelling activity' is proposed where named children from the data source will be used to build a hypothetical life scenario, allowing students to make choices based on information where the variables affect the outcome.