Feb 23 response
The meeting with Jeremy last Wednesday was really helpful and I realized that there are tons of features on WordPress that are pretty easy to manipulate once I have been made aware of them. I am excited to know that via dreamhost.com, I can edit the CSS/HTML on a built-it web-based FTP program, which seems to make things more manageable. I have been playing around with my site a little bit, just trying to get a feel for the different codes. I really appreciate the responses from the class about my project on Germany. I’m really excited about it and found out that at GW next week my professor who I traveled with to Berlin has invited several of the officials we met in Berlin over the summer, so hopefully I’ll be able to get off work and attend the symposium on the memorialization of the Berlin Wall to reinvigorate my love for the topic and give me fresh ideas for my site! WordPress has so many templates … it’s hard to choose one for my site! Hopefully I will be able to familiarize myself with HTML/CSS to fuse some designs together and come up with a template most suitable for my site. I am looking forward to play around with Omeka tonight to see how the program compares to WordPress.
Feb 16 response
I have been reading through WordPress and am still a little confused as to whether or not it can be used as a vehicle for developing the web site or if it is actually just the blog program. I am curious to learn more about it in class this evening and see how WorldPress differs from Omeka. For my web site, my strategy and scope keeps evolving, and it’s exciting to know that the possibilities are literally endless when it comes to links and content. A really important question that the strategy and scope should answer is about the the contribution the web site will make to historical inquiry and understanding. Ultimately in the long run, I hope that my project will be able to shed light on how countries deal with the past and allow other countries to learn what to do and what not to do from Germany’s own experiences. I will be expanding on this point in my strategy and scope. I have not visited these issues of politics and memory and history in Berlin in depth since my trip there in May 2008, so I have been pulling out my notes and re-exploring the pamphlets and postcards I have saved from the trip and the resarch I conducted as an assistant to my professor. This project is helping me look at these materials in a new lens and challenging me to take such issues of space and history and make them virutally accessible. I want to learn how to attach RSS feeds to my web site as well because just over the last couple of days I already spotted several articles in the Post that relate directly to my topic. I can share them here if you all would like to check them out!
Auschwitz plans put on display in Berlin http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/16/AR2009021600614.html
Berlin artists being evicted from famous commune
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021300917.html
discount for dreamhost.com
As I was signing up for dreamhost.com for the full year, I just came across a promo code that knocks off 97 bucks! This may be helpful to some of you: (http://www.dreamhost-promo-code.net/).
Feb 09 readings
Although last week’s readings were more invigorating from an historical discussion standpoint , the exercises in Meyers’ book helped me understand the fundamentals of CSS. Just sifting through the exercises, one can see how much variety can be added to a web site or a series of sites. Because there are so many rules to writing CSS, I am hoping that with a lot of practice and trial and error, I will within the next weeks become familiar enough with the coding system to be able to look at Notepad and troubleshoot (i.e., when a line is missing an h1 or has an unclosed curly bracket). I have been trying to brainstorm how I can use these tips for my own web site, but the endless possibilities for web site design are a bit overwhelming. I understand the importance of transmitting information through an aesthetically pleasing medium, and I notice that I have been much more cognizant of the stylistics and layout of different web sites that I have been visiting in the last couple of weeks. Before this course, I never new what a source code was, so to be able to view the language that lies behind the scenes gives me more appreciation for the effort that goes into creating these sites.
Feb 02 readings
Not having ever read about the nature of comics, or even glanced at a comic strip in years, I found Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics engaging and provocative. I was particularly impressed by his ability to relay the information is such an innovative and easy-to-follow format. I served as a docent for the University of Virginia Art Museum and the program director trained us in the concept of visual literacy, or how people learn about, define, and perceive art, and agreed with McCloud’s explanation of the concepts of “closure” and “the gutter.” It is mind-boggling to consider just how much our personal experiences and assumptions trigger what we end up seeing or not seeing in images that stand before us. When working with the elementary aged students at the Museum, for instance, I would ask students to imagine themselves to be a young boy sitting inside of a painting that was done during the Romantic era. I asked the students to write a verbal postcard to their parents, describing what they saw, how they felt, what sounds they heard, etc. The students began by describing what was visible to them in the painting, then their imaginations drove them to fill in any “missing” gaps with creative responses, actually bringing a sense of closure to the incomplete image in front of them. Another example of closure and the gutter that came to mind was how Jamal, the protagonist in the recent film “Slumdog Millionaire,” knew the answers to the game show questions not because he had learned them in a formal sense via an exam or the like, but because of his very traumatic experiences.
In designing my website for this course, I will try to keep in mind McCloud’s concept of amplification through simplification (30), as I myself find too many links or “resources” on one particular site overwhelming and intimidating. On that note, the Smithsonian website “America on the Move” strikes a fine balance between form and content, and its use of the second person to set the stage for the web site user embraces the concept of experiential learning, inviting the user to venture into the world of the past. (For example: “You see the 1903 Winton, the first car to cross the country, and the two men and a dog who completed the journey. The car is set on a raised platform, loaded with the kinds of stuff that H. Nelson Jackson and Sewall Crocker took with them on the trip. The car is stuck in a gully, and the men are using a block and tackle to get out of their predicament. Bud the dog waits quietly in encouragement.”) CUNY’s “Lost Museum” web site also employs this interactive concept, as the characters of the past come alive and welcome students to help solve one of history’s mysteries. Of all the sites, I preferred “A More Perfect Union,” as my very right-brained mental framework found the web site’s simplistic chronological order, touching black and white images, and organized themes, like “Immigration,” “Removal,” “Internment,” etc., more approachable than the others.
As a facilitator for a professional leadership development conference, I took a group of high school students to New York City’s Tenement Museum in 2006. Perhaps it was the combination of the unenthusiastic tour guide, the students’ discomfort in the tight quarters, and the summer humidity, but the experience, which had potential to be quite exciting and extraordinary, turned out to be unusually disappointing. Looking at the creative and interactive nature of the web site, this is one of the very rare instances in which I would actually recommend saving the trip to the Tenement Museum and take advantage of the lesson plans, primary sources, photograph exhibits, and all of the other resources available online. In this case, I would say that the actual Tenement Museum is supplemental to the web site, which is quite an accomplishment on behalf of the creators of the site!
During dinner the other night, one of my friends was trying to describe the cultural tensions between the Hahn Chinese and the Mongolian populations within and outside of China. I was having trouble visualizing Inner and Outer Mongolia, and she got up and led me to the map on her wall. “Here, let me just show what I mean,” she said, as she traced her fingers along the region’s boundaries. Instantaneously I understood through this geographic visualization what my mind had failed to comprehend fully through words, much like Staley describes in his work (48). That visualization can serve as a supplement to written history is one of the many estimable principles that Dan Staley so eloquently touches upon in his book, Computers, Visualization, and History. I admire Staley’s ability to trace reasons for and empathize with historians’ traditional prose-based narrative, and agree that the coexistence of imagery and words can offer students with a more holistic learning experience. In writing my MA thesis on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, tackling the issue of simultaneity in the historical narrative proved to be problematic, as so much happened in the world in 1979 that affected the Soviet decision to invade Afghanistan, including the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Iran hostage crisis, and America’s relations with other countries in the Third World. I had difficulty ordering and describing concisely all of these factors and events, when all of them affected the topic on which I focused. Staley notes that in both the written and visual form, the way by which an historian reconstructs the past inevitably affects the narrative, even down to the words we choose and the sentences we put together. This statement, as well as McCloud’s point that everything an artist puts forth is deliberate, reminds me that I must be cognizant of who my audience is and what I wish for the audience to take away from my web site when creating the content and style.
Also, I have done a bit of research on history, memory, and politics and how other countries have been dealing with the past, so I am curious to hear from Staley how other countries have used visualization and interactive media to come to terms with traumatic histories and help younger generations move forward.
With McCloud’s ideology in mind (“… and all that’s needed is the desire to be heard, the will to learn, and the ability to see …”), I hope that this class will help me reverse the “sad inability to communicate directly from mind to mind” and help others and myself take away lessons from history in ways previously deemed impossible.
