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Excellent responses! These are some of the most high-quality responses to the online discussion for the course.
These issues surrounding the concept of the digital divide and public history are, of course, ongoing. I’m curious to see how the concept will change in the future. What will the “digital divide” mean 10 years from now?
Great responses again this week. I agree with you all that augmented reality has the potential to enhance real-world experiences for students and public history audiences. This can take a variety of forms, of course: images, text, audio, etc… Keep an eye out for museums and other public history organizations that make uses of different forms of augmented reality.
For those looking for some smartphone apps that do augmented reality, check out these two:
Field Trip (iOS): https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/field-trip/id567841460?mt=8
Field Trip (Android): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nianticproject.scout&hl=en_CADriftscape (iOS): https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/driftscape-local-guide/id1295310449?mt=8
Driftscape (Android): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.driftscape.driftscape&hl=en_USGreat responses this week and goo discussion about these issues surrounding the use of “big data” in history. I think we highlighted some of the exciting possibilities of distant reading, but (I hope) we also noted the potential risks of assuming too much from this methodology and losing sight of the continued importance of traditional close reading methods.
There is certainly variety when it comes to the quality of Wikipedia articles, so I think using this as a research source should be done with caution. But the same can be said of any source. You should think critically about how the source is produced and what evidence is used to verify the information available in that source.
While Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, that also means that it can be improved by anyone too. This week in lab, you’re going to improve some Wikipedia pages by adding citations and/or correcting flaws in some articles. It should be fun!
You have raised some good points about the relative merits of Wikipedia’s NPOV policy. It does raise questions about how you write “objectively” and eliminate opinion or subject position. As Sarah notes, one weakness might be that the writing offers no conclusions, synthesis, or analysis.
In some ways, we might think of digital history projects as more challenging because they include all of the same academic expectations of a traditional essay assignment, but with the added work of building the digital platform for communicating your research.
Great suggestions for this topic. I too like Zoom! It’s excellent for video conferencing and collaboration. Anyone with a Passport York login can access a basic license for Zoom here:
In reading your suggestions to an ideal search engine for historians, here are some of the features that stood out in your responses:
– A variety of advanced search options
– Quick relevant results
– Filters for subject area and years (both time period and publication dates)
– Access to multiple document typesOn the last point, I think you’ve raised an important issue when thinking about search engines and historical research. A search engine is ultimately limited by the database that it is searching. As we learned in the readings, Google searches an enormous database that consists of a large percentage of the World Wide Web. However, it does not search the entire WWW. Similarly, JSTOR and ProQuest do not search all journals or all primary source documents everywhere in the world. They search large, but limited databases of information.
Wonderful responses this week. You’ve touched on many of the limitations to archival digitization projects.
One that comes to my mind is from this week’s reading. The author noted that digitization is simply one step in a process of digitally archiving a record. The digital object itself cannot be put to use until it has been organized. A random assortment of digital images of documents would hold little meaning for the user. Metadata is one method of organizing large sets of digitized archival materials.
Thanks for all of your forum responses this week. I really appreciate reading your thoughts on podcasts. And thanks, Annabella, for posting a podcast suggestion!
Thanks for all of your responses this week and for your in-class contributions to our discussion of copyright issues in digital history. This is, obviously, a complicated and often confusing issues. I hope that the readings cleared some things up.
Remember to check back with that chapter by Michael Geist as a good reference for understanding fair dealing and Canadian copyright law.
These are some excellent picks for well-designed websites. You highlight a number of key features (colour, layout, clarity, ease-of-use). It seems like audience and intent are critical factors to consider.
To get things started, I’m going to suggest the following website as one with good design:
Medium is a Web publishing platform for writers. It is kind of like a magazine. Some have described it as YouTube for writing. Others describe it as a blogging platform.
The focus of the platform is reading and writing and it is reflected in the design. Here are a couple features of the design that stand out:
1. Distraction-free reading. When you click through to an article on Medium, you’ll notice that the text is front and center: black text with a clean, readable serif typeface with no distracting sidebars.
2. Collaborative reading. When you sign up for a user account, you can highlight and annotate the text and share this with other readers. When reading, you can see how many people flagged particular passages and what they thought about it.
3. Social sharing. This is a common feature on blogging platforms, but it’s worth mentioning here. The only thing that stays in the margins of an article on Medium is the panel for social media sharing. Social media plays an enormous role in driving traffic to websites. Few Web users navigate directly to a website to browse around. They more often arrive via a search query or a link shared on a social media network (Facebook, Twitter).
That’s my pick. What’s yours?
Wonderful responses all around to this discussion question. Thanks to everyone for their contributions.
After reading your responses, here are the main points that stood out to me. You believe a good history website should have the following qualities:
1. Efficiency
2. Accessibility
3. Usability
4. AccuracyThere were many more points that you all made, of course. Please keep these in mind as you embark on creating websites for this course.
