Creating a Blog Discussion Board

July 20, 2009 7:50 am -- I'm looking forward to a good research day today. The material about the Cataldo mission continues to develop my understanding of the significance of the Catholic missionaries. I also want to look a bit into the history of the Metaline falls area in the extreme NE corner of WA. I'm backpacking up there next weekend and it was first settled in the decade prior to statehood. Also, I want to take a little time analyzing how Bill made his Cataldo pics available online. That should keep me going for the time being. - Phil


July 14, 2009: 10:20 am -- I'm impressed with the quality of blog posts in the last few days. I've read through the blogs to stay abreast of the discussion and I'm posting comments and working on my own sample timeline entry, following my theme of "explorations of the fur trappers." (Phil)

July 11, 2009: 3:35 am -- I ended up getting a new digital camera (a Nikon) and a computer the other night (an HP, sorry Dr. Youngs!!) and am currently using it to research places to visit on the way home from our Portland trip. I also need to brag a bit -- I figured out how to set up a wireless router all by myself and it even WORKS!! But, I digress... I'll set up a FlickR account and work out some way to archive the pictures that I take so that they're available for use. I'll also do a couple of blogs. Anything specific you'd like me to focus on? Any suggestions on places to stop?

July 8, 2009: 10:59 pm -- I discovered how to add the evernote paste option onto toolbars. The link to the page that describes how to do this is here. Basically, you just drag and drop the bright green icon in the middle section of the page that says "Clip to Evernote" onto your internet toolbar. Once you've done that, you can highlight sections of text on webpages and click "Clip to Evernote" or, if you'd rather clip the entire page, leave it all un-highlighted, click "Clip to Evernote,"and in the dialogue box, check "clip whole page." More information to come... Still working on Wordpress - it's a lot like blogger, but just different enough to be slightly confusing...


July 8, 2009: 2:11 Last night in Frontier Washington East we focused on timelines, and Bill entered a list of four criteria for a good timeline entry or "nomination." We need to work on that in our own examples. None I have seen so far include all four. Some have good essays, some have a good Timeline image (Curtis and Marla), but none follow the "rules." Perhaps what we need is basic entries, following the rules, with links to the longer essays and/or images.
-- The two sources should often include scholarly articles. Mention America: History and Life.


July 2, 2009: 3:25 Candice and I are wrapping up our joint exploration of Bee Docs. We have created a demo timeline of early Spokane. We noted that the Demo is quite limited. Further research will be needed.

July 2, 2009: 2:52 -- 1) Do a report time template. (time range, activity, achievement); 2) explore timeline software, especially Bee Docs; 3) score some more images

July 2, 2009: 2:47 -- I think we are making progress. I have to leave very soon, and I want to make certain that we all know what we'll be doing next. Hey, how about putting that information here? Bill

July 2, 2009 -- 2:38 Hey, that's a fantastic idea! Candice and Phil

July 2, 2009 -- Hey guys, let's try this. We have one blog on which we put daily chatty observations. Bill

The Timeline Software Challenge

(3D Timelines by Bee Docs)

We need some software to make good timelines: Here are are features we would like to see:

-- Really good "behaviors" -- Check out the the 3D Bee Docs Timeline Software for an example of a really attractive timeline presentation. From this page you can get more information by clicking "Watch a video of 3d timelines." (By the way they also do a great job of presenting themselves as a company. See the Bee Docs About Us page -- explore, check out their blog. We want to integrate web site and blogging site(s). They do this well.)

Other Features Needed for In-Depth Collaborative Timelining

-- Web 2.0 capabilities so that the timeline can be created collaboratively, say, among students in a class. You could simply use a Google Doc to do this, but it is a bare bones approach.

-- Easy transition from brief entry to still more detail, photos, movies, etc. The HistoryLink timeline does this.

Re: Today

Actually, as my home computer had a slight gigantic meltdown today, I went old school and went to the Cheney library. I was also able to figure out how to post short blogs via my cell phone (as you can see). Anyway, I found a number of interesting books with many potentially useful pictures regarding 1889 Washington and the frontier era in general and I'll bring a couple of them in tomorrow...well, it's midnight, so I suppose "today" is more accurate. Any suggestions as to where I might take a four year old Dell laptop to get it up and running again?

Learning to Use Google Reader -- YouTube

We want to use "aggregator" technology to track changes to our various Blog sites. (At this moment there are a bunch in History 300, Frontier Washington, for example.)

Here is some information on how aggregators work and how to set them up:

1. A YouTube video with a quick overview of Google Reader:

2. A move detailed YouTube video on Google Reader

More to come....

Re: My tenuous use of technology

I completed my first blog. It should be open for everyone to view. Here's the url: 

 http://adventuresofcandice.blogspot.com/

I hope it's okay!! 

The "Crowd-Sourcing" Challenge

Fellow Researchers,

Good discussion today on our various goals and our challenges in finding the technology that will work best for us.

FIRST WE HAVE TO ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS -- right?!

The question I saw us asking today is, how do we create a good on line discussion of our project(s) -- one that allows for easy access and a free-flowing conversation, while allowing us also to accumulate and organize insights and information on set topics.

FIRST ANSWER: We link to a Google Document, as indeed we did.

NEXT CHALLENGE: The document provides a good overview, and we can continue to tweak it as needed. But if we want to go into detail we either need to create a very large cumbersome document or create a series of Google Docs, each one requiring that we create it and create links to it.

NEXT AVENUE OF INQUIRY: While continuing this blog and that original Google Document, let's explore OTHER WAYS of gathering and organizing information. Some possibilities:
-- I suggest that we check out these sites to see whether they would work for us:

* Google Sites
* Evernote
* Wikispaces

* Omeka

* Zoho

* Blackboard

BTW HOW IS THIS BLOG WORKING -- ADD A COMMENT IF YOU'VE READ THIS!

Elements of our "Obelisk"

We are thinking of our research this summer in terms of three levels:

Level 1 ("Flight Control") = priorities, task-sequence

Level 2 = (mastering relevant technologies) blogging, film-making and editing, web design, crowd-sourcing, Text to Speech, Timeline creation

Level 3 = (creating end products) Pacific Northwest Forum on Line, History 300 (Frontier Washington), Bill's Books, Running Start History 110, Frontier Justice, History Department Web Site, Phil's and Candice's Resumes, Jackson Hole Center for Global Affairs

We will update the Obelisk on a Google Document called Flight Control.

Regarding Technology

We have discovered that Safari works better than Mozilla Firefox in viewing and editing blogs on this site.

First Post

As we design this blog, we hope to pool our understanding of key technologies which will allow us to rapidly accomplish our goals.