ly incomplete, one can already begun to discern the outlines of the future. For example, a visit to the home page of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), the Organization of American Historians, or the American Historical Association, will reveal not only extensive information about the ongoing work of these organizations, but also links to many other resources, not a few of which are useful to historians of the Cold War.
The Cold War in the ClassroomNew technologies are also beginning to change the way we teach. E-mail, the oldest of the "new" technologies, allows faculty and students to communicate more frequently and more intensely. Web based discussion groups, both asynchronous and real-time, make it possible to extend the classroom community across time and space, creating (among other things) new opportunities for collaborative learning. The amount and variety of materials available on the Web permits faculty to organize classroom content with unprecedented efficiency. Consider, for example, the 24x7 "electronic" reserve reading room. A brief review of a handful of sites illustrates how these changes are beginning to affect the teaching of Cold War history. For example, Professor Robert Brigham of Vassar College has created an excellent Web site to support his senior seminar The Wars of Vietnam, 1945-1975, which includes a brief overview, primary documents and photographs by Seton Hall professor (and Vietnam veteran) E. Kenneth Hoffman. University of Pennsylvania Professor Al Filreis has created a large and eclectic collection of documents and other materials on the Literature and Culture of the 1950s, one of the relatively few sites to explore the domestic impact of the Cold War. University of Pennsylvania Professor Mark Trachtenberg's Cold War History Web site, designed to supplement to his recent book, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, February 1999), also includes an excellent guide to researching the Cold War. Michael Reese of the Department of History at the University of Washington has created an excellent set of curriculum materials on The Cold War and the Red Scare in Washington State. Designed for high school history and social studies classes, the heart of the site is comprised of some 50 documents relating to the 1948 investigation of "un-American" activities by the Canwell Committee (the state's "little HUAC") and to the University of Washington's 1949 decision to fire three allegedly pro-communist professors. Other fairly typical examples of class Web sites include Richard Immerman's History of U.S. Foreign Policy After the First World War (Temple), Lisa Daley's American Foreign Policy in the Cold War (Syracuse) and Patricia Stein Wrightson's government class on Cold War Dynamics (Georgetown). The recent advent of course templates produced by firms such as Blackboard, Inc and WebCt, which make placing materials online much easier, has accelerated the rush of faculty to the Web. Unfortunately, most of these courses are accessible only to students enrolled in the classes. Thus, institutional and faculty concerns over markets and rights to intellectual property have begun to erode the Web's once radical principle of openness. For my own classes in recent U.S. history at American University, I have created a "dynamic syllabus" that includes links to lecture outlines, bibliographies, campus resources, and information on the Web (see, for example, History 207: The United States since 1945), used Lotus Notes to set up a series of small discussion groups (see Using Lotus Notes), and assigned group projects that require students to research and create their own Web sites (see The Projects). For details, including the principles underlying the course design, see Notes of a Recovering Administrator, an informal talk I gave to a group of faculty colleagues at American University on February 5, 2,000. I cannot report that the results have always been successful. Some groups bonded well, worked hard and surmount