Hello Timeline Group! We’ve reached that part of the course where it’s time to start working on your small group projects for the Dick Dowling archive. In this post I’m going to talk a little bit about the project you’ve been assigned–making a timeline related to Dowling’s statue and memory. Please take time to read this post carefully so that you can begin to talk amongst yourselves about what you plan to do.
As you’ve already discovered from your research on Dowling, there are numerous significant dates in the story of Dowling and his memory. There are the dates associated with the Battle of Sabine Pass itself. There are also the dates when various statues honoring Dowling were unveiled, moved, rededicated, and so on. By browsing through the items that you and other students have compiled for the Dick Dowling Archive, you can quickly come up with a variety of dates related to Dowling. But you should not think of your task for this project as a simple listing of all the dates that have come up related to Dowling–that would be a straightforward “copy” and “paste” task that would hardly be worth a group effort! Instead, think of your assignment as a more complex project involving both a technical dimension and an interpretive dimension.
The Technical Dimension
To build your timeline for this project, you must use the SIMILE Timeline software created at MIT. As you can see from the Timeline homepage, this software has powerful functions that will enable viewers to interact with your timeline, and also gives you an array of choices about how to make your timeline (e.g., what time scale to use, how much description to include, how to distinguish between types of events, and so on).
Fortunately for you, Brian Croxall has written a very useful tutorial about how to build a timeline using Google Docs and the SIMILE software. You should start by watching his video tutorial to get a sense of how, technically, you will build the timeline and what sorts of things you can do on your timeline. For example, you can include information, media, and hyperlinks in pop-ups for each event that you place on the timeline.
As you begin to work together as a group, you may find there are other technical dimensions to this project, like learning some simple HTML tags to “style” text on your timeline. You may also want to consider using web-based tools like Google Docs or Writeboard to make a working list of events you want to include on your timeline so that each of you can update the list and keep track of your project.
You may also discover other tasks depending on the kind of information you decide to associate with the timeline. For example, if you want to associate images with events, and we don’t have the images you want already in our Dowling database, you may decide it’s worth it to obtain those images. If you decided that photographs of particular sites would help you improve the timeline, you might talk to staff in the Digital Media Center about renting camera.
The Interpretive Dimension
While it may seem like the technical side of this project requires the biggest learning curve initially, the harder choices that you will have to make concern the selection and contextualization of events. One could simply make a long list of every conceivable date associated with Dowling, but such a list would be minimal value–and probably of minimal interest–to a viewer of our digital archive. What do you think is most important to include on the timeline? What will make your timeline meaningful and give it value? Those are the questions you need to keep in the forefront of your discussions for this project.
These questions become more challenging when you consider that any timeline is only a small selection of all the possible events that could be included. You’ll have to make decisions about what most needs to be included–for example, should the date of Dowling’s birth be included on a timeline that includes the unveiling of his statue? Why or why not? Moreover, you have the option of including any number of events not specifically related to Dowling that nonetheless add context to those vents. For example, would it make a difference for viewers of your timeline to see that the Battle of Sabine Pass took place after the Emancipation Proclamation? Why or why not? Should viewers know about other events taking place in the 1950s and 1960s in the South around the time that Dowling’s statue was being moved or new markers were being unveiled? Should your timeline be limited to events in Houston, or deal more broadly with events in the state or nation? Should this be a timeline confined to events in the actual life of Dowling or his statue, or should you indicate when articles and books written about Dowling and his statue were published?
In addition to deciding what to put on the timeline, you’ll also have to decide how “data rich” to make each particular event. How much information about the event should you include? Links to items in our Dowling archive about the events? Images or other media associated with the events? YouTube videos, say, of events related to the Civil Rights movement alongside dates associated with the Dowling statue in the same era? What would including such media say to the viewer? Is it relevant, or should it be on another timeline?
As you can see, the decisions before you quickly multiply, and more such questions could be posed. Ultimately, you’ll only be able to make those decisions as a group by deciding what point or points you want the viewer to take away from the timeline. Only be having a clear point in mind will you be able to make your timeline meaningful and keep it from just being a jumble of dates. As blogger Jeremy Boggs has explained, ultimately making a point and providing context is what makes the hard work of building and reading a timeline defensible.
What Next?
It could be that not everything you would like to do with your timeline will be feasible within the time frame you have to work on this project. That introduces another level of choices you will have to make about what to prioritize, what your main objectives are, and how you will pool your collective skills and divide the labor among you. For now, think broadly about what–in an ideal world–your timeline would do. And investigate what’s technically possible by reading about SIMILE Timeline.
By the time that Blog Post #9 is due next Thursday, you should have done at least enough groundwork and discussion on this project to be able to give a progress report and share ideas you have for the timeline. The following week, you will meet with me to draft a contract for your project. That meeting won’t be useful to you, however, if you’ve done no thinking or learning about the project before then.
So you should think of these as your next two steps and strive to complete them sometime in the next two weeks: (a) watch the tutorials about SIMILE Timeline; (b) talk with each other about the project, paying special attention to sharing information about particular skills and interests you have; (c) begin to discuss with each other what the objective of your timeline will be, since so many of your decisions will hinge on that.
And as always, if you have questions, let me know!