Project reflection

I'm nearly done with the project: all I have to do is continually check the responses to the proposal form, update the project page, and communicate with students up until the project is wrapped up at the end of the school year (currently, a little under a week from now). I am very happy about my project, and proud of it: I worked very hard to set it up and I've been working hard to keep improving it and working with others on making it as useful and as accessible as possible.

The biggest challenge was external: as the website is necessarily involved in every single other project, I needed to constantly adjust and accommodate a large group of people, and my plans had to bend and change to fit what was required from me. Despite this, I feel that my goals have been achieved, and I hope that others feel the same.

It was really interesting developing the site. I have used Wix before, for a different project that ultimately did not work out, and it was really gratifying to be able to transfer the skills I gained from that project to a project that was successful (to my mind). Many of the values of DH are ingrained in the web design, and I feel that I mostly had to adapt my website skills to the specific purpose of essentially creating a space for others to share information. In one of the sources I read prior to the project, I learned a little about what my goals for the site design should look like. This is a quote from the analysis I wrote:

"...interpretative digital history must have a heavy focus in the design and organization of the site as it is an integral part of the history itself—it shapes, emphasizes, or guides interpretation, and so digital history has an inherent pedagogical quality."

In the source, DH site design values are said to include "many mediums as "scaffolds", organization used to guide interpretation, engagement/interactivity". While I can't account for the ways in which individual students incorporated these values in creating their projects, I feel that I incorporated these in other pages, especially when it came to engagement and interactivity.

I don't actually think I would do anything differently. Maybe I would have approached Ms. Smith earlier so that we could have avoided confusion over the two different sites, transferring ownership/domain, etc. I would have absolutely chosen the same topic, approach, design, and execution. I think the project would have improved if we had been able to work on it in school together: communication would have improved and it would have been much easier to work through issues and get things done in a more organized fashion.

I think that I did a good job communicating and collaborating, though I designed the site almost entirely by myself: I set up every page (home, about, contact, blog, projects, forum, and members) and then filled those pages with descriptions, links, and images. The only pieces of the project that I did not have a hand in were the blog posts, and the individual project pages beyond the initial duplication of them. However, I worked very closely with Ms. Smith on it--talking about communication with students, organization and design ideas, etc.--and the site would not be the same without those conversations. I also communicated with students via email and google meet announcements, and have corresponded with a few on specifics.

What I gained most from this experience was the necessity of letting go of my control a little bit. If I could have, I absolutely would have literally asked everyone to send me their projects so I could upload them because I wanted to control how the site looked, the uniformity and crispness of it. It felt messy to let people change it however they wanted, even if they only had a little bit of space to change it in. Ultimately, of course, the site was made for the students to edit and use, and letting go of control and embracing chaos was freeing in a way.

Though someone did try to add a Billie Eilish merch store... which made me glad that only Smith and I have the power to publish the site.

Though I can't speak to how this project changed my view of history very well, as I didn't do any history, I can say with confidence that watching everyone work on their projects and adapt them to the digital format did change my perception of how history can be done. I now believe digital history is a new way to explore and interact with our knowledge of the past, and provides a new set of glasses through which to view and understand it.