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Work and Technical Plan
General Work Plan10
The initial plan for building the site will begin with a meeting of scholars and teachers who will collaborate on the content development process. A broad range of scholars and teachers from different areas of the country and varying backgrounds will be chosen. Content development must occur at least to an extent before primary sources are digitized and before the timeline is fully developed. This will try to insure that the materials chosen are relevant and useful as well as readily available (either copyright-free or at minimal cost). Lesson plans can then be written around the sources and incorporate only those sources available on the site. If five sources are used but only four are available on the site, a plan can include a reference to another online place to go for this last source. If nowhere online has the source available, it will be listed as an extra source in the bibliography but will not be required for use with the lesson. These lessons should strive to only include sources available online.
The advisory board chosen should be mostly scholars but will also include a few high school teachers. Having a core board of scholars and teachers who agree to do this is the key to getting funded. Conferences (American Historical Association, Association of Asian Studies), H-Asia, and teaching-prize winners will all be used as starting points for solicitation. Local scholars and teachers at universities and high school campuses could also be solicited and provide information on more potential board members.
Once the board is chosen and the content development has started, development of the database storage format for sources and lessons must begin. Format for the sources table will contain an id for each source plus information such as author, time periods and topics included, and the text of the source. Lessons will be stored in a similar fashion, with each lesson having its own id plus related fields (instructional steps, discussion questions, standards, etc). Database records will be delivered on dynamic PHP pages. Currently, and for practical purposes, there is no reason to yet incorporate XML into the site. PHP/MySql will serve the purpose and will be the easiest method to employ, as the cost is very low in implementing it (the proposal author has the technical skills to set this up).
For each lesson plan solicited, one to three months will be given to complete For each lesson solicited, one to three months time will be given to complete it. Using the format for lesson plans developed earlier and giving a general idea as to the length requested will speed up the process of submissions. The more specific the requirements of what should be included, the better. A general payment (based on the amount in the budget and not to exceed $100 per lesson submitted) will be made to each person who submits an approved lesson. Since the aim is for twenty lesson plans, $2000 will be budgeted for this.
Finding, scanning or typing up, and entering the sources and lessons into the database will be a lengthy process. Checking copyrights where necessary is not always easy, and in some cases obtaining copyrights might cost money. Every attempt will be made to find all necessary sources out of copyright and for those still in copyright, an effort will be made to obtain them as part of “fair use” or for a very minimal cost. No more than $3000 will be written into the budget for copyrights and permissions.
Interns, research assistants, data entry clerks, or students looking for part-time jobs can provide database entry. Generally, this should not cost much—20 hours a week with two people a week for six months (24 weeks) at $8/hour would cost $7680. However, history interns could be given credits or good recommendations, and six months might actually be the total time spanning over a year (more hours some weeks than others). A maximum of $20,000 over a period of one year should be budgeted for these costs.
Finally, advertising the site should not be hard using the same sources that were used for locating scholars and teachers. In addition, the backing of an institution offers numerous publicity and funding opportunities. A National Endowment for the Humanities grant for this project would require the backing of a university and a solid advisory board of Chinese and East Asian history scholars committed to the project already.
Technical Plan
The body and most content of the site will reside in a database with two tables —one for primary sources and one for lessons. Text sources will be scanned using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software where possible, or typed directly into the database. This allows for greater flexibility, particularly in searching, adding to, or editing either table in the future. The tables can also reference each other through join script searches, but will remain separate since their content is so different.
The site will be run on free, open source architecture—PHP/MySQL running on an Apache server with Linux. Open source means no licensing fees will have to be paid. The cost for setting this up is minimal and involves mostly hardware. The site will be hosted through an institution such as the Center for History and New Media or personally. Having someone set up a server and paying for a static IP address (up to $34.95 a month) to run the box personally (for about $150-200) is another, though not very reliable, option. 11 It is a last resort if nowhere else is willing to host the database and dynamic content.
The site, except for the about, links, contact, and introductory timeline pages will be all dynamic pages written in PHP. When going to lessons or the database search for instance, one or two pages will control all the content (browsing, searching, display of results, and the lesson or primary source). The searches will include rewrite rules which will give each dynamically generated database entry page a static URL, making them easy to find and index by Google and other search engines. 12
All database entry will be from internal, password-protected database entry pages so that those without a technical background can manipulate the material easily. Dynamic content always makes more sense over static with sites that include a large amount of searchable materials.
The timeline, the most interactive feature of the site, will be a set of dynamic PHP pages but will also include some javascript to switch the content as a user clicks on the timeline and receives popup windows. Although Flash was considered for this feature, the ability to update Flash movies regularly can be tedious and adding material is an important feature of the site. If, in the future, the site becomes “frozen” in terms of new material, Flash movies could be added. However, this would require additional funding since another programmer might have to be hired.
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10 Several details in this section of the plan were discussed during an interview with Kelly Schrum, Co-director of World History Matters and Associate Director of History Matters, December 2, 2003.
11 Details of setting up a server came from Marty Andolino, technical associate and programmer at the Center for History and New Media.
12 World History Matters and History Matters are both set up in a similar fashion. For instance, see a web review on World History Matters: http://chnm.gmu.edu/whm/d/33.html