Assignments

ASSIGNMENTS

Blogging (20%)

Each student will be responsible for maintaining a personal blog using WordPress. As described in the syllabus, students blog about their work for the course, the development of their major projects, and their reflections on the course readings.

Before the second class go to WordPress and create an account and a blog. You may choose any title you like but I strongly recommend you select something that is both catchy and professional. Post an introductory message about yourself and then send me the URL of your blog so that I can add you to the course blogroll.

I will use student blogs as a place from which to begin our in class discussion. These blog posts should be at least 300 words, and are due on Monday for the week in question. Posts for all weeks are required, unless otherwise noted.

Attendance and Class Participation (20%)

Students should come to class prepared to engage with the material and their fellow students. Active participation in class discussion and exercises will serve as the minimum necessary to receive a passing grade for this portion of the course.

Evernote Shared Notebook (10%)

Evernote is a set of software tools for taking and organizing notes and resources. It is available in a free version for both Windows or Mac, and offers additional features for a paid subscription. It is flexible and allows you to synchronize work between your computers, tablets, smart phones, and other mobile devices.

You will use Evernote for note taking, research organization, and drafting content for blog posts and your web exhibit.

  1. Create an account (free) at http://www.evernote.com.
  2. Download Evernote for your computer and other devices.
  3. Create a public notebook and post the link on your blog.
  4. Use Evernote to gather information for your research for blog posts, metadata, and your web exhibit.
    1. Create a To Do List to keep track of tasks and things you want to look for
    2. Use Evernote’s Web Clipper to capture blogs, webpages, and other content.
    3. Include digital photographs or video you take from your phone or camera
    4. Add PDFs of secondary source articles
    5. Use Evernote to gather research sources and take notes for your work.
    6. Use Evernote to start writing blog posts, item descriptions, and web exhibit text.
  5. Use Evernote’s tags and other systems to organize your research
  6. Use Evernote to create first drafts of your blog and exhibit text
  7. Discuss the process of digital notetaking in class and in a blog post (Week 14). Try to make this more than a review of Evernote: talk about how digital notetaking helped, hindered, and changed the way that you did research on the project.

Digital Exhibit proposal (10%): Due February 27

This is a description of your topic for your digital exhibit on Connecticut and the First World War for the Connecticut State Library Commemoration site.  Your proposal must include:

  1. General topic of the exhibit
  2. How it fits into larger history of topic, place or time.
  3. How you are approaching the topic.
  4. What secondary sources you plan to use
  5. What steps  you need to take in order to complete the exhibit.

Digital Collection (20%)

This will be a collection of primary sources on your research topic that will be placed in an Omeka installation on the library’s server.  The sources should be of interest to both scholars and the general public.  Primary sources can include letters, photographs, images of physical objects, newspaper articles, etc.

Your collection must include the following

  • at least 20 distinct items
  • metadata using the Dublin Core metadata standard
  • the permission status of each item

Digital Exhibit (20%)

Using materials you have collected in your archive, build an online exhibit using Omeka to describe and contextualize your topic.

Here are some tips on creating an Omeka Exhibit

Here is a worksheet to help plan the exhibit:  omekaexhibitworksheet

Your exhibit must contain:

  • Original text that tells both a factual and interpretive story
  • Approximately 3500-5000 words of text, including an introduction, credits, and content pages. You should figure on roughly 250 per exhibit page.
  • Bibliography of Secondary Sources

You may also include additional material such as web links, timelines, or maps.

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