Conroy’s Corner

Combining my love of history with my enthusiasm for touring, I hope to create an interactive and historical, map-based website. The website will be a map that will allow potential tourists and other interested persons to explore an area of the District of Columbia and see pictures of the monuments and memorials in that area. Each small thumbnail will link to a larger picture that is on a page with the history and historical significance of the monument or memorial. In addition to that very basic historical blurb, I will also include a section on how each monument relates to other monuments, memorials, or statues in the area or along a common line. For instance, people often point out that there is a line that runs from the Washington Monument, through the Pentagon to the Masonic Temple in Alexandria. I do not know the historical details of their construction, but Dan Brown’s (author of the DaVinci Code) next planned book, The Solomon Key (although as of February 28, 2006 that is no longer the working title) will no doubt inspire many professionals and nonprofessionals alike to investigate the veracity of his claims.

Less conspiratorial yet still fascinating, there are axes upon which monuments are built that reflect the progression of freedom (Armed Freedom on the Capitol dome to Lincoln’s Emancipation statue to Mary Bethune’s statue honoring education advances for African-Americans) or powerful guardians (Lincoln staring at Congress, Jefferson watching the White House). I hope to research all of these connections and find some that are, as of yet, fairly undocumented. No site that I have visited has mentioned axes upon which architects constructed monuments and memorials in the District of Columbia.

A number of websites have done a fine job in mapping and explaining national monuments and memorials. As one would hope and expect, foremost among the websites that do a fantastic job on the Washington, DC sites is the National Park Service’s website. The National Park Service (hereafter NPS) uses a map as the start to a person’s DC exploration; however, this map is very basic and only has five options: Downtown, the National Mall, Capitol Hill/Anacostia, Georgetown/Upper Northwest, and Dupont Circle/Embassy Row. One must choose where he or she is going first, as opposed to choosing where one will go based on what one can see.

After clicking a shaded area on the initial, vague map “to explore Washington’s historic neighborhoods, buildings, & monuments,” the website improves dramatically in content although the maps remain poor. Each region brings up a basic, relatively unmarked street map that has stars indicating the attractions. When one clicks on the star, a page opens that provides pictures of the area of interest as well as a history. The history is clearly written for those who have only passing interest and provides no real depth or links to more in depth information. The NPS has succeeded in compiling a very comprehensive list of all the historic sites in the District, and it would function as a good place to start building my own list of interesting sites.

Other government sites also have made an attempt to attract tourists through their site to the DC area. The White House has a virtual tour that the White House Historical Association maintains. It is very detailed, but some what lackluster in fulfilling its claim as a “virtual tour.” One is restricted to clicking through a slide show of pictures on each room entered. The site, while made with the intention of having a wide audience, is probably only read thoroughly by someone with a particularly vested interest in White House history and more importantly White House cultural history.

The District of Columbia government also has attempted to entice tourists with its 3-D flash map. The map is a great attempt and a good example of what I would like to do, but it is incredibly limited. The map does not extend beyond the National Mall, and the information it displays is pitifully little. If one toured DC using the government’s map they would miss out not only on a number of wonderful sites but also a vast amount of history. My own guess would be that the website was a student’s summer internship project (and a darn fine one at that) but it has never been improved upon.

A number of privately funded sites have also done a magnificent job at helping tourists and interested individuals navigate the District of Columbia and obtain information about monuments and memorials. A number of personal webpages, like Rachel Cooper’s and MetroWeb, capture the beauty of Washington, DC in a photographic tour. Although these websites are more for personal edification than the spread of specific historical knowledge, they do a nice job of given online visitors a taste of the District. For my own purposes, their pictures provide nice examples of angles at and places from which I should take my own digital photographs.

A private site, hot-maps, has a clear and detailed map of Washington, DC on its website. Unfortunately the map contains the names of places and roads but no links to obtain more information about them. In addition the map viewscreen is far too small for anyone to view more than a few blocks at any one time, which makes navigation difficult and frustrating. On a slow computer, the images would load so slowly that one would probably be unable to change views by dragging the map and would have to enter addresses as an alternative means of shifting the map.

By far, the best site out there on the web for exploring the District of Columbia is “Washington DC, the American experience,” self-proclaimed as the Official Tourism Site of Washington, DC. This tourism website targets potential visitors of Washington, DC. Its homepage lists all of the current and upcoming events in the city and its museums. More importantly and, from my experience, hardest to find, the site provides very detailed interactive maps. The maps are for general tourists and do not contain much by the way of historical data, however, one can click on a place of interest and read the popup with pertinent tourist information and usually a link to the NPS site for that attraction. One can easily navigate the map and also choose things to flag on the map (attractions, accommodations, dining, nightlife, etc.). This site raises the bar far above any others that I have yet discovered.

After all of this online searching, using broad searches in Google checking for terms like “history,” “interactive maps,” “Washington, DC,” “tourism,” “photographs,” and “virtual tour,” and combinations of all of them, I found that Washington, DC is one of the best documented cities in the United States. No doubt this is because one can obtain funding from so many government and private organizations. All the sites target tourists to our nation’s capital, but most do not go in to much historical detail in any matter. In addition, I have found no sites that discuss in any detail the statues that often surround famous monuments or stand by themselves as aesthetically pleasing additions to the city. The government sites that one would typically search (dc.gov and the NPS site) yielded some results, but provided nothing more than expected or, in the case of the DC site, less than one would hope.

While the capital of the United States may be well-documented and widely researched on the web, no website combines what I plan to combine. Nor do any websites address the interconnectivity of famous sites in Washington, DC as I will do with my historical research. There certainly remains a small niche in both the historical and digital realm for me to submit my project.

This discussion, instigated by Edward Tufte’s comments, I found fascinating.  First, I liked that there was a mix of students and teachers responding.  I feel that many teachers (much more at the secondary school level than college) have a great disconnect with their students.  Second,  I really enjoyed that there were so many disparaging viewpoints.  I personally enjoy PowerPoint, am indifferent to handouts (because I usually lose them), and hate when teachers expect their students to be stenographers.

PowerPoint is wonderful because of the ease with which one can use it and transfer it to numerous places.  Professors used to have to carry around their spindles of slides; now one slips the flash drive into her pocket and away he goes.  However, abuse of PowerPoint is one of the worst possible public speaking sins.  That PowerPoint of the Gettysburg Address could not be any worse!  The notes make no sense, and even if they did, I cannot imagine that in anyway it added to the presentation.

My own experience with PowerPoint starts when PowerPoint started.  I thought it was awesome to watch the bullet points zoom in and screech to a halt, but I soon became disillusioned.  As a seventh grader, I was getting to do PowerPoint slides for my mother’s college class.  She, thankfully for her students, vetoed many of my more adolescent, style wishes of zooming text and loud explosions.  There is no doubt in my mind though that the PowerPoint notes were much better than her scrawled overheads.  I feel my own use of PowerPoint has stemmed from being well-trained early on about the abuses and I have survived relatively unscathed by the potential downfalls of technological presentations.

Although I was more interested in the PowerPoint discussion, I thought that the people who debated handout issues had many good points.  The one professor said that he only handed out notes at the end of class.  I think that is a jerk move if he wanted people to just take notes for the hell of it, but I can understand why he would do that if he taught at a school like Penn State where half the students would only stay until they got the handouts or took the quiz and then got up and left.  I think teachers, especially of large undergraduate lectures, who give handouts make it easier for students to pay attention and to discuss things at a later date.  Depending on the subject, to have a handout that has all the names and places spelled correctly is a great blessing.  If I am ever put into the situation where I have a large class and a lot of names that I will be dropping during a lecture, I will definitely give a handout of terms/important people at the very least.

Here is the website that I designed based upon my Jot Board images.  I will continue to improve it and add to it as time permits.

I thought that this was an interesting question to begin the “Getting Started” section entitled “Web, Websites, and Web pages.”  It is a question that, in many ways, we’ve beaten to death while trying to classify some websites/web pages worthy of historical citation, copyright protection, etc.  I think that very soon the MLA handbook and other writing manuals will produce a specific checklist that all websites must meet in order to meet their standards.  The question I think one should ponder is not “What is a website,” but rather, “What is a good website?”

This week’s chapter explained the technological part of creating websites very well.  I am amazed that I actually understood (on an elementary level) or could relate to practically everything they talked about.  The differences in the programs Dream Weaver and FrontPage I found helpful.  I had used FrontPage before and found it easy to use but not so fulfilling in allowing me to create the things I really wanted.  It will be interesting to learn what Dream Weaver offers in more depth in class.

My ideas with regard to my own websites are constantly changing.  The paragraph warning about over using technology and without any reason hit home.  Flashy attempts at things on websites I relate to people using PowerPoint without having it add to their presentation at all.  Through our years in school, I’m sure everyone has been exposed to that teacher or student who has a crazy PowerPoint presentation with car vrooms to screeches but without any useful notes.  I sometimes feel the same way when looking at websites.  The creator tried to do too much and lost the audience’s interest in the process.  I will keep this in mind when designing my own website for this class.

This picture is so I have at least some digital image posted before class. I forgot that I am on a different computer that doesn’t have a scanner, so I’ll try to do my JOT! game scan from work tomorrow.

This picture is of my roommate and I at Carcasonne Castle in France. It was used in the movie Robin Hood: Prince of Theives as the castle Robin Hood and Morgan Freeman break out of in the beginning. This is the type of picture I would like people to submit to my website if I did something involving monuments and travel. It was fairly easy to digitize, all though I now wish I had done it at a higher resolution. It is a little grainy for my taste.

Below, I will post the digitized directions to the game JOT! and hopefully an image of the board as well. I know that this was supposed to relate to our project, but everything I have relating to the project is digital pictures, so I wanted to try something else instead. Images will be added as soon as I determine how best to digitize a game board

Results from above effort:

Jot directions in both image and OCR (without any corrections…eww) and the game board

                     OCR0001.rtf          

Having experienced the loss of a website, I will definitely be more aware of preserving my creation the next time I design one.  I feel the “backing up” section of the chapter was rather self-evident and has been beaten into our heads by so many people by this time (although I certainly still don’t back up everything, it is a conscious choice).  However related to those preservation concerns and using the right software and everything, I had a question the reading did not address.  Does anyone know how much it costs now to get your own website?  I understand that the software I use will determine readability in the future, but I also need a space on which to keep my work.  My AU webspace, I assume, will be reclaimed by the university after I graduate.  Could there be an EdConroyisAwesome.com?  I remember when websites were first coming out and everyone looked into buying them, but today is that a realistic option or do most people lease space from someone or something?

One thing that I found very pertinent in the Margaret Hedstrom article was her concern over the lack of standards and the question of readability in the future.  The Digital History text also brings up this point.

Standards for digitizing I think are particularly important if people are going to be utilizing them more frequently as resources.  One should be able to critique how a website came into being with the same critical eye with which one examines the construction of a book.  If XHML is the best style for website designs, people should spend the time and effort (and money) to publish them in that style, assuming they want their work to be judged as professional.

That being said, I do not understand why XHML is better than HTML or other forms of web programs.  If anyone has more knowledge, please enlighten me; otherwise, I’ll look forward to asking about it in class.

First, I would like to say that if I could outsource my ideas, I would.  I am an idea man who has little knowledge of how to put those ideas into action except by enlisting capable friends.  I guess I have never quite outgrown that 1-800-Inventions type mentality that riches lay just out of reach of my half realized ideas.

*       *       *
I think it would be fun, useful, and marketable to create a map of Washington, DC with popup images of monuments and linkable pages to information about them.  This fall, I took a Civil War tour of Washington, DC that took us to neat historical places that I had no idea existed (because they were off the mall and don’t appear on tour maps).  In addition to visiting the place where Lincoln was almost shot during the war (Ft. Stevens) and Lincoln Park, the instructor, Prof. Ed Smith explained how the monuments in Washington, DC are laid out in very meaningful and well-researched lines.  For example, the President of the United States in the White House is constantly under the watchful eyes of Thomas Jefferson in the Jefferson Memorial.  Abraham Lincoln watches Congress from the far end of the Mall, while Grant, mounted on his horse, looks at his Commander and Chief and protects one side of the Capitol whilst Armed Freedom watches over the other.

I think it would be very interesting and effective to show those connections on a virtual map.  I have been told that it is a very daunting task to combine some sort of GIS and images and links because of all the coding, but until I actually know how much it is, I will not be flustered.

Please give me feedback and suggestions about this idea.