I was teaching history at a comprehensive school in East Grinstead when I first discovered the internet. This was a time before the arrival of Google (September, 1998), The Guardian (January, 1999), Wikipedia (January, 2001), Facebook (February, 2004) and Twitter (March, 2006). I decided to create a website that would provide my students with local history materials. I also uploaded material that had previously been published in book form by Spartacus Educational.

The website was launched in September 1997, by sending out free Spartacus Educational mouse-mats to all secondary schools in Britain. I was helped in this venture by obtaining sponsorship from a small local internet provider. To encourage other teachers to provide free materials I helped establish the Association of Teacher Websites.

After we lost our sponsorship we were able to pay for the website from advertising. This is no longer the case. Like other free websites we are struggling to recover our production costs. At the same time, Google has introduced domain-rankings that gives preference to major corporations.

The last time we counted (October, 2019), the Spartacus Educational website contained over 21,036,905 words and 33,196 sources.

Spartacus Educational is committed to producing free content, especially to those countries that find it difficult to purchase books, but we need your help. There are several things you could do for us. (1) Do not use ad-blocker. (2) Share our pages via Twitter, Facebook, etc. (3) Make a small donation or a small monthly subscription.

John Simkin (BA, MA, MPhil)

If you find any mistakes on any of my webpages please send details to: john@spartacus-educational.com

You can follow John Simkin on Twitter, Google+ & Facebook or subscribe to our monthly newsletter

Videos

The Student as Teacher

The Creation of the Spartacus Educational website

History in Education: Interview with John Simkin, 4 June 2009

Other Links

Wikipedia: Spartacus Educational

Academic Dictionary: John Simkin

Facebook