David Beck’s Blog

Determining the cost of my project has not been very easy. I have read Trevor’s post and Jerry’s post and still am not quite sure what my costs will be. About the only thing I know for sure is that I could do my site for absolutely no money and that it would be a worthy contribution to whatever is out there about the decline of Rome currently, which isn’t much. Before I begin to size up what may be accomplished for $0, $5,000 and $50,000, I would like to share a few more decisions I have made about what will be going on at my site.

1. I have decided to eliminate the discussion board. Quite frankly, teachers don’t have the time or patience to discuss various aspects of Rome. At least not the majority of 7-12 World History teachers. They will still be able to submit lesson plans and that feature will be apart of the site. By eliminating the discussion board, that will save me from having to constantly administer that part of the site and to be frequently backing up. I have seen teachers use discussion boards before, but mainly in pursuit of better classroom management techniques.

2. I would like to add an interactive timeline of the final two hundred years of Roman history. The Digital History website uses one and it is really cool. It uses flash, so I would need a flash expert to help me set that part of the site up. Obviously, if my budget were $0, then the map would have to be thematic in nature and not interactive.

3. The Digital History website gets around copyright laws by using trailers of movies instead of scenes or even clips. The professor in charge of the Digital History site commented to me that it seems strange that thirty seconds of a three minute song can be played while no one that he knows plays 30 seconds of a movie. I may do that as well. Of course if I have a budget of $50,000 then I could maybe see about paying to show two or three minute clips instead.

A Budge of $0

I do not plan on having a database. While a search feature would be nice, I don’t think I want to put so much information on my site that it is overwhelming to either student or teacher. Digital History has a database that you can search for various primary sources. They actually use several different databases to find newspapers, court cases, documents, and books. In the case of the primary documents and movies, someone has clearly cataloged them as they have some metadata accompanying them. In a simple version of my site, this is clearly an expense that I cannot afford, and while it would really enhance the site, it doesn’t make the cut. The next casualty is the interactive timeline. A great idea, but one that I could eliminate without it being too much of a detriment. A static thematic map showing the contraction of the West would work just as well.

Basically the site would be very straight forward with some text, images and video. The images I would use would most likely be artist paintings from before 1907, which would put them in the public domain. I could still very easily post lesson plans that teachers would contribute. I plan on hosting the site on the Spotsy County server, which should not cost me anything. All in all I think my site would do very well on little to no money.

A Budget of $5000

With some money I could probably include the interactive timeline. $5000 should also cover the expense of a part-time web designer. Although that still isn’t very much money. $5000 may also allow me to do more with images.

A Budget of $50,000

I’m pretty sure with this much money I could do everything I want to do with my site and then some. With $50,000 I could have a great interactive timeline. Perhaps include some clips of lectures by Roman experts from around the country. Only at this level of funding would I even consider putting a database into my site to allow students to search primary sources or various forms of multimedia. I could hire a full time web designer/developer who could run the site for me. The money would also allow me to form a committee to oversee the site and to ensure its future preservation. I would have the web designer, another teacher and myself. We would meet every two years to see what needs to be changed, which links have gone dead and to critically evaluate and change the site if need be.

The main thing to remember is that there are so many free sources about Rome on the internet already, that much of my site can be produced very cheaply. The more money I received in funding, then the better the design of the site could be and it would allow me to make it a much better learning module for students and teachers alike.