David Beck’s Blog

During my presentation several questions were asked of me about my site. Two questions in particular focused on whether I should include aspects of the Byzantine Empire into my site and also explain what happened to Europe after the fall of Rome and its’ descent into the Dark Ages. A third question was whether I would include scholarly articles for teachers coming to the site. I would like to address these questions and to see if anyone in class has any feelings about the very focused and limited scope of my site.

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE
While it is true that this was in fact a continuation of the Roman Empire, I am focusing solely on the Western Empire and do not wish to confuse the reader or user with a complex answer.  The purpose of the site is to give a very simple and straightforward account of the fall of the Western Roman Empire.  I think it will be clear to most readers that the Eastern and Western halves of the Empire had been going their separate ways for centuries and this different way of life hurt the West much more than the East.  If someone would like to explore the Byzantine Empire more than they should feel free, it just won’t happen on my site.  This does not preclude the possibility of linking other sites about the Byzantines to my site.

THE DARK AGES
The way I envision the site is strictly to explain to kids in grades 7-12 why the Western Roman Empire collapsed. I hope to show them that the theories historians have developed did not happen overnight, but took hundreds of years of decline before they finally fractured the Empire permanently.  Obviously it is hard to explain how Rome fell and not explain what happened to it after the last Western Roman Emperor was removed.  However, I will try to keep the epilogue to the events of my website as brief as possible.  There are many good websites that detail the Dark Ages and Medieval Europe that students can peruse.  Especially after reading the articles on preservation, I do not want to create more work for myself in the future than is necessary to keep my site going.  By keeping the site focused solely on the causes of Rome’s decline, I hope to have an informative and cohesive website.

SCHOLARLY PAPERS FOR VISITORS WHO ARE TEACHER
At first this idea appealed to me.  However, the fact is, you don’t have to read scholarly articles to be able to teach middle schoolers.  While I welcome teachers to my site to read and even exchange teaching strategies and ideas, I do not think putting journal articles on the site would be very wise, especially when it comes time to back those things up and dealing with copyright issues.  There are other sites on the web for those teachers really wanting to know all the facts about the fall of Rome.  Although I intend to have teachers come to the site, I imagine the users to be mainly students using this in the classroom.

As you can see, my site is really going to be limited to strictly the fall of the Western Roman Empire.  Any student or teacher wanting to know more would have to consult another site.  Clearly, my site is in direct response to the cluttered and ugly site put out by Roman-Empire.net.  Just like the Egyptian site from the British Museum, I hope by simplifying my topic and keeping it within the bounds of the Standards of Learning, I can create a site that is educationally stimulating and fun for students without getting away from the purpose for why I designed it in the first place.

Although copyright law can be a very complex issue, I actually found the articles by Dr. Cohen and the other one by Lawrence Lessig to be very interesting. The original copyright law was a very simple and straightforward law. It was also a very balanced law. It protected the rights of the artists for a specified period of time, but allowed the material to become part of the public domain after a period of, at the most, 28 years. The law today is much more complicated, although one must acknowledge that the world of copyright is much more complex too, especially when one factors in that individuals and corporations are creating properties that they want to control at all costs. As Lessig points out in his chapter on property rights, the original checks and balances that made copyright laws fair for almost everyone have been pushed aside. What we now have is a law that is unbalanced and does not take into account the needs of the “commons”.

In some ways, I think current copyrights laws exist to circumvent the death tax and other inheritance tax laws. Mark Twain felt that copyright should extend through his grandchildren’s generation. Why? His grandchildern had nothing to do with Twain’s artistic creations. Why should that person or persons, perhaps born long after the book, song, or poem was produce get to participate in the control and use of that creation? People who have been dead for many years are able, thanks to the changes in copyright laws, to make more money now than they did when they were alive. Just look at Elvis Presley as a prime example. His ex-wife and daughter have inherited much more money due to his death than they could have ever dreamed of if were still alive. Is this fair? No, and it demonstrates another way the government has increased the power and control it has over every facet of life in America. It also demonstrates how Lisa Marie and Priscilla have access to a steady stream of money that is not being taxed the same as if Elvis left them the same amount in his will.

Copyright protections for individuals now are automatic for life plus fifty years. For corporations, it is 95 years. Modern age marketing is most responsible for this madness. The internet has not helped either. When I initially thought about my project, I thought I would be safe from copyright licenses because anything dealing with Ancient Rome is so old that it is certainly in the public domain. And while most of my site will have no problems, there is one aspect of my site that may cause me problems.

As I explained last week, there will be four categories one can choose from to explain the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Emperors, Army, Economy, and Moral Decay are the four main topics. I planned on then having several additional screens that will weave the user through the most salient points under each category. There will be some written text, primary sources and I wanted to also embed little clips of video within the page. This is where I will run into problems. I will have to ask for permission to use the video clips, unless I shoot the videos myself. (This is not as crazy as it may seem, my undergraduate degree is in communications and I wanted to be a documentary filmmaker when I was in college.) However, I doubt I have the time or resources to do that project myself. If I do decide to ask for videos, I face the following choices. Obviously, I could first approach the History Channel about using clips from their videos, but I’m sure they will ask for a very steep price. They may give me a break since my site is purely educational and maybe I could convince them it would be a great ad for their History Channel store. Another site that lets teachers download videos in the classroom is United Streaming. However, they are owned by Discovery Education and from what I gather are quite protective of anyone using their videos. That’s probably why the videos on United Streaming are terrible for the most part.

I have to think that somewhere out there, someone has done a video on Rome and would be willing to let me use segments of it for free. I even saw on www.Roman-Empire.net that the webmaster has simply put up a You Tube video of Roman legions. I’m sure You Tube could sue for this, but it has been up there for a while so maybe they aren’t concerned.  In any case, I will have to deal with copyright laws in the making of my website and will hopefully find a solution to show small clips, while keeping the site as focused and entertaining as I can.

Rome Website Mockup  Here is my website. I did the homepage in powerpoint and hope this will give you an idea of what I want it to look like.

I have decided to focus my website on the Fall of the Western Roman Empire. There is not much information on the web available when one conducts a search on the various reasons for why Rome fell. I will use the Virginia Standard WHI.6k as my guide in constructing this site. I feel these standards lay the basic theories for the fall of Rome in a simple, yet expandable format. For those not familiar with the way the standards are written (these were last updated in 2001), there is an essential question and an essential understanding that needs to be achieved by the students. The questions is why did the Western Roman Empire decline? The essential understanding is – Over a 300-year period, the western part of the Roman Empire steadily declined because of internal and external problems. In order to achieve the essential understanding, students must be able to identify the following causes:

1. Economy – cost of defense and devaluation of Roman Currency

2. Military – Army membership starting to include invaders, resulting in a decline of discipline

3. Moral Decay – People’s loss faith in Rome and the family

4. Political Problems – Civil Conflict and weak administration

5. Invasion – attacks on the borders

The best part of these standards is the it will keep the site focus, but allow the various popular theories of Rome’s decline to be discussed. For example, Gibbons theory fits very well with the Moral Decay cause described above. While in reality any number of aformentioned causes would probably apply to the fall of any and every empire throughout the course of history, it is surprising how little quality information there is on the end of Rome. Roman-empire.net has a couple of pages devoted to the collapse of Rome, but the information requires a significant investment in time to sift through all the unessential parts. Wikipedia is the number one search result when doing a google search on the decline of Rome. So clearly there is a opening for me to develop a site solely for illustrating the factors involved in bringing down arguably the greatest empire the world has even known (apologies to the Anglophiles in the class).

As I explained in my last blog, teachers are going to be the main audience. I still intend to have a spot on my site for discussion, lesson plans, bibliography, and other various resources. I’ve recently discovered the site http://www.eduweb.com.  Eduweb is a company that helps develop interactive websites for museums, and other educational institutions. It is a great resources to use when comparing different websites and their elements of design. There is one site in particular dedicated to U-505. It was a German U-boat that the Americans were actually able to recover. This site is very easy to navigate and includes text, animation, videos, and timelines to really highlight this amazing feat. I would like to use it as inspiration for my own site.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF MY PROJECT IDEA

As I have begun to critically think about my historical website, a few perplexing questions have arisen. My initial proposal was for a website dedicated to all things Roman. I wanted it to be geared towards middle and high school students. However, after cruising the Roman offerings at Google, I am starting to feel that there are several capable websites that already handle much of what I wanted to do. PBS has an excellent site dedicated to Rome during the First Century C.E. (or A.D. for the traditionalist). The information found at http://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/ has many of the same information that I would like to include. It’s time-line and virtual library are all elements that I would love to incorporate into my site. Obviously, after viewing a site like this or others like http://www.livius.org/rome.html, which has excellent biographical information on almost all of the Roman Emperors, it makes one pause. For what exactly do I intend to do with my site? I see no point in simply regurgitating the same information that a user could find on another site. I think this also underscores the point made in Digital History about the focus of a website. A project like a historical website about Rome for 7-12 is a massive undertaking. I would want to have things like virtual maps, and video/audio clips. The amount of graphics and other audio/visual components would mean that my site would be pretty slow for most school networks. I know our network that our county uses is pretty slow and can’t play streaming video during school hours.

So where does this leave me? One area that doesn’t get covered enough in my curriculum is the early Christian Church within Rome. Although I don’t necessarily agree with Edward Gibbon’s view that Christianity helped bring down Rome, I do think more students need to understand that it played a large part in Rome’s history. Discussing with kids the funerary societies, the martyrs of the early Church, Roman attitudes towards early Christians and the role of the Pope within the Church and the power he amassed within the waning Empire and beyond would make for a very interesting website. I guess I have another week to fully flesh out this idea for certain. I still reserve the right to make a go of a site dedicated to Rome. Especially when I look at that Roman Empire.net (http://www.roman-empire.net), I know I can improve on their design flaws by miles.

MY AUDIENCE

1. Teachers – Regardless if I decide to still capture the various aspects of Rome or pair it down to focus solely on the early Christian Church within Rome or some other specific Roman topic, my website will have to address teachers in some capacity. The PBS site does a really great job attracting teachers in their Teacher Resource section. Of course it also give them an opportunity to advertise their accompanying DVD on Rome. However, they do provide about eight lesson plans that teachers can incorporate into their classrooms. I too would like to have this feature, particularly for newer teachers who looking for ideas and who may be a little thin on the content that they are teaching. Besides having sample lesson plans on Rome, I would like to have a blog/message board within the site for teachers to offer ideas, suggestions or ways they have incorporated the website into their lessons.

Besides having great content and offering lesson plans and a way for teachers of Rome to share ideas, how can I maintain the interest of the most important members of my community? The interactiveness of my site should keep many teachers coming back for more. There will be a “featured page” that could be updated to keep the site fresh and evolving. I also think the more real you can make history especially via a Internet site, then the better off the lesson will progress. For example, I shared with my students the Thebean Mapping Project and seeing all those royal tombs, made a much better impression and visual than simply telling them about the Valley of the Kings. However, other ideas would be get my site linked with Rome portal sites or even on Wikipedia in the links section. Finally, I would attend conferences and use my fellow 8th grade world history teachers in my county to relate my site to the rest of the social studies teachers in America and even abroad.

2. Students - Most students will probably discover my site due to their teachers. However, that may not always be the case especially if I were to design a site that could at least get in the top ten of a Google search. The writing level of the site would tend to be less complex than say a site geared towards high school seniors and college freshman. In doing research projects with my 8th graders, I have noticed that many students are more than willing to dive right in to any page that they deem helpful even if in actuality it is above their heads. By keeping the site easy to follow and having interactive graphics, animations, and lots of pictures, I hope to keep them engaged and interested in the content. Linking my site to other sites could also work. Perhaps Trevor would let me link up with the historical games site in order to increase the students background information and ability to play the games better.

3. Tourist/Rome Enthusiast -The final segment of my community would be tourist and other Rome enthusiast who want some background information before they leave for their trip. For example, a tourist could come to my site to get a 3-D model of the Baths of Caracalla that would give them a great visual of the past with which to compare the present. Or I could have small videos that provide information about the past, but focus on present day structures within Rome. I would also appreciate comments by fans of Rome that could possibly lead to better articles and features on the site. Word of mouth is still an important tool for finding out about new websites. I’ve learned about more websites in this class than from ever searching the web.

These are my thoughts for now. By next week, when I present, I will finalize my content and have an excellent idea of my homepage and various featured sections.

I was wondering if anyone knows anything about stringing machines for tennis racquets? There are three models that I am particularly interested in, the Gamma 5003, Gamma 6004, and Prince Neos 1000. These are all floor models, as opposed to the table-top variety of which I have one that I bought in 1992. It has been a great little stringer for me, but I want to upgrade. If anyone knows of anybody looking for a used table-top model then please let me know. I would be willing to part with my Gamma table-top model for $50 or best offer. I had the guys at ATS sports look at it last summer and they said it was still working great. I have a lot of experience stringing racquets in Florida, Europe, and the Caribbean. I have used both Gamma and Prince stringers in the past. I have had no issues with either, but wanted to know if anyone can definitively recommend one over the other. I will mainly be using the stringer for my own racquets at first, but eventually want begin stringing for other players as well.

I also have several tennis racquets that I am looking to unload. They are all in fairly good condition. I have two Wilson Hyper Pro Staff 5.0 with a 4 5/8 grip size. This racquet is not made anymore. I also have a Wilson Hammer 6.4 with Powerholes. And finally I have a Wilson Pro Staff 6.0 with an 85 sq.in head. Yes, the same one that Sampras used. The grip size for the last two racquets is 4 1/2. Like I said, anyone with a serious offer, please let me know.

I’m sure no one in my class knows exactly what I’m talking about, but since I had a comment left by someone from the United Kingdom last week, I thought why not post something and maybe my growing international audience would be interested.

At first glance there appears to be no difference between Citizendium and Wikipedia. Most of the information that Citizendium has on The Beatles entry is almost verbatim as Wikipedia sans pictures. Citizendium claims that it is as far along as Wikipedia was at the same point in its development. While this may be true there are several obstacles that Citizendium must overcome in order to be as widely used as Wikipedia. They are as follows.

1. Citizendium needs contributors urgently. The chances of finding your search topic on their site is not very good. For example, they returned no results for searches on George Martin or even Egypt. In fact, none of the names/places mentioned in the page about The Beatles were linked to another page.

2. Wikipedia has an enormous share of whatever classification one could label it, certainly in terms of on-line encyclopedias. How does a new wiki site break the near monopoly that Wikipedia holds? Having trusted sources is a start, but Wikipedia not only dominates in English, but in many other languages as well. Even though English is the international language of the business world today, how far short will Citizendium fall due to its current setup of English only entries? At the same point in their history, Wikipedia had already branched out to other languages.

Wikipedia has certainly had its share of detractors, particularly at the graduate level. Citizendium tries to counter this by promoting the reliability of its authors and editors. Posting entries with a real name certainly will suppress vandalism and flagrant errors. However, I don’t think that any current graduate student or beyond would ever think of citing one of these sites in their papers. That may change however as more students, who have grown up with Wikipedia and Citizendium, will be more inclined to believe all of the information found on these sites. Obviously, teachers need to vigilante about how they treat these sources. I also agree that even if Citizendium succeeds, what will be the ultimate difference between these two sites. Does even a virtual community of millions have the time and resources to monitor a wiki like Citizendium and Wikipedia without falling victim to intellectual terrorism? Well I probably over did it on that last point, but the question remains, if the user sees no difference in the information or where it is coming from, how successful can a challenger to Wikipedia ever be?

The most interesting thing about the Internet is how much change can occur over a short period of time. Ten years ago, Netscape ruled with their Internet browser. Now Internet Explorer and Mozilla have replaced it. Perhaps Citizendium will overcome the shortfalls that have caused some to discount Wikipedia has a research tool?

Project

Although there are several ideas that I have for a historical website, the idea that is currently at the top of my list is a site dedicated to all things Rome. This site would be geared towards middle to high school students and would offer a one stop shop for those interested in the various aspects of the history of the Roman Empire.

The site that I have chosen to critique is the aptly named The Illustrated History of the Roman Empire(www.roman-empire.net/index.html)

At first this site looks really good. It has a lot of great information about Rome. It breaks down the history of the Empire into convenient categories and has a section for adults and kids. However the site has some problems that I would correct if I suddenly found myself with the title of webmaster for this site.

My first order of business would be to clean up the clutter on this site. There is too much writing on the homepage. The eye does not know where to look first. There is some hierarchy as the main categories are distinguished from the rest of the material by silver bars. They are grouped in rows of 3 and in columns of 5. On the left side of the screen is the latest updates section. Underneath the categories table there are a series of bolded highlights that do not seem to have a home within any of the categories. Beneath that you finally come to the search feature. The silver bars are outdated way of helping to group the main ideas of the site. Having the search feature at the bottom makes your site more cumbersome to use and therefore lose users.

I would clean up this mess by reducing the homepage to a series of 8 moderate sized sections highlighted by a graphic that would also act as a link. Visually it would look very similar to the Mt. Vernon site we looked at in class last Monday. The sections would be titled, Founding/Kings, Early Republic, Julius Caesar/Augustus, Later Republic/Constantine, Decline and Fall, Emperors(graphic with pics of all Caesars and links to their bios), and finally a section on maps. There would a search feature in the upper right hand corner above the large graphic on the homepage. Each graphic would then take you into separate pages each linked together by the overarching theme. Within each section, one would learn the history of the period, daily life, religion, politics, sports, army/battles, social hierarchy, and achievements.

I prefer homepages that don’t require the user to scroll down and subscribe to the philosophy that less is more when it comes to web design. People today are very impatient when it comes to web surfing. They want to find what they are looking for quickly and you are only hurting your website by forcing a user to scroll down in order to find information.

This site has a lot of potential. Every school child in America must take a class at some point and learn about Rome. Having one decent site devoted to all of the various aspects of Rome would make learning easier for the kids and perhaps even spark a lifelong interest.

PODCASTS

I listened to my first podcast this weekend. I sampled the Amateur Traveler and Digital Campus 10. Despite the name Amateur Traveler, that podcast is not performed by a true amateur. He threw in a plug for some travel company in the beginning and each episode is devoted to a new destination. I listened to his last trip to Las Vegas. A teacher in my school has done a little with podcasts and I think for teachers they could be wonderful tools. I could put a few of my lectures on the web for my students to listen to again in preparation for an exam. I particulalry enjoyed the screencast that Trevor linked everyone to on his blog. It was very cool and a great explanation for how Wikipedia works.

Wikipedia

The three sites I looked up on Wikipedia were the bands, Cream, Led Zeppelin, and the 19th Century German politician Otto Von Bismarck. I have used Wikipedia a lot over the last several years. I think the site is a great way to find basic information about a topic. The histories for Led Zeppelin and Cream go back all the way to 2001 and 2002 respectively. The early posts were not much. Very brief and very simple looking. Over the course of the years better pics and other graphics have been created in order to enhance the overall appearance of Wikipedia. Maybe by the end of the year I will feel confident enough to post my own information on Wikipedia and have it accepted.

For several years, whenever teaching my unit on Egypt, I have had my students visit the Ancient Egypt website developed by the British Museum.  The address is http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk.  Although it has a couple of issues, I do think this site is a very good example of what someone can accomplish when they keep things simple.

Before I get into what I like about this site, I want to discuss a few of the problems this website has.  First, it has not been updated since 1999.  Sure the information hasn’t changed, but newer technology is available that would definitely benefit the site.  They use a lot of shockwave for their games and animate several of the graphics.  The pages also take some time to load even if you are on cable.  However, even with all those problems the site is still worth the time spent navigating it.

The home page is a black background with a stone tablet in the center of the screen.  Along the left are the various topics one can look up.  Pyramids, Gods/Goddesses, Mummies, Pharoahs, and writing are all various subjects one can peruse.  For each individual subject, one can select a story, challenge, explore or play a game.  For example the story on the Mummification page deals with the process the Egyptian went through to create mummies.  They hyperlink vocab words that the user can click on to learn what they mean.  The information on each page is concise and gets straight to the point.

The pages are not too busy and the alignment and proximity are good.  The site is very easy for my students to use and I believe they learn a lot when we do the exercises I developed to accompany this site.  While there are other sites about Egypt that are more sophisticated and probably more spectacular with their use of VR and other newer technologies, this Ancient Egypt site does a commendable job and is aesthetically pleasing at the same time!

As an 8th grade World History teacher, I am constantly in search of quality websites to share with my students. The biggest criteria for me when evaluating a website is the ease with which a 13 or 14 year old can navigate the site. For my students I want the information to be concise, topical, and clear. The first website I have chosen to review is Eyewitness to History, which is found appropriately enough at www.eyewitnesstohistory.com. This site deals with popular history. It is a terrific site with which to interest kids in primary sources. The design of the website is fairly straight forward. Below the main heading, they have placed the various historical periods that one can visit. A visitor can click on, for example, Middle Ages and Renaissance and up pops twenty different events from which to choose. There are first person accounts from monks, kings, queens and even a tortured victim from the Tower of London. Each account is hyperlinked. The text is generally aligned into two columns each left justified, but there is space on each side so that the text doesn’t appear to come out of the side of the screen. The background is a beige/tan type color and the contrast between background and font is just fine. If you click on the tab for snapshots, thumbnails appear which allow for faster download time. The user then simply has to click on the thumbnail for a larger picture with a description to appear. They also have movie clips. The one I viewed was of a submarine being sunk after the crew was made to surrender during World War I. With a slow connection speed the movies may be a problem.

If a first person account is what you want then this site will not disappoint. However, there is one issue that may cause users to discount the site as nothing but rubbish. The most problematic area for this site is the amount of advertising that is done on it. On the home page itself, I counted no fewer than three large and animated advertisements. They are also on every page. One can be reading about Herodotus’ account of the Battle of Marathon and then be abruptly assaulted with an animated ad from ING. It makes a user wonder whether to true intentions of the website are to promote historical accounts or make a quick dime with all the advertisements. They definitely detract from an otherwise solid site.

In the final analysis the design of this site is very good. It aligns the text and pictures nicely. There is good proximity between the various design elements. There is a nice sense of repetition between each of the pages so that the page on 20 Century accounts looks exactly like the page for ancient history. I do not like the site simply because of the advertisements and the rather small heading they use for their website. The ads are bigger than the main heading. That should tell you where the main interests of the producers of this site are…in their pocketbooks!