History in the Digital Age

As discussed, the “final” versions of your projects are due by midnight on the evening of May 2nd – whatever’s online at that time is what I’ll be grading. Said grading will be along two axes, “Historical Content” and “Implementation”, and the average of both scores will be your project grade.

* Historical Content: Is there an argument? Is the material well thought-out and compelling? Is there an interesting *reason* for this site to exist, and does it fulfill that rationale?
* Implementation: Does the design (both visual and informational) inform the topic? Does the site work? Does it *use* new media in an interesting way, and show that the creator “gets” the potential of digital technology?

But how will I actually be *choosing* a grade, you ask? In short, my main criterion is “interestingness”:

* A: The content/implementation makes me think about the topic/digital media in a new way; I learned something ___(extremely interesting)___
* B: The content/implementation is solidly engaging, but doesn’t do anything original ___(moderately interesting)___
* C: The content/implementation is there, but that’s about it ___(not interesting)___

Finally, the post-mortem; a week later (by noon on May 9th), your post-mortem analysis is due. Here, you’ll think through what worked and what didn’t work, both about your particular project and the process through which you built it. Think about this as a “What I learned from actually building this project” report, which should at least touch on (but not be restricted to) these topics:

* The topic: Why was it a good choice? Why was it a problematic choice? Would you choose to do it over again, or change it somehow, and why?
* The new media: How did you approach this project differently than you would have approached a term paper? What were the benefits and drawbacks of working in digital media?
* The technology: What did you have to figure out how to do? What tools did you use, and how were they (in)sufficient for your needs? What constraints were placed on you by the technology?
* The project: How does the end version of your project compare with your intentions? What would your ideal version of this project be? Given infinite time and infinite resources, how would you get there?

Rather than grading the post-mortem outright, I’ll think of it as your last argument on behalf of your project…a B project might well become an A project if the post-mortem convinces me that you learned from the problems you ran into, and that the current incarnation of the site isn’t the best representation of its potential (while at the same time making clear that you did everything you could this time around).

For Tuesday, write a 250-500 word proposal for your final project. The goal here is to lay out a concise description of what you intend to do and how you intend to do it. That in mind, the proposal should include the following:

* Who your audience is
* What you want that audience to take away from the project
* What your content will be & how you’ll acquire and digitize it
* How you plan to organize your content
* What tools you’ll use to build your site (i.e. standard HTML, an online survey, a blog, a wiki, etc…)
* What you want the site to look like (general ideas and layout, rather than specific color choices)
* How this site will benefit you and you own personal / professional / research goals

…and most importantly:

* What’s the argument of the site?

__Please post this by Monday, so that people can look over it briefly before class on Tuesday__

There are a bunch of tools out there that will help you integrate information and maps; here’s a sampling:

* Google Map Maker
* My GMaps

Those of you grappling with the question of how to represent footnotes and citations in online work might look at Paula Petrik’s Scholarship on the web: managing endnotes & footnotes…

Here’s a link that at least points toward using FTP for uploads to the american.edu servers

In the interest of learning more about the range of skills and expertise in the class, please take a few minutes to fill out the following survey. The questions cover a wide array of topics, and your candid answers will help me decide how basic or advanced our discussions/tutorials should be. Thanks!

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Welcome to this *very* preliminary site for the Spring 2006 incarnation of American University’s History 332/632, “History in the Digital Age.” More information coming shortly.