Digital Humanities – Spring 2018

If you could make a game about anything that we have done so far in this class with unlimited time and resources, what would it be?

I think that if I had unlimited time and resources, I would make a game about the 1919 fire. I know that my group is making a game based off of the fire for this portion of the course, but since we only have three weeks and not too many resources, that is why I would select the same topic to make my dream game. I would implement VR into the game so people would really feel like they are in the building in the fire. If it were really a dream game, I would get an actual building that resembles the normal school, and set it up the exact same as the school used to be. Then people could use AR goggles, or some kind of technology that allows them to walk through the building and it would seem as if it was actually on fire and they had to escape, or find how the fire was started/ who started it. Though this version of the game would be much more expensive and time consuming, and wouldn’t be as accessible because people would actually have to drive to the building, I believe that the experience would definitely make it all worth it!

 

Megan Bender

Grace A. Mapps’s birthdate is unknown, but is believed to have been born in New Jersey in 1835. She was a woman who was highly educated for her time and possibly the first African-American woman to ever graduate from college. She graduated from New York Central College in McGrawville in 1852. She became a teacher and was the principal for the Institute of Colored Youth. she died in 1891 from what is thought to have been starvation. She was also a beautiful poet.

David Rosell Jr. was an African-American man born in New Hampshire in 1838. He was also a student at New York Central College in McGrawville, New York. He studied in both the United states and Germany in order to become a physician. He served as a surgeon during the Civil War. After the war, he continued his work as a surgeon in Philadelphia until his death at the age of 40. There is no record of an obituary or cause of death for David Rosell. It is said that both he and his father, David Rosell Sr., made significant contributions to the colored race.

Seen below is a photo of the map we created of Rosell and Mapps’s places of origin and their final residences. As you can see, they ended up in pretty close proximity in Philadelphia and New Jersey. The stars represent the places of origin and the “X” marks represent the final residences. It is interesting to see that these two African Americans who had a major impact on the colored community lived relatively close to each other.

 

The lost museum is a virtual reality version of P.T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York City. The website is greatly interactive as it allows it visitors to solve the mystery and explore the classroom all while visiting the website. It’s really a great thing to have for people who are interested int he topic, but do not have the opportunity to make the trip to the actual museum.

Digital mapping has both its positive and negative qualities. It grants access to information to people who might not have the physical opportunity to visit the physical museum. Not only does digital mapping make it easier for people from far away to take a look, it also ensures that the information will be accessible for years. Putting it out there on the internet, while maybe only photographs and typed words, it creates an archive that cant be lost due to decay. A negative of digital mapping is the desensitization toward a subject due to the physical divide. Being in the presence of history is a very different experience than simply viewing it on your computer screen. While this is something unfortunate about digital mapping, there are definitely more benefits and positives associated with digital mapping than there are negatives.

 

Grace Staudt

The Lost Museum is a virtual reality of P.T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York City. This interactive website  showed me a realistic perspective of the mid-19^th century. Many people think that this museum burned down due to a fire, but there are many different theories and controversies about this idea. I thought that this website was extremely interesting based on its use of 3-D visualizations as a tool for learning and teaching. Essentially, I am a visual learner which is why I enjoyed my experience with this source of technology. This source was an extremely convenient way to successfully learn about this ancient time period.  I think that this form of technology is definitely an extremely productive way for learning. I would much rather use technology as a source of information, rather than reading a book. The Lost Museum recreated an ancient time period, which was extremely cool. Ultimately, I think that this tool should be shared with all students and teachers.

The Lost Museum is referring to P.T Barnums American Museum in New York City during the mid 19th century in antebellum United States. The Lost Museum is 3-D virtual museum of the American Museum which questionably burned down due to a fire. Technology now that can let people see what a museum looked like many years ago and make it feel as if you’re in the museum is a great tool. It’s a great tool for learning and keeping people interested in the topic if they aren’t that into it. These virtual museums spark my interest a lot more than just reading a book about it which would turn a lot of people away from learning more. As technology gets better and better were going to be able to recreate lost artifact and civilizations. To see these important ancient and be able to explore them thousands of years later would be incredible and huge step to learning more about these people. 

While I was exploring the Lost Museum, I was really excited to see how interactive this site was. When you first go to the website, you get to see an introductory video about the Lost Museum and what it actually is. You can explore the museum, solve the mystery, search the archive, and visit the classroom all while on this site. This website is actually really awesome, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to explore it.

As for the blog question: digital mapping makes historical facts more accessible. I really like the idea of a public digital history museum because of how universal it is. For people who do not live in proximity of the materials the museum actually has, it makes these materials available to a population that they were not once. By digitizing artifacts, we also are making them available for time to come. What I mean by this is that some historical artifacts will not be around in another hundred years just due to the fact that they are already old and decaying in a sense. Paper in particular will not always be accessible in the physical form. Digitized materials and artifacts make it so we are able to access the material even if there is no longer a physical version of what we are seeing. This is helpful in natural disaster cases as well as cases of fire or water damage. The materials will always be able to be viewed.

The only negative takeaway is the desensitization of the physical materials. It is much more humbling to be able to physically touch or hold a piece of history, or to physically see the spot where something occurred. By having this online, the physical component is no longer the forefront affect. In the case of mapping however, I do not believe this is a negative issue. In my opinion, it makes the locations more accessible because you are able to track movement patterns across the globe, across the nation, across continents- you are able to visualize the spatial component that is history. Without the visualization, patterns can be harder to detect.

I would be interested in incorporating digital mapping in my future classrooms (especially upper level high school) in order to make canonical literature newer, fresher, and more accessible for students. I plan on teaching in an urban area (like NYC) where many of my students come from diverse backgrounds, but have not necessarily been too many places where the history has occurred. This would make the literature and activities more relatable for students if they were able to map the author or characters within a book on a real life actual map. I definitely do not feel one hundred percent comfortable with digital mapping myself, but now I at least know one resource (Dr. Moranda) and a few websites to go towards for further practice and help.

-Emily Hatch