CUIN 6397 - Practicum in IT, Summer 2006

Two interesting topics are open for discussion this week as part of our class exploration.

First, the following website displays an online tour of Sommerville, Massachusetts that has many similarities to the Third Ward Online Tour we are helping develop. Take a look at: http://www.somervillecdc.org/communitymap/






















And then post a comment in which you discuss your reaction to this resource and talk about what is the same as our site, what's different, what new ideas does this bring up, can we use this site to help us in our own desing, etc.

Secondly, you will see that there are two comments to the last posting from Sensen, the Chinese student we discussed earlier. It might be interesting to post some additional comments that revolve around whether it's possible to collaborate with interesting people who live on the other side of the planet. From Sensen's last message, it seems that we have all been invited to a festival in China. But since most of us probably can't make it this summer, perhaps we could ask Sensen to send us some pictures so that we can participate virtually. What else do you think we could do to facilitate a collaboration between us?

CUIN 6397 - Practicum in IT, Summer 2006

As part of the development of the Dawn Installation Project, our class has been posting messages about our work and sharing ideas about some of the content that will be used in the project as well as some of the technology tools we're using--like this blog.

Recently, I recieved an email message from a university student in China who is using blogging as a method of online educational communication in courses at Tianjin Foreign Studies University--which I visited in 2002.


Although the student sees the educational value of blogs, as evidenced by the statement:

"I believe the wide application of weblogs on online learning in China will be more and more popular and will attach great value to the development of Internet-based education;" I was asked to comment on the following:

"What methods can we use to guarantee that the topics students discuss are only concerning the academic knowledge? I found in many academic weblogs, the result of the students' discussion has nothing to do with the initial academic topics."

Since one of the reasons we started this blog was to see how students and teachers can use these kinds of online comunication tools as part of our course, I thought it might be helpful if each of us in could try to answer the student's question from our own perspective.

Please post a reply to this message in which you discuss your ideas and then we can send the student our comments--and also perhaps get her (or him) to contribute to our blog!

CUIN 6397 - Practicum in IT, Summer 2006

During this July 4th holiday break, participants in our course at the Universitry of Houston are at the half-way point in the summer semester. Students and community partners are actively engaged in discussion and modification of the components they are developing for the Third Ward Online Tour. It seems appropriate at this time to try to document some of this process and engage in an online discussion regarding where we are and where we should be going.

So, please add a comment to this post in which you describe any issues that have arisen during your work on this project and ask any questions you have that you would like addressed when we return to class next week.

CUIN 6397 - Practicum in IT, Summer 2006


In Class 4 (on June 20th), we participated in an oral history workshop that included a discussion by UH history professor, Dr. Joe Pratt. Dr. Pratt is the editor of the Houston Review of History and Culture, and workshop participants received two issues of this journal.

For this discussion, you are being asked to read at least one article in the journal that you feel has some relationship to the work you're doing on the Dawn Installation project.

Then, post a comment in which you describe the material you read (be sure to include the name of the article you selected, which issue it was in, who wrote it, what the main themes were, etc.) and discuss how what you learned from the article might be used in the design and development of the project component you are working on this summer.

Pachyderm continued...6.21.06

Hello everyone,

Thank you all for your comments re. Pachyderm issues etc. Please keep posting about Pachyderm.

Also, I wanted to let you know that it is best to write your text in MS Word or Wordpad, then cut/copy and paste it into Pachyderm templates. Do not author text in Pachyderm because you might lose it when previewing. This warning was just given to me by one of the Pachyderm developers. Some people have been having problems with this.

We are working on the issue of not being able to preview Pachyderm templates from the CITE lab. We are not sure yet why this is happening, and I will let you know when I find out. Until then, if you are working on your Pachyderm templates from the school, click on the "publish" button rather than the "preview" button to see your work. It just takes a little longer to publish the templates than preview them.

If you have any questions about any of this please reply to this post or email me. Thank you!!!!

Pachyderm Issues

Hi everyone,

I am posting to find out how you are all doing with using Pachyderm. Has anyone had problems previewing their pages from home?

I spoke to Rachel (my contact who is helping us with Pachyderm) and she wasn't sure why the majority of the class wasn't able to preview their Pachyderm pages last Tuesday night. She said the previewing problem is random. All templates have that problem from time to time.

One option is to "publish" the page, which is an option on your templates. That way you will be able to see what you have authored in Pachyderm.

Please reply to this messages with any information about how you are doing with using Pachyderm. Your feedback will be helpful for me so that I can keep relaying it back to Rachel.

Thank you!
anne

CUIN 6397 - Practicum in IT, Summer 2006



Oral History and Blog Assignment

In Class 4 (on June 20th), we will be participating in an oral history workshop. We would like you to be familiar with the concept of oral history before you come to class on the 20th. Please research the term "oral history" however you would like and post a comment that includes:

1. A definition of oral history

2. Answer the question: Who is the oral historian in your family or what personal experience you have with oral history? For example, Brian's personal experience with oral history was his grandma, who was a first generation immigrant from Lithuania who could not read or write english. Her contribution to the family's legacy was many stories of the struggles she went through and how there was once a town in Lithuania that was the origin of the Plankis family name and it was a thriving town until Germany invaded in 1915 in WWI and razed it to the ground.

3. One or more of the following:

Links to additional resources (such as websites, titles of books, movies, journal articles, etc.) that you found describing oral history that other people can examine.

Before you post your comment on the blog, be sure to read other people's comments to make sure you are not posting a duplicate resource.