Kayle P's Digital History Blog

For the assignments, I read two articles that used wikipedia. I always like to read articles about using wikipedia in classroom. I thought that it was interesting to see how these professors discussed how they used Wikipedia and having to teach their students how to use it. One of the lines that stuck out to me was the article that was discussing the first year seminar. The author was talking about how she had push back from the people that had declared themselves history majors. I think that this is true in a lot of ways. Most history majors don’t use wikipedia or are told not to use wikipedia since it is unreliable in a lot of ways. I really liked looking at these articles and I though it was really cool to see how these  professor introduced and used wikipedia in their classrooms.

And for an update about our project, we are doing really well. All of my research is done but because I had some issues with technology (long story short..new google account+not being able to view documents and my group not being able to see anything….) We also heard back from Tim about the map which we are going to have to discuss tomorrow. But other than that we are doing good!

Wow because I am finally done with all of my research and I can’t believe it. It just doesn’t see possible.  There have been a lot of changes and lots of progress made to the site this week. We decided to remove the RSS feed down at the bottom of the site since it was not going to be rotating through the buildings, but only showing the first five buildings on the list. We also decided  to change the layout of the page that each of the buildings were on. Now if you go the headings, for example the “other buildings”, it has tabs and you can click to the building you want to view. We thought that it would make it look clean and Kay and Sam did an amazing job changing this. Last week, Kay, Cam and I all meet with Tim about the map. After showing it to him, he decided that it was best for him to upload. (Given my relationship with technology I guessing that it was probably a good plan too!) He said that once the map was on the site, it wouldn’t be hard to input the points or the information, that it was most likely just going to be time consuming (which I knew going in) but we are all really excited about the way that the site is looking!

Just when I get one mystery solved a new one comes up….This week has been quite crazy. One of the sources that I had been using was not a good source to being using (this is when I start hitting my head against a wall for nto double chekcing my sources) and so I thought that I wa sgoing to have to start over on all of my drafts. Thank goodness though….I didn’t. I was able to find the information in other sources and I didn’t have to start to start completely over which was lucky. So once the mystery of the author of the unuseable source was solved I am now left with the mystery of when did Tyler house recieve it’s name. I have two buildings left (Seacobeck and Tyler House) I haven’t been able to find when Tyler House got its name change. It was orginally named the Anne Fairfax an

One of my friends told me that I am always going a mile a minute and this week it certainly felt like it. Unfortunately I was behind with my drafts for the websites. Cassie was amazing and got her done and Cam has been chipping away at them too but sadly I just fell behind. I have about half of them done and since we build time into our schedule it’s fine…but not where I want to be. Our project however is coming along really well! We are going to try and meet with Tim sometime soon (hopefully this week) and figure out what is going on with the map and Cassie is taking pictures of the buildings on campus today! So slowly but surely it’s coming together. Off to work on the rest of the drafts!

So when I was creating my digital resume I had some issues with technology. I could not for the life of me figure out how to turn off the comments. It was driving me crazy!!!!

As far as the resume goes, I have had to apply for on campus job, as well as my summer job and since they are both similar, I have a resume for that. This was really different since I was trying to include both history and what I want to do with the rest of my life. I tried to model it after some of the sites that’s we looked at in class but after looking back it, I realized that it is nothing like it. It has a more personal feel, which is the kind of person that I am. Don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing but I guess that works.

I also tried to pick a theme that wasn’t to busy and also reflected some of my personality. Hopefully I achieved some of what I wanted to achieve with this site and if not…it’s a learning experience right?

Yeah…I couldn’t come with a catchy title this week… I blame that it is Monday. :/ I looked at Dr. McClurken’s site and one of the first things that I noticed was the background was simple and didn’t draw attention from the information that was on the site. The information that was also on the site was straight forward and easy to read. It made it easier to understand and when you are trying to communicate with a group of people it, that is the type of website of blog you want.  After Dr. McClurken’s page, I looked at the Digital Tattoo website. I went to the pipl website and search myself..the only that came up was my address…then I searched my given name (Katherine) and I had 3 birth records and a divorce record come up? Huh is about all I got. Following some other examples, I googled myself. It was interesting to to see what came up. I found things that I had commented on Facebook, my blog, but I also found a survey for an award that I was nominated for in high school. (Obviously didn’t win it….but still nice to know that I was on the list ) I guess this says I don’t’ really have much a digital tattoo but interesting to learn what is on the Internet about me. Finally I looked at Seth’s Blog…..and as I have just seen…Google doesn’t forget anything so as we had been told “Be careful what you post on the Internet.”

This week Cassie and I met with Professor Hanna in the geography department about the possibility of getting a map for our site. Within about 20 minutes we had our map! The map for our site has been dubbed “my baby” since from day one I have said that I have wanted to include a site on our site and I am so excited about it! Professor Hanna create a map to met our needs from a preexisting on that the county had made and then manipulate it so that the buildings, paths and plazas (where the fountains are) were all shown and nothing else is visible. THIS MAP IT SO COOL!!! I’m really excited about it and now we have to meet with DTLT to find out how we are going to make each portion of the map “clickable” to the visitors of the site.

When we first started writing our group contract it started out that Cassie was going to be the scribe and that we would edit it as we needed. What I took from that is that group contracts work much better if you build them together. While we all did edit the first one and it was built from ideas that we all imputed, it was connected very well. After we met with Dr. McClurken and came back together on Thursday, we had a much better understanding and were able to really make changes with what we need to make our site great. We decided as a group that Omeka was not the right fit for our site and now our creating our site in wordpress. We also created more deadlines for the research phase so that we all know when everything has to be done by. All and all I think that it is a much better fit!

This week our group has spent most of the week researching. The main focus of our project is why the buildings of campus are named what they are named. It has been an interesting process and I am learning things that I would have never guessed since becoming a student at UMW. My part of research process is researching what I am loving calling the “other” buildings on campus. This refers to the buildings that tucked into the corners of campus that no one really knows what is housed there, that no one really uses or that are in the little houses scattered around campus. It has been frustrating researching them but it has been so much fun. For example Brent Hall (though I have always called it house) has been used as a president house, a residence hall, for studying French and now as the police station. I can’t even think of it as anything other than the police station! It’s interesting to look as these buildings as something other than just what there present use is. Well back to researching the “other” buildings!

For my map assignment, I did find my house but not my house in Virginia. I was born in Atlanta so I decided to map my house and first elementary school there. As far as programs ago, I like both Google map and Google Earth for different reasons. I think that Google Map is easier if you are trying to map with roads and it easier to learn. However Google Earth allows you to take a tour of anywhere in the world and lets you add pictures to the map, as well as 3d drawings. It is like visiting a place without ever leaving your living room. The complication with Google Earth is it takes more time to input the information into it. As far as viewing things, I like to see things in Google Earth rather than Google maps but I still like using both tools equally.

I think that both would be an excellent tool for the building project. Including a map in the project is one of the main goals for our group. Either tool would be helpful and I think that using a map will be great for our project!