Digital History

1) Top three things you liked about the class structure.

1. Class discussions about history in the digital age. Very interesting!
2. Blogging!
3. Liked learning and using all the options to communicate and work effectively with a group (mainly Google docs!)

2) Top three things you would change about the class structure.

1. More time in class to work with group
2. 10 minute presentations right before the project is due may not be necessary because at that point we didn’t seem to have very much new information to talk about
3. Have a preliminary due date leaving time for corrections to be made not during finals week

3) One or two projects/topics that you think might be good for future iterations of this class to do.

1. Aug Wash.
2. I’ll keep thinking.

4) What advice would you give to future students who take this class?

Don’t be intimidated if you don’t know much about html or how to create a website.  You will learn as you go and it is an incredibly rewarding feeling to see the finished product.  The best part is, you’re not writing just another research paper but compiling data and research that has the potential to be displayed indefinitely and influence an audience.

I was excited to be assigned the topic of Mary Ball Washington because I thought it’d be great if I could tell people more about the lady my university was named after.  I’ll admit, my freshman year I was guilty of thinking that Mary was George’s wife (now I know that was Martha).  No one in my group really knew who she was, which was surprisingly the inspiration we drew upon for our website.  We decided to find out how much knowledge our fellow students and UMW alumni had about Mary by creating a brief survey.  From there, we envisioned a website that would cater to the UMW student population and the Fredericksburg community, because this area of Virginia is where Mary spent most of her life and has the greatest legacy.

I was thrilled to see how our group immediately jumped into the project and worked amazingly well together.  The work was divided into four time periods of Mary’s life so that we could each have a focus.  We also organized the labor for the other elements of the website that include the survey, family tree, video, map and timeline.  We all traveled to some of the historical places of significance in Mary’s life, including Pope’s Creek Plantation and the Mary Washington House.  Everyone contributed in collecting interviews at one point in time, whether for the research or for the video.  Through good communication (including Google docs, Google wave, Facebook, and cell phones) we were effectively able to do research, tackle problems, and turn the WordPress blog into an excellent website.

I feel my group successfully completed all the milestones (sometimes way in advance!) except for one and included all the elements as envisioned except for making the map interactive.  The milestone missed was completing all individual research by March 8.  As we discovered along the way, the sources we had to work with were full of contradictions and contained limited information.  We also hit some snags trying to interview some professors who we felt were knowledgeable about Mary Ball.  Although the research took longer than expected, I don’t think it hindered any production of the website.  In fact, by doing continuous research, we were able to learn more about Mary.  Also, initially we’d planned for an interactive map which would enable the viewer to click on a place from Mary’s life and be connected to one of the four sections we did.  However, after compiling all the research, we saw that making it interactive would only clutter the map and be confusing for designating places such as the Mary Washington House as a link to the Fredericksburg page (where she lived) or the Legacy page (since it’s a historical home you can tour).

Overall, I think our group successfully met the goals set down in our contract and collaborated equally and productively to create an interesting website about Mary Ball Washington.

(Hey Lauren, I saw your mention about this article so I checked it out)

http://news.discovery.com/tech/library-of-congress-twitter.html

Apparently the Library of Congress will soon be archiving twitter posts.

“That Twitter message you just posted about your ham sandwich might now become part of history.”  -As part of the article reads.

Just wondering what people in our class think of this considering we’ve spent the semester talking about what should be digitally archived and such?  Personally, I can see that conversations that may be political discussions/opinions would be interesting to keep in an archive.  But the play by play of someones life is not necessary.  (Maybe I’m biased though seeing as I’ve never even been on twitter and find the idea of updating the world about what you’re thinking pathetic.  For advertising though…that’s fine.)

The final days are here.  Tomorrow the Mary Ball Washington website will be made public.  Come Friday morning, anyone will be able to view our site at the following URL:

http://www.maryballwash.umwblogs.org

I’ve just about  finished editing my Fredericksburg page and we will be running through the site tomorrow as a group to make final corrections (though it will be edited again before due date on Tuesday).  I inserted instructions on both the timeline and survey pages to inform viewers how to manuvere through these sections.  Also, Patrick got the information to show up in our Timeline.  However, our images were showing up in the “description” section so I had to go through and edit those so they’d appear correctly in the “image” section.  Now just trying to figure out the code so the images will be the same size and not overly large.  Finally, we’re waiting for the survey to be put back up (typing text on the page erased it!).  The video should be finished sometime this evening.  Then all our elements will be online!  Keep your eyes open for flyers appearing around campus tomorrow – See how many different survey respondent quotes you can find!

In preparation for our launching, I was talking about the website with some fellow rowers after practice this morning.  We got into a “What if” situation that was found to be a funny idea.  What if, Mary Ball Washington had died when George was a child and it was his father, Augustine Washington, who raised him?  Putting aside the fact that history would possible be quite different, consider that Augustine’s name was the name of our University. And now, just like we currently shorten the name of the University to Mary Wash, what if we were called Aug Wash? Didn’t laugh? Say it out loud.    Just another reason why we love Mary!

I have never been so frustrated yet with WordPress as I am currently.  I just spent the good part of an hour editing my Fredericksburg page of information only to click update, then view site, to see that NONE of my changes were applied or saved (not even autosaved). [I checked the history where you can view revisions made].  Thankfully, I wrote a draft in Microsoft word so I only have to re-write it all again on the website page.  However, another issue is every time I click on the page to edit, it shows the page as blank.  Although, there is information in the HTML tab.  This makes it impossible to edit if I can’t even view what is currently written.

On another note, Jenn and I went and talked to Patrick about getting our timeline and survey online – and they’re up! [Thanks DTLT!] There are just a few glitches that hopefully we’ll be able to smooth out in the next few days.  3 classes left till launch date! yikes!

The first article I read from the American Historical Association page was called Blogging for your Students.  I figured this was relevant to what we’ve been doing all semester.  It first, I was a little skeptical about having to keep a blog for a class.  I know that when I was in Australia, I struggled to post updates (perhaps just too busy having fun?).  So I figured how could there be enough interesting things to write a blog about for a class?  Boy was I wrong.  And this article was interesting because it spoke of the benefits for the instructor or teacher to keep a blog as well.  I agree with the article that the easy access to everyone’s information/posts is great for collaboration efforts.  Also, as the article points out, comments and posts on blogs are public and so should be thoughtful.  One thing it did say was that, by writing out thoughts and questions from the lecture material, though it may takes some time, actually is a great way to help piece together and organize one’s thoughts.  I definitely agree that having a blog requires me to think more about what I am writing.  The next article I read was called AHA Today: Yesterday and Tomorrow.  This was interesting to see how far the blog has come since being launched, the sorts of articles/topics discussed, and it shows the potential for similar sites.

“Observations on Archives”  -  I liked the comment about the “abundance of digital archive records” vs. the fact that only certain collections or parts are actually available online.  I think that is something that I’ve run into myself when doing research online.  Or I’ll run into a site where it gives me an abstract of an article I need but then would require payment or membership in order for me to view the whole document.  The point was made that the ever changing resources on the internet can make it difficult for the professor to keep up with available resources for their students.  While I’ve thought about it only slightly this semester, I have wondered how our assigned readings/websites to look at have been picked – some of them so far from anything I knew was possible with the internet that I never would have discovered that information on my own.  I feel we’ve discussed most of these issues with archives during class already – things like links not being accessible a few weeks later and the integrity of a source.  All of which is stuff I consider now when searching websites.  I like that you include in your footnotes links to specific examples and the articles/information about the hoax.  In a way, the essay shows how this topic itself can be linked to the web.  I thought this was an easily understandable read and points out the major items that need to be taken into consideration for archives.

Another funny story has occurred which helps solidify the neccesity of the research my group is doing about Mary Washington.  My suitemate (Megan McMillian) informed me that the Great Lives lecturer this past Tuesday night shared with the audience why they thought Mary Washington was important…or not.  Basically, she was telling a story of how she and her brothers used to play the 20 questions game with the category: famous people.  At one point, one of the brothers guessed, ‘George Washington’ and the other brother says ‘No, it was the mother of George Washington.’  Her laughing response…..’as if THAT was a famous person.’….

With this story in mind, I continue to try to figure out Mary Washington’s life in Fredericksburg.  My goal is to have my personal page about her finished before we present on the Research and Creativity Day.  We’re also working on piecing together the video, which includes editing the video interviews so they flow well together and writing a script so we can provide some historical information as well.  Our timeline is finished and Jenn and I finished categorizing the survey results – both of these are ready and waiting to be added to the website.  Caitlin is still messing with the family tree to figure out a better way to display it.  We’re all taking pictures this weekend (hopefully gorgeous weather) for the site and the header of the site (which I finally figured out how to edit pictures to the correct dimensions and upload them properly!)  And though we haven’t heard from our map group since the last meeting, we’re feeling pretty confident that they’re sticking to our agreed upon goal of having it up and ready to display for the Research and Creativity day as well.  Overall, I think we’re making steady progress!

Too excited to wait to do the reading before I post a blog for this next week, so…

Part 1.

Thursday after class Caitlin and I did our interviews of students on campus.  We hung out by the fountain for about an hour and filmed 20 students.  It was quite entertaining and we got some great responses, though you’ll have to wait to see them in the video.  Today, we met with our map making group and it was great to see what they’ve done so far.  We all settled some nit-picky questions, like picking out our font, and clarified all the places/names we’d like on the map.  We’ll meet in another week or 2.  They’re also going to help us make it interactive! Plus, if all stays on track, it should be ready for the Student Research and Creativity Day presentation.  As for this afternoon, I’ve spent it working on my page for the site (Fredericksburg) and I kept getting excited as I figured out how to insert an image, a footnote, and a link to another website.  It’s suddenly starting to look like a decent website!  Oh, p.s., we’re still struggling to find reliable sources and “professional” people to interview for our video (aka not students, who are more than willing to help).

Part 2. (after I do the assignment for class…)

The article about “Digital History Hacks” was really interesting.  I thought it was cool how the way something is typed in could be tracked to keep records of how many times that phase is searched.  I’d also never considered why I had so much trouble when doing a search with a date in it.  Turkel is correct when he said that the web would be more useful for historical research if dates and times period could be more easily searched.  In the Babel to Knowledge article, I thought the mention of the “inverted index” is important because it shows that often times it is more beneficial to view or search for information in multiple ways.  I think this relates well to what my group is trying to do with the presentation of our survey results.  We want our viewers to see that maybe how many years a student has attended Mary Wash effects their knowledge versus what their major or focus of study is having an effect on knowledge.  It was also interesting that the articled noted the imperfections of data across the web with the example of Lindberhg’s crossing of the Atlantic date and how one could simply infer that the date which appeared the most was correct.  “Unexpected connections” was the key phrase that stood out to me in the article about googling the victorians.  I think that can be applied to search engines such as Wiki where an article has links to multiple other articles, whether its a persons name, a date, a location, or a concept.  And suddenly after following link after link you wind up on a totally new topic and yet the original search is connected by the means which brought you to the end page.

So today, Jenn, Caitlin, and I had an excellent meeting with Jim Groom.  He showed us how to turn our umwblogs site into something that looked like it could be a real website and at the same time incorporating all of our ideas.  The technical aspects do not seem so difficult anymore and I can’t wait to start plugging all our data into it.  In two weeks when we have our longer presentation, I’m sure you will see a radical difference in what we showed you last week and what we’ve been able to accomplish now.  Kari and I are also working to plug our data into the timeline, which we’ve finally figured out how to use.

This past weekend, Jenn and I also took a visit to Ferry Farm where the lady seemed less than interested in talking to us until receiving her $1.50 payment each to look around.  And what a wasted $3 it was…..as we discovered, Ferry Farm is all about George.  Where as Mary lived on the farm for 34 years, George only spent about 7 years there.  The information was very general and not of any use to us.  Or it was information we’d already come across in research.  The most interesting thing was seeing the progression of toys over the centuries from dull colored clay marbles to an explosion of brightly colored plastic everything.  The day wasn’t a total waste however as we drove around town afterwords and took pictures of the Mary Washington Monument, House, and Meditation Rock for our website.

This Friday we’re meeting with our map group to see that progression and nail down any final thoughts/decisions.  Thursday, Caitlin and I will be around campus in the afternoon doing interviews for the video and then Kari and Caitlin are planning to tear up downtown on Saturday gathering some more. Everything seems to be moving along!

So spring break was definitely a needed break from school work after barely surviving midterms.  However, I was in the middle of nowhere training, without any opportunity to work on our project.  Now that we’re all back, I think our group has hit the ground running.  We had an excellent meeting today with the group that will be creating our map, more specifics will be discussed during our presentation on Thursday.  And now with the nicer weather, we’re planning visits to the Mary Wash house and Ferry Farm to gather more information.  Having a solid list of milestones was helpful today when discussing what we need to focus on this week as well as having a schedule for the map group.  Personally, I’m working on writing up my page for the information about Mary Ball while she was living here in Fredericksburg.  As a group, we’re trying to get as many elements online now so that we can see what other questions or issues we run into and then have the necessary time to fix them.  I can’t believe how quickly this semester is flying by and I know that with a research paper hanging over my head, I need to get as many of the small details for our website worked out now as possible.  The contract may have been tedious to write, but having these milestones worked out is keeping me from feeling overwhelmed with what we have left to do.

Ps. Today I messed around with a program called Doddle.  It was introduced to us by our map making group.  I used it to create a poll for the rest of my group so that we can easily and visually figure out everyone’s schedules for next week for when we want to conduct our interviews for the movie.  It is quite a useful and fun tool, though it took a few tries of editing to have the form just right.