A brave first step into the future of interactive education.
I took this course to challenge myself and to create my own unique college experience. I believe that courses like this will eventually become a common feature of classrooms. Historical or contemporary subjects are commonly sourced through the internet now, but colleges have not yet put enough emphasis on the importance of these mediums. Research projects like this can become tools for future researchers and students. I have used a few digitized histories for my own research projects and without them some of my research would have been impossible.
This course presents a unique challenge for students at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. No students have taken a course like this and the staff is unsure about how to support us. Through my own projects on campus, I have become more familiar with the resources available and the right people to contact. I have some familiarity with WordPress customization, video editing, audio sampling, and archival research.
The team at our school has been very responsive. Within an e-mail or two, I was able to track down a librarian on campus who was passionate about book censorship. She actively follows the developments in St. Mary’s County and is willing to meet with me and Price. The challenge is selecting the right book as our case and how to effectively tackle it. It is not as simple as selecting a book and hoping for the best. Some cases can have minimal evidence that results in poorly supported research. Our case should be a local problem with a robust amount of information.
I have developed a general idea of tools available for research and how I would like to present my case, but I am still struggling with selecting a specific case. I think after our meeting with the librarian we will have a better idea of how to tackle this project. We have a meeting scheduled for Wednesday at 3:45pm and I am currently developing the questions to guide our meeting. However, I also hope that she will provide us with information that I did not know we needed.
Thus far, I found some interesting challenges that were recorded at the St. Mary’s County public forum. Reddit can sometimes be a source of unique information that leads to useful primary sources. People post things they are passionate about, and book censorship is a lightning rod for debate. The links below are some digital history tools that I have used, as well as the recorded public appeal I found.
Digital History tools
http://codicemendoza.inah.gob.mx/html/acerca.php?lang=english
Public appeal video
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