As a digital studies minor, I have learned about a ton of tools I can use to create digital content. I think many of them can be used to create content for Karina and I’s website.
At the University of Mary Washington, we are lucky to have so many digital resources at our fingertips. In the last few years, they built a big Convergence Center that provides a lot of digital tools for students to check out, assistance with those tools, and spaces to work. It is almost like a library but a little more digital projects focused. Between this center and the library on campus we have plenty of help for our project.
One of the main digital tools I think we should use for our project is Timeline JS because I
enjoy the way it looks and I think that it will be useful to present the information we find about challenges for To Kill a Mockingbird in our area. We have found two bigger cases involving this title, one from the late 60s and the other just a little over a year ago, so I think by going through a timeline a user of our website will be able to understand the story we find easily. We could also set up a StoryMap to talk about where the book has been banned and what is the thread that ties all of the cases all over the place together.
I have had a lot of experience with WordPress and I want our site to be really easy for people to navigate. I agree with the high contrast colors, like black and white make it easy for people to use. We will probably use pages rather than posts because I think post would be hard for users to dig/scroll through. The theme we have set up right now is Ryu, which has those contrasting colors, so I think it could work well. We might switch it up after we add a little bit of content.
There are so many plugins available through WordPress that I think it will be easy to find ways to embed content such as, audio recordings, images, and other things like Timeline JS. Even if we can’t figure it out on our own, we can go visit the Digital Knowledge Center, here at UMW. The DKC is like a tutoring center for digital tools and all the tutor are knowledgeable in WordPress. I have friends who work there and myself have gone there many times before to get help with digital projects for other classes. This is technology resource I think can be really helpful for any related questions we may come across.
For audio recording I plan to just use my the recorder on my phone and save the file on my computer. The Convergence Center has a nice Vocal Booth and audio/video editing set up downstairs. They have things like Photoshop, Audacity, and other editing software you can use in there. I know that I can also edit video on my Macbook with iMovie and some Audio with Garageband.
Our library has a nice, simple high resolution scanner where I can email scans I make to myself. They also have a whole collection of microfiche and microfilm newspapers that we can also send the snips of we think we could use to our emails. In the Convergence Center there is a Digital Archiving Lab, so if we find something that we really would need a super high resolution picture of we can request to have it digitized. If we find an awesome photo or chart we could create a StoryMap of it with the high resolution image.
These are the tools that I know of so far. As the project progresses, I am excited to look through more plugins and other digital tools we might possibly be able to use. This site is going to be a lot of fun to put together. Now to get back to work!