Monthly Archives: October 2014

Live Tweeting a Day in Public Projects

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The semester is flying by, and last week I realized I had yet to live tweet a day in a division. I figured today would be a good day to attempt this assignment since it marks the beginning of the first year fellows’ time in the Public Projects Division. In addition, it’s Monday, which seems to be the busiest day of the week for the Center, so I thought I would have no shortage of things to tweet about. I also need to preface this blog post by admitting that I am not very social-media savvy: prior to this semester I was not on any social media site (unless you count LinkedIn) and was happy with that. My net-anonymity bubble burst quickly after starting at the Center, which is undoubtedly a good thing. I had to create a Twitter account for Clio, and have become familiar with the platform and follow several different digital historians. In doing so I have come to see how Twitter is used in an academic environment.

Twitter seems to be an excellent platform for scholarly communication. The telegram-style tweets that emerge as a result of the 140 character limit are useful in that the person tweeting must get to the point quickly and the viewer doesn’t have to waste any time in trying to understand what the tweet is about. There is no space for someone to get on their symbolic soapbox. I think this is definitely a product of the current generation, who want and expect everything at the click of a finger. Things must happen quickly: people must convey ideas in a timely fashion, and the audience must be able to comprehend that idea in just the same amount of time. While you wouldn’t expect it to, this lends itself well to the digital humanities, and to all of academia.

Every project that I have worked on so far at the Center has a Twitter account: PressForward, Digital Humanities Now, Histories of the National Mall, Zotero, Omeka. 100 Leaders is the only exception to this, but I think that is because 100 Leaders was created for National History Day and is not a sole creation of the Center. Twitter is a great way to promote such projects, get out information about updates on plugins and apps, and let everyone know about outages. One of the benefits of Twitter is that it is so popular, which makes spreading the word fairly easy, but it also shows how connected the Center is with social media and current trends in technology. For all academic institutions, Twitter one way to remain connected to a core audience.

Tweeting conferences is another way in which Twitter enhances scholarly communication. It can be overwhelming to have a deluge of tweets from one person on a specific day, but there are many benefits to it as well. One of the digital humanitarians I follow live tweeted a conference she was attending and it was useful in that I was able to get a brief snapshot of what was going on at the moment, such as who was presenting and a shortened version of their argument and/or project. Since I’ve never attended a THATCamp, I would find it helpful to follow someone attending one so I can get a feel of what sorts of things are discussed and presented. I think that the 20th Anniversary CHNM Conference should be live tweeted to get the word out and to broaden the discussion. I will attempt to live tweet at least one of the two days.

Twitter has been useful to me in understanding what exactly digital humanities is and to observe the conversation among scholars in the field. Twitter would be useful for any newbie in the digital humanities or academia in general to learn the ropes, understand the trending topics, and see which scholars are the most active either in their scholarly pursuits or on Twitter, or both as the case may be.

Reflections on the Education Division

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Over the last four weeks the first year fellows had the opportunity to work in the Education division of the RRCHNM.  Since the start of our first year fellowship, working in the Education division was something that I was really looking forward to—especially since a lot of the projects they were completing were with National History Day.  As an undergraduate and MA student at Southern Miss, National History Day in Mississippi was always one of my favorite times of the year.  Having the opportunity to work with middle school and high school students on History Day projects and offering an outlet for students who were more gifted in the liberal arts has given me something to be proud of over the years and I was excited to do some work with the Education division on the national side of History Day.

Working in the Education division was more than just learning new aspects of something that I was already interested in, it was like coming back to my nice “cuddly blanket” of history that I was a little bit more familiar with.  While I enjoyed working with Research immensely, after having my ups and downs with Python coding and reaching the mid-point of my first semester as a PhD student, the Education division made me feel like I was “coming home” and it reminded me that I was still useful and could learn new things at a faster pace.

The first assignment we were given was to locate photographs of the 100 leaders for the 100leaders.org website.  While I initially thought this task would be simple, I quickly learned a lot about the overly complicated world of copyright laws.  I had always assumed that famous paintings and photographs became famous because they were open access and freely used enough by the public to become recognizable and iconic—e.g. Washington Crossing the Delaware.  Oh, how wrong I was.  While I had a feeling it would be difficult to find open access photos of Walt Disney (because Disney is notoriously good at copyrighting everything), I was more than shocked to discover just how difficult it was to find an image of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, etc.  These are some of the most famous and recognizable figures in American history and it is almost impossible to find a copyright free image of them for public use.  Even other—not as well-known—leaders such as Ray Kroc, and Rachel Carson would exceedingly difficult to find images of due to copyright laws.

In order to show how important these leaders were without using their own images, Jordan, Alyssa, and I had to get a little creative with our searches.  For instance, since Susan B. Anthony only has one or two open access pictures, I found free images of women protesting for their right to vote.  For Ray Kroc, I found an image of a retro McDonald’s and so on.  While it was frustrating at times trying to find new ways to represent the 100leaders, it was also an exciting challenge that reminded me of why I love history so much and chose it as a career.  The hunt can be frustrating, but when you find that one image that brings everything together it makes you feel like Indiana Jones.  There were definitely many “booyahs!” yelled out from my side of the fellow’s table.

Finding these images made up the majority of our work in Education and I learned so much from it.  I’ve had the opportunity to teach History 101 (pre-history to 1500CE) twice at the university level and after working on the 100 leaders project I’m aiming to teach a world history course again this summer.  Going through bios, finding pictures, and learning about figures that I’d never heard of before has made me want to revamp my lectures and inspired me to look at different ways of teaching. While I’m sure this wasn’t necessarily an intended lesson from Education, I’m so grateful it reminded me of how much I love history, research, and teaching.

In our time in the Education division we were also asked to do some testing on the 100leaders website before it goes lives in November.  Sitting down at the Education table and giving Thomas Edison a constant rating of “1s” is what I call a pretty fantastic day.  However, outside of my historical hate of Edison, I discovered that I’m interested in how these websites are created.  Getting to give feedback on whether the “slider” was working properly or how many times the system would lock up depending on voting made me want to explore more of the technical side of Education.  Even though we didn’t get to work with the design and construction of the website, I was constantly shocked by how many different components went into creating a simple slider and how many options there were for creating the pages for voting.  I had the same curiosity when we were asked to create a manual for the 100leaders website once Education hands the website off to National History Day.  I was in charge of creating a step-by-step guide for editing resources on the website.  Writing this portion of the guide helped me to better understand the inner workings of a wordpress website and also let me see all the ways these sites can be manipulated.  While we weren’t able to help create portions of the website, it definitely made me want to explore more with coding for future use.

I will definitely miss working in the Education division.  I looked forward to going to work every day and working on topics and projects that I love.  I’m excited by the possibility of working in the Education division again and will actively keep up with their projects throughout the rest of the semester.

 

Education Division Reflection

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Our rotation through the Education division has come to an end. It was a great experience and I learned a lot from our assignments.

To begin, I want to contrast the fellows experience in the Research division with our time spent in Education. Our entire rotation through Education was spent working on the 100 Leaders project. We were given various tasks and assignments to complete, all of which  focused on 100 Leaders. This was different from out time in Research, where our rotation was divided between two very different projects. My time in Research, as I mentioned in my previous blog post, gave me a broad over view of a project and then a more “nuts and bolts” experience with the second project. My time in Education working on one project allowed me to engage that project at different stages along its progression. The experiences in each division are very different but, for me, are complementary in their pedagogy.While Research allowed me to see how each division manages multiple projects, Education showed me how one project matures and develops.

Our first assignment was to build up a pool of images and videos for the people on the 100 Leaders website. We each were assigned 25 of the leaders to work on. It became somewhat like a treasure hunt as we were trying to find a quality image for each leader. It was a lot of fun to find interesting or unique images and then to share them with the other fellows. In a way, I  felt more connected to each leader I spent time searching the web for. This assignment also forced me to think differently about certain leaders whom I could not find many images for. I had to reword my search phrases or approach them from their work as opposed to their name. The biggest hurdle in collecting images was copyright. I must admit that after this assignment I became somewhat disillusioned with copyright the availability of public domain images. By way of example, I was assigned George Washington. As I began to search, I was excited to work on him as I had seen many amazing pieces of art on Washington. However, it turns out, many of the paintings of Washington are not public domain. I felt saddened that such an important figure in US History, a founding father and the first President of the United States, did not belong to the people but instead to some organization or government. Looking beyond the frustrations of copyright, this assignment was very rewarding and it was even more exciting to see the images used in the instructional videos on the 100 Leaders webpage.

Our next task was to do some user testing. A major facet of the 100 Leaders website is the voting component. End users will be able to vote on how well the leader did in five different leadership qualities. The voting functionality is still being worked on and we were tasked with testing it both on a laptop computer and on a mobile device. I had never user tested anything before, hardware or software. It was interesting to think about the various scenarios in which an end user would access the site. First, would they be using a PC or Mac? Second, what operating system would they be using? Third, what browser would then use? Safari? Chrome? Mozilla? Internet Explorer? Directions were written up (how we should vote) and we had to run through them in different scenarios. Luckily, with three of us doing this, we were able to move through the directions fairly quickly. On my MacBook Pro, I have a dual boot with Windows 7, so I was able to test the voting on both OS X and Windows 7. Whenever an issue arose (the webpage froze or had a glitch, links broke, webpages loaded incorrectly, etc.) we took screen shots to document them. The mobile testing was even more interesting as we had to interact with the site on touch screens. In the end, I learned there is a lot to consider and think about when user testing. This is the time the designers want the website to break, not when it is live and taking thousands of hits a day. I must say, it was fun to “try” and break a website.

Our final assignment was to draft a user manual for those who would be editing the 100 Leaders website. I had some experience in writing a manual for a website. During my undergraduate degree, I worked for a museum whose website was being switched over to a new content management system.  My task was to develop the content for the new website and then write a manual on how to manage/edit the new website. In all honesty, I did not entirely enjoy writing the manual. For the 100 Leaders website, I only had to work on a section of the biographical content of a leader. Writing a manual is a mental exercise. The author is trying to explain how to do something to someone who has never done it before. On top of that, the text is static so there can be no conversation between the author and the user. The sections I was tasked with writing the instructions for covered material that would change according to different scenarios. With the help from my mentor, Jannelle Legg, I was able to work through them. While I don’t necessarily want to write manuals, doing so stretched me as an academic and a student.

My time in Education was very rewarding. I am excited for the 100 Leaders project and will return to the site often to see its progress and to use its tools and information. Now on to Public Projects.

Education Division Reflection

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Another four weeks has gone by! I cannot believe our time in the Education Division is already at an end. We’ve had a busy and productive month.

Our first task was to find images and videos of the people featured on the 100 Leaders website. I enjoyed examining the leader gallery, seeing which leaders were chosen by the panel, and debating with the other fellows over leaders that should have been included (like John Adams). We had to find videos or images of the leaders in context or performing some action rather than portraits, so for Martin Luther I used a picture of him nailing the 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenburg. We also had to find images of the leaders that exemplify the five qualities of leadership: articulating a vision; motivating others; making effective decisions; willingness to confront tough issues; and impacting history. It was immensely satisfying to see the images we collected highlighted in the video Chris created on using 100 Leaders in the classroom.

The only problem I ran into with collecting images and video footage was, of course, copyright. While in library school I took an excellent class titled Legal Issues in Information Handling: Copyright and Fair Use in the Digital Age, taught by Dr. James “Kip” Currier. In this class we delved into the problems and consequences of American intellectual property laws, including patents, trademarks, trade secrets, and copyright. It was both frustrating and interesting from an academic standpoint to see how far the hand of copyright can reach into historical work. The fact that we cannot use a decent image of any of the Founding Fathers is ridiculous. The problems I encountered with copyright furthered my opinion that American intellectual property law hinders rather than helps the creation, promotion, and usage of intellectual property.

We also did user and mobile testing on the 100 Leaders site. I first tested the site out on my laptop and didn’t have too many problems. Mobile testing was much more problematic. I used an iPad and had a really difficult problem using the slider. What struck me most was how many changes I saw on the site from one week to the next. The voting box looked completely different after only one week of work. User and mobile testing helped me understand how much work goes into creating an interactive website. Any problem we had with the site was reported to make sure that everyone who will vote on National History Day will have a positive experience and be able to navigate and use the website.

We also worked on creating a user guide for the 100 Leaders site for when we turn the site’s management and maintenance over to National History Day. Between the first year fellows we divided up the content portion of the site. I worked on providing step-by-step instructions for how to edit the biographical information associated with each leader. We had to ensure that our work was consistent in style and that the screenshots were uniform. Prior to starting work on the guide we were able to play around with the back end of the site, since we had previously only used the front end for user and mobile testing.

Working in the Education Division has given me an appreciation for knowing one’s audience, something we’ve been discussing in Clio 1 as of late. The work we did in Research with PressForward and DHNow was catered to an academic audience, but the work we did with 100 Leaders is for a much younger audience of school-aged children. When we were discussing what went into choosing the leaders, determining the qualities that make a leader, how the site was constructed, and mobile and user testing, I was constantly reminded that National History Day and 100 Leaders was designed for children in school to be able to understand and use for their own purposes. Especially with mobile and user testing, we had to think about how children would most likely interact with the sight. We had to consider such things as: would the slider or a dropdown box be more appropriate? Would they have a problem moving the slider? Is it visually and aesthetically appealing enough for that age group?

The Education team is busy with a multiplicity of projects and it’s been fun listening to what everyone is up to at the weekly staff meetings. I also found the lightning talks informative and I would have never known about The American Yawp, the timeline Stephanie told us about, or the religious atlas that Jordan discussed otherwise. The lightning talks were a great way to highlight digital tools and resources for educating all age groups about history.

I’ve really enjoyed my time in the Education Division. I’m looking forward to seeing how the voting turns out on National History Day and I’ll be sure to vote for a few of my favorites!