His 407/Doc 407/ His 606: Project #1 Learning the Basics

His 407/Doc 407/ His 606: Project #1-- Learning the Basics

Fall 2010

Due date: In class, Wednesday, October 27

Please bring your finished project on your flash drive, so it can then be copied into our course folder in Digital Workshop #2.

Assignment:

Create a simple web-based project that tells about the history of women in the Civil War.

Also write a 2-3 page overview that explains the choices you made in designing the project.

This is an assignment intended, as the title indicates, to get you comfortable with the basics involved in doing history on the web. With that in mind, I want you to restrain the scope of the project—i.e. keep it small—and just make sure the following minimal elements are included:

*at least 2 images

*at least 2 documents (or portions of 2 documents)

Where can you find these items?

The images are available for download from the following Library of Congress site:

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/cwp/

Be sure to search for both “women” and “woman.” You might also try related words such as “nurse,” “lady,” “girl,” etc.

The documents have been transcribed and are in the file labeled “cwletters” on the X network in Digital Workshop #2. (Be sure to convert them to plain text before marking up in html!)

In addition, to help you understand the context behind these images and letters, I have included on the X network a copy of Harriet Sigerman, “An Unfinished Battle, 1848-1865,” in Nancy Cott, ed., No Small Courage: A History of Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). Read this to help you write any contextual material for your site.

Additional Guidelines:

The idea here is to squeeze a lot out of a little. You can focus on one small aspect of women’s Civil War lives – or on some theme that cuts across their experiences. It is up to you. Strive to create a site that:

*tells its story in a way that cannot be done in traditional mediums, such as an article or a book

*exploist some of the unique qualities of this technology that we have discussed

this semester: nonlinearity, interactivity, accessibility, its visual nature

*has a cohesive purpose or message

*demonstrates an effective “fit” between its purpose and design

These first projects should be simple—just images and text, not a lot of bells and whistles. In each subsequent project you will work with more advanced web capabilities.