Author: 'His' (Great) 'Story'

This week’s blog was a large step into the use of an actual online tool, mapping or timelining. I used Timeline JS3 to complete this task and found the work more tedious then difficult… then again I don’t believe I utilized more than a fraction of the sites possibilities. For some, a task such as this one may have seemed easy or redundant. In my case, this task took time to comprehend and even more time to produce something that was any where close to working. If I understood what I believe to be the method of embedding my time line here it is:

If not then here is the link to the timeline: My Timeline

I chose to timeline my years after highschool graduation, this way the information was simple and not another thing to worry about on top of the actual development and creation of the timeline itself.

Taking a look as a group to the entire set list of web pages we were assigned to surf, we find a mixture of helpful and not so helpful tools and utilization of web-space. Together we came to a conclusion that (http://dsl.richmond.edu/) showed an all around intuitive and user friendly format, that offered creativity and information in abundance. While on some of the sights we found their ideas are great but didn’t hit the mark for example; 1919 Molasses Flood site looks good as an initial concept, but appears to be poorly executed and difficult to navigate. Overall this list of sights gave us adequate in sight to the possibilities for our group project. An inspiration we have would to utilize the idea of displaying the buildings lay outs though virtual mapping similar to the Valley of Shadow (http://valley.lib.virginia.edu/), maybe even adding video formatting.

Other thoughts:

• Digital Scholarship Lab is very well organized, visually wonderful, and has a great mix of AV and text information. A+ in all categories.
• Imagining the past is well executed and doesn’t suffer from being somewhat plain.
• French Revolution website uses colors that lack contrast, text covers images, no neutral color space, the alignment is off, and the font is difficult to read. Each takes a chunk out of the experience.[
• Emancipation website is a strange mixture of visually bland and intuitively confusing although for content it is bursting at the seams.
• Slave trade link is broken, hopefully it’s not lost forever.
  
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This week we were assigned a list of websites to look through and pick apart, in order to get a greater understanding for the creative possibilities to further our options for the final group website. After looking through these sights I realized the potential for the site, and it is honestly a bit exciting. One of the sights (http://republicofletters.stanford.edu/) really showed the wide range of historic portrayal capable through a single web page. With mapping, links, and captions. Another page I looked at was the winner of the DH (digital History 2014) award for best data visualization. With this award/title I expected to be blown away, but maybe had expectations that were to high. To me the sight seemed basic, and I will admit it is probably because I do not know what it took to create the visuals, and the interface. The sight seemed to be filled with hyperlinks and the information that is provided seems to be scares. The site that surprised me the most was (http://dsl.richmond.edu/april1865/) this site offers an amazing visual aspect that was not met by some of the other links provided. The layout of the site is very simple and clean while also providing an intuitive interface that can be utilized without strain. I am not yet sure what parts will be able to utilize in our group project, but after looking through the catalog of websites proved I am now optimistic of our endless possibilities.

This semester I was recommended to enroll in a History 400 class, the most appealing of the options (and the one that fit my schedule) is titled “Adventures in Digital History”. I took this class not only because it fulfilled and satisfied portions in my degree but also in order to work on, and be enveloped in an area I deem myself weak. I also feel that this class will offer me with a more adequate understanding of the use of technology and digital aids for future research to also further help my degree. After the first day of class it occurred to me that  I am in for a ride, a grand ride on the technologic train to triumph. It will be a large amount of work with a new skill as the end goal.