weisner

My semester project is focused on the story of my cousin Henry’s immigration from Nazi Germany to the United States. Clearly, a large part of this project is dependant upon the oral history I will collect from Henry. However, I wanted to survey the digital landscape in order to gain some awareness of what has already been done and what resources I could use in my own website.

First of all, a little background on my proposed site is necessary to understand my searching approach and goals. Ideally, my website will be used for educational purposes. While it is the story of one man, it is an exceptional story which should be shared. However, it is also only one of millions of exceptional stories which are possessed by immigrants to America. Henry’s story could be used as an example of one of these narratives. A case study of Henry’s life could also be used as part of a larger unit on immigration. Personal accounts certainly contribute to a deeper understanding of the challenges and experiences which immigrants faced. My site will appeal to a younger audience. It will allow them to form a personal connection to the story of an immigrant and possibly lead to a better understanding of how immigration shaped the country and affected individuals involved.

I used Google as my search engine and I entered various key words and phrases in an attempt to bring up different sites. First and foremost, I wanted to get an idea of how prevalent the idea of an immigrant’s story was on the web. I started with a Google search of “immigrant personal stories”. A PBS site entitled Destination America was the first, and most common, hit that came up. This site is a collection of immigrants’ stories and encourages the visitor to submit his or her own information in a questionnaire with drop down menus. It is a reliable educational site and it is incredibly broad in its coverage of immigration.

Another site I stumbled across was an Encyclopedia of USA History with a focus on immigration. This site allowed me to go directly to a link about Germany. From there, I could go to a section on German Resistance and than read through numerous personal accounts and biographies. Since my cousin Henry fled Germany, this section on resistance seems like it might be an interesting resource for comparison with other stories.

The Library of Congress also showed up frequently throughout my searching project. It seems to have a huge number of sites devoted to documenting the immigrant story in the U.S. Unfortunately, the entire web system for the Library of Congress was unavailable while I was conducting my research so I’ll have to go back and look at the websites when they are back online.

After searching immigration in general, I attempted to find “German immigrant stories” specifically. This led me to a huge website from the University of Wisconsin with many books, images and collections online. All of these areas focus on immigration in the 19^th century. Within the site, there is a collection of newspaper articles and stories by or about German immigrants. It is organized by date and contains text about numerous people. In a way, its purpose seems similar to the PBS site. It is a broad survey of immigration. However, it seems more likely to be used by those interested in higher level educational research, whereas PBS would appeal more to the casual visitor searching for general background on immigration.

At this point in my search, I left off looking for immigrant stories alone and took a more technical approach. I browsed through a few ancestry websites, such as the Ellis Island site and an Ancestry site in order to gain an understanding of the information these sites provided. The Ellis Island website is a great resource for anyone doing research on immigration, whether it is for a class or for their family history. The website is huge, providing an opportunity for you to search for a family member, read about the history of Ellis Island, view photo albums, read about immigration patterns in America and even check out a few individual stories. There are tons of images and great interactive maps. It seems to span the gap between a site intended for research and a site intended for the recreational user. Although Ellis Island itself is not really relevant to my project, it is a truly amazing website. I’m definitely planning on referencing the set-up, graphics and information on this site when I build my own.

Finally, I attempted to search from an educational angle. I looked up immigrant stories or personal journeys that were used as teaching or classroom resources. However, there are very few lesson plans or curriculum suggestions that really utilize case studies of immigrants. The Library of Congress site does have a site entitled Immigration in the American Memory under their section on resources for teachers and students. I plan on checking this out but, basically, the educational angle was a dead end and I didn’t spend too much time browsing this topic.

The information on many of these sites is presented mostly with text. Most of the sites use a few photographs of the immigrants, but the stories are largely just presented in a few paragraphs of writing. While there are many opportunities for an individual to share his or her personal story on various websites, there are very few interactive aspects to the sites. PBS and Ellis Island are probably the major exceptions to this rule. The Destination America site relies heavily on graphics, images and has a great interactive map. However, this site is more conducive to browsing than research and probably reaches a broader audience than the more academic or research based sites. I would imagine that Ellis Island attracts a large number of visitors as well, which probably explains the amount of interactive features. Research based sites do not feel the need to equip their information with all the “bells and whistles”.

Most of the websites I found useful are directed at an adult audience. I am guessing this is probably because it is typically teenagers and adults who are surfing the web or doing research. These websites do, however, address a wide range of purposes. Most of the genealogy sites would be used by people specifically seeking immigration information. The PBS site is intended for the causal viewer who is possibly following up on the show that was on TV. The Library of Congress sites or the website put together by the University of Wisconsin is intended to assist people in conducting research. Clearly, the layout and makeup of the websites change based on the intended audience.

I could not find any immigrant story that had its own site and was directed at a young audience. I envision my site as presenting Henry’s story in a very simple way. Ideally, it will have a few maps to trace his immigration, and multiple images to supplement the narrative. I want it to be easy to navigate and understood by grade school children. It needs to be a site to which a teacher could direct the class as an example of one man’s story in a larger unit on immigration. Based on my survey of the digital landscape, there is nothing like this on the web. I know that many schools and teachers do not fully take advantage of the internet in the classroom. I wonder if this partially explains the lack of educational, historic websites directed at children. Although there are some great educational websites (such as Teaching with Historic Places), the use of the internet as a teaching resource is still a relatively new concept.

Basically, I’ve discovered that immigration is a very broad topic and there are thousands of websites dedicated to exploring some angle which relates to this historic theme. Based on the searches I conducted, it seems as though most of the information on the web is not focused on an in-depth case study. While many sites do offer biographies or accounts of immigrants, none of them present a detailed personal narrative.

While much of my research cannot be gathered from the web, I was able to discover a great deal of useful information from surveying the sites already published. I’m sure I’ll be able to use some of the images, maps and other types of visuals on my own site once I gather the information. However, it is nice to know that my intended project will be filling a void in presenting an in-depth case study for a younger audience.

Powerpoint cannot completely make your presentation. Nor can it completely break it either.

After reading Tufte’s article, and the discussion thread which followed, this statement basically sums up what I found to be the most important point. Obvious, but important. As a speaker, powerpoint can really supplement your talk. It can keep the audience engaged and interested and provide a great way to highlight your main points. However, it could also really detract from what you are saying as well. You can’t rely on powerpoint to do the work for you. Your speech must be able to stand alone as well.

I guess what I took from this article is that we should appriciate the value of what can be done with powerpoint, but not slack off on the information that is being presented. It relates to the idea of technology and website design: flashy graphics are great but don’t neglect the substance/text.

Hey guys, my first attempt at my site, although I’m still working on getting the whole picture thing going. Just wanted to try this out.

Em’s Site

- I really appriciated this week’s reading in Digital History. There were several great chapters with really useful information about building a webpage. In the section on texts and images there was some good advice about considerations you should have before even beginning to build your site. For example, this section detailed the different types of software you could use when building your site. I really had no idea that so many options were available depending on your skill level and the needs of your site. I’m also looking forward to learning how to use Dreamweaver after reading about it in the book. While this section cleared up a couple of basic questions, it also got me thinking more about what I want to do with my site and which software will best serve my purposes. Does blackboard actually have a program that we can use to assist us in webdesign? Or is that just for posting syllabi and other textually based information?
- Another group of questions came to mind in the section entitled Serving your Website. Should I be using my blog space to make a site? Or should I use space provided by American University through blackboard? (actually, do we have a built in webpage space?) If I do use American’s space, for example, does it than disappear when I am no longer a student? There is definitely a concern about the life of my site which I guess will influence how it should be hosted. I also didn’t realize that my internet provider might give me webspace as well. It’s amazing how much space is available on the web for free, especially for users who intend to make only a small site. Owning your own server sounds like it could be an incredible headache.
- I can also see how you could get caught up in all the flashy technology and fun graphic stuff while building a site. (which is exactly what parts of this chapter warned against doing). I don’t even really know how to use most of the fun technology, but just reading the section on multimedia and discovering all the possibilities for a site makes me want to try all of it. Interactive maps of Pearl Harbor and 3D journeys through Egyptian tombs sound way more fun than simply typing in a few facts and posting a static picture. However, I’m sure it is incredibly complicated and time consuming. This could definitely lead to the possiblity of spending so much time on the media that the information on your site is mostly “fluff”. Media could, however, really contribute to the effectiveness of your website, especially if you do need to map out an event. I guess moderation is the key.

As a sidenote: I’m so proud of myself for inserting links into my blog!

Ok, here is the edited version of the image from the previous blog. I ran it through Adobe Photoshop and cleaned it up a little bit. It is cropped and I played around with the contrast and brightness. I also changed the color of the sky a little bit, to make it lighter and more blue.

This image is from the Black Forest in Freiburg, Germany. I visited there not too long ago and it was absolutely gorgeous. Anyway, it fits in with my proposed research/website idea involving my relative’s odyssey from Germany to the United States.

Ok, I have a digital picture that I played around with on Adobe Photo all ready to post, but unfortunately, it is stuck on my computer until my internet is up and running again. Sorry about the delay!

 But I can give you a little background….

I’m in the early stages of planning this web project, but I’m thinking about using a little family history as the basis for the site. I have a relative who was born in Germany prior to WWII. During the war, he was drafted into the German army and served on a U-boat. He managed to escape Germany and somehow traveled to the U.S. I’m not sure of the details, but it’s a familiar story that no one has really bothered to document. I’m thinking of using this story to create some sort of interactive/educational website intended for a younger audience. It may trace his journey, tying his narrative into a larger history. I’m not quite sure yet. I’ll need to interview him and a few other family members to see if this is really feasible.

Well, I am in the middle of experiencing the drawbacks to depending only on digital information. Although I love winter and I am thrilled with the snow, the storm unfortunately knocked out my internet. So now I’m working in the “business center” of my apartment complex, crammed in a small room, with about three computers and one of the most annoying individuals I’ve ever met. I apologize for any errors or incoherent thoughts in my blog. I’m typing as fast as possible….

 I can definitely relate to the concerns over the unreliability of technology. BACK UP YOUR INFORMATION is one of the best pieces of advice this book has given so far! Last year, I was halfway through a take-home exam when my computer froze and shut down. Needless to say, I had forgotten to save any of the work at that point. I now back up my work about every other line. On a larger scale, I could see how this could get tricky. It would take so much time, money and work to continuously back up an archive or website, especially one which changes on a relatively regular basis. This also brings up one of our favorite topics… those inappropriate comments on sites. Should you sort through a site/comments before backing up? This would take forever. So does this mean that the idiot comment on the Pearl Harbor site is preserved? Ugh!

The section on changing technology also resonated with me. Apparently, this  reading really applied to my personal life! Anyway, after our class discussions about the short life of CD’s and other storage information, I started worrying about little things, like all my papers or pictures I have stored on CD’s. I was pretty proud that I had thought to back up the stuff on my computer, never really thinking about the storage devices themselves. Changing technology is a whole other issue. What happens to all my stuff when CD’s are no longer compatible? Should I keep dumping onto new storage devices as they are released. Again, the concern of time and money! While my concerns are all on a small scale, I can’t imagine how stressful it must be to be in charge of entire digital archives.

I really enjoyed the Lifehacker website.  What a great way to organize and publicize all sorts of random information that people may want to access. The CiteULike link was really amazing and incredibly useful. I love that it is all online so you don’t need to install or pay for anything (unlike endnote). You are essentially creating a bibliography for yourself that is easily accessible from any computer anywhere in the world. The fact that citation details are added automatically is a huge timesaver as well.

I’m not entirely sure what my research topic will be for the end of the semester web project.  I’m really impressed with the ideas I’ve read about so far (i.e. Linda’s Chinatown project and Sarah’s Vietnam War research). After our discussion last week about collections, I really think it would be amazing to formulate a topic that involves collecting stories and memories, along with searching for other information. Right now, I’m tentatively playing with a few topics. One idea would involve recollections from the Great Depression. Another thought I had would involve rememberances from WWII. There are a few  problems with both ideas though. I’m worried they might be overdone. And both involve collecting stories from an older audience who may not use the internet, as Linda also mentioned in her post. Obviously they are both really broad ideas. If you have any suggestions, let me know!

First of all, did anyone else find themselves a little bit confused by this chapter? I found my eyes glazing over with all the references to GML, TEI, GIF, TIFF, etc. I understand the basic arguments and discussions about digitization.  Clearly, there are benefits and drawbacks when historians are addressing this topic.  I get that there are multiple methods of turning analog historical records into digital historical records.  But the detailed information about “Marking Up” the text or using a scanner vs. “the process known as OCR” really confuses me.  I’m hoping that we can really go over the terminology and the process of digitization in class.  I think I may understand all of this better if it is explained to me (and maybe demonstrated), rather than trying to understand based just on the reading.

I was intrigued by the first section of this chapter, which discussed the costs and benefits of digitizing the past.  I definitely appreciate the advantages of placing documents and materials online.  They are easier to locate and search, a benefit I certainly enjoy as a graduate student.  Additionally, they are much more accessible to a larger group of people and often include documents which are too fragile to handle in any other circumstance.  Yet there is still no replacement for visiting a library, or archive, and actually handling the material.  It’s all part of the “experience”.  While I don’t advocate wasting unnecessary time, the historian in me really enjoys looking at actual documents.  I think this is true of the general public in some ways as well.  People visit historic homes because there is something about being in the presence of original objects.  It transports you, in some sort of abstract way.  This same benefit is lost when original documents and materials are placed only in the digital form.  Although searching through digitization is much easier, is it worth the loss?

It’s interesting that even digitization is connected to the current political atmosphere.  The idea of outsourcing digitization projects seems like a pretty harmless decision.  I didn’t realize that even this work is often sent overseas to China or India, where the labor is cheap because the workers are paid next to nothing.  It’s funny; I would expect my computer support guy to be working in India these days…but I would never think that digitizing the documents for a historical website would be sent there too.