Unit 4: The Evolution of the Digital Web

Here is a list of very prominent digital projects listing chronologically.  I was unable to find a date for Amiens Cathedral and could not open the Lascaux project at all. 

• Oyez
• The Valley of the Shadow Project
• American Memory Project
• Romantic Circles
• Dickinson Archives
• Persepolis Reconstruction
• Hawthorne in Salem
• Hurricane Digital Memory Bank
• Avalon Project
• April 16 Archive
• Digital Karnak

Looking at these projects you can quickly tell that technology has changed from when these first couple of projects started until the later ones.  Oyez project which I think is incredible and gives you a ton of information on all court cases you would need, does not have the depth of the late ones such as Digital Karnak and Hawthorne in Salem.  Although Oyez project does give you links to audios outside of the project Hawthorne and Karnak allow you to use in depth maps right from their page. 

I found a website from the University of Houston that I think would be a good fit to this list, Digital History:

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/

Unit 3: The Multi-Talented Blog

The use of blogs are popping up left and right and it seems with every new blogs come new agenda.  Over the course of history a lot of documentations have come from chronological orders which is something that blogs have. The timeline and chronological orders have been around since the beginning of recorded history.  I think this timeline fashion can be used over time.  The other use that has been used in history is the use of personal encounters, letters, and diaries.  These use have shown a much more dramatic and personal approach.  Certain blogs are taking that approach and can be seen as the same written paper diaries from the past. 

The issue determining the level of authority is a massive one.  Like I stated above anyone can start their own blog at all time.  And in the Introduction of the textbook, Rosenzweig's even talks about the fact that a google search saw an amateur historian was given more merit then Pulitzer-Prize winning.  This is the same thing that most of my high school students would say.  So determining how to determine authority is a big concern of mine. 

Unit 2: Introduction

The Introduction given by Roy Rosenzwieg in his book Digital History was very well put together.  The ideas that he laid out put the entire book into an easy layout.  It was really interesting to me that he addressed the seven qualities of digital media but also talked about the five dangers or hazards as well.  That makes me want to read his material even more.  Each of these components are something that I have thought about and agree with.  If he would not have addressed the dangers right up front I think his reliability would have been in question to me.  As a teacher I believe a lot of people and students tend to fall into the dangers very easy and if we can educate people on these dangers the digital history can grow.                                                                                                                                       

My plan is to produce a final project that will create and develop an online lecture on World history 1945 through 2000.  This time period has a lot of information online and in creating this online lecture it will coordinate and combine some of the most useful information available.  Many times when putting together a lecture series it is hard to weed through the abundance of material available and it can be easy to get lost in gathering material.  This lecture project will be easy for other teachers and students to work through on their own, as well as accurate and reliable. 

The point of online reading is to present information that is easily accessible to the masses.  For me online reading works when it is for short, quick information.  I am a person who likes to underline, and ear mark pages so online text are not my favorite.  I also like to go back and review material which is hard to do online.