Backbone: rough draft of website update

— Beginning of week Eleven —

This week we have been given the task to present a rough draft of what our overall website is going to look like for our project. Since last week, I’ve made some progress and finished the final quirks for the website design portion overall, and can now focus on the bigger task at hand: getting the information onto the site.

This within itself is an incredibly tedious task; every independent page presented on our site has to have meaning, and sufficient information. I think that this of course helps narrow down our research, and forces us to get to the point. So far I’ve come up with a few “topic” or titles for the pages I plan on constructing such as:

  1.  Home Page
    • Welcome Message
    • Header Image?
  2. The Wichita Indians
    • Basic Information about who they were
    • Maybe some customs?
    • Images of course
  3. Identification of Forced Migration
    • Storymap JS will go here
    • Information about the map
  4. Significance of Northern Frontier
    • What obstacles (if any) did the frontier present?
    • It’s significance in reference to the Wichita will be stated here
  5. How the Project Came to Be
    • About author page
    • Also, the contract will be here

Of course I plan on having subpages within these main pages, so that it is neat and compiles the information section by section depending on the topic or what I would like to share. I have finished what I’d like to call the skeleton of the website, which helps lay out a foundation of the required work to come. As the month of November approaches, I can definitely feel my nerves come towards the surface of my existence; this project would definitely be a lot easier and so much more could be accomplished if I had a partner like the rest of the “teams” in the course. It feels as if I am at a disadvantage, and it’s quite unfair to be completely honest. But nevertheless, I do feel like significant progress has been made on my end, although it’s taking me twice as long as it should.  We shall see how this goes. Wish me luck.

Until next time, Maria.

Please feel free to take a look at the digital COPLAC contract, which I have taken the time to perfect it from its initial form and includes a formal research proposal as well.

Here you will find my working thesis: “The Native American group known as the Wichita Indians suffered through immense forced migration during the 19th and 20th century due to Anglo – American influences in Northern Texas; hence the lack of current representation in places such as Wichita Falls, Texas.”

Until next time, Maria.

Link to MWSU Project Site.

Bibliography

COPLAC Contract.

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Where I Stand in regards to the Finns in Newport Project

So due to me not feeling well, I did not go to Newport Friday. I will be going this Friday no matter what to get so more research on the culture of the Finns. I know a lot about what came before, and what it was like for the first and second generation to live in Newport, but I only know about their political history and that they worked in mills. I need to upload all the information I already have, my bibliography, and some timelines. I still have unanswered questions. What was it like to work in the mills every day, what was it like to not speak English for the first generation, and what was there culture like? There are even more questions I have that sadly I will most likely not find answers to. Significant progress has been made on uploading all of the portraits of the Finns that I have discovered on my various trips up to Newport. I did not get as far as I would like, so I’ll have to keep uploading them on Tuesday. Tomorrow I will be working on uploading the rest of the photos and Wednesday, and Thursday I hope to make significant progress on Newport before the Finns arrived to the area. It’s not as much as I would like to have done for Tuesday, but it is progress. By the time we meet for class Thursday there will be a lot more updates coming to the website. This coming week I plan on devoting all of my free time to working on the project.

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Website Design Update

— End of week Ten —

After taking on the lengthy and tedious task of searching for the perfect theme for my website, I have finally settled on the theme known as Fluida. This theme was honestly really frustrating to work with in the beginning, mostly because you have to go in and edit every single little detail of the website from its header, to the font you will see in the search bar (if present on your pages.) Although it was very frustrating having to spend literally hours on this theme alone and setting all of the information to it’s proper dimensions, the flexibility and creative outlet it provides makes my project as aesthetically pleasing as I can make it.

These are examples of what the theme can look like. It’s truly beautiful.

One challenge this theme does possess is the inability to edit or set the size for tables that are added to the webpages from TablePress. I have come to the realization that I will have to yet again, do twice the amount of work in order to produce something I am proud of. Importing Excel Sheets actually fixes the issue, but it is a task that is time consuming. Either way,  I am very happy to have found a theme I like, and have taken the time to teach myself the mechanics of what makes this particular theme work well. I didn’t want to settle for a theme that everyone else could have been using already, and I also wanted to present my information a little differently. Hopefully it works well.

Until next time, Maria.

Please feel free to take a look at the digital COPLAC contract, which I have taken the time to perfect it from its initial form and includes a formal research proposal as well.

Here you will find my working thesis: “The Native American group known as the Wichita Indians suffered through immense forced migration during the 19th and 20th century due to Anglo – American influences in Northern Texas; hence the lack of current representation in places such as Wichita Falls, Texas.”

Until next time, Maria.

Link to MWSU Project Site.

Bibliography

COPLAC Contract.

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Linguistic Environment

Attribution to Raymond Sangabau, English Professor at the University of Kinshasa. Provided by Dr. Sally Cook via email correspondence 12/12/16.

During my last Linguistics Practicum class period, we discussed the factors both helping and working against the Congolese in their quest to learn English, an absolute necessity for anyone who would like to be employed outside of minimum-wage, manual jobs.

In regards to their educational background, it appears that the majority of the population highly values education, as one of the Diversity Visa lottery’s requirements for the applicant is having a high school diploma. Many of immigrants practiced as doctors and professors in the DR Congo. However, some problems arise when the applicant’s family, such as their spouse or children, are not literate.

Linguistically, it is helpful that these immigrants are already polyglots. In the DR Congo, French is the official language. There are also several national languages, such as Lingala, Swahili, Tshiluba, and Kikongo. It is also helpful that these languages all share the roman alphabet with English. Finally, there are more than 200 local or tribal languages spoken, such as Mongo and Lunda. However, it is difficult for adults and teenagers to pick up on a new language because they have passed their critical period in brain development. Coming from backgrounds with limited English exposure, the instantaneous immersion can be overwhelming.

Finally, I would be hard-pressed to find a group who is more economically or socially motivated to learn English. There are several opportunities to learn English, from a wide berth of education students at Truman State to the public Vocational school in town. However, Truman students are not professional English teachers, and there is no standardized orientation or training about American culture or laws upon their departure or arrival. Moreover, opportunities to learn English are limited because new immigrants often work over-time, perhaps 60-70 hours a week at the aforementioned gruelling, labor-intensive jobs.

In short, there are a number of variables that both help and hinder the Congolese English acquisition. As discussed last week, language can be used as a measure of acculturation, making their socio-linguistic status a vital measurement for the forthcoming research.

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Update

So after a little over a week without my Macbook (and still learning how to even type on a PC that my lovely research partner has loaned me!!) I have been writing more web content for Amy and I to use online. Amy has reconfigured our page a bit to make sure that all our tabs are organized properly and then we will create our prezi’s later on! Looking forward to keep adding more information and see things coming together!

Website Design: Technical Difficulties

— Beginning of week Ten —

Who knew website designing could, and WOULD be so difficult? It had never truly crossed my mind nor did I ever consider how much work was necessary in order to create a digital project of this magnitude. Doing this project alone has been difficult; I know for a fact I would be able to accomplish twice the amount of work in less time if I had a partner for this project. Every little detail of our websites must flow and mesh well together effortlessly, and since this project is meant to produce an education portion for other individuals to view at their leisure in a way that is not only interesting but meaningful, I can surely feel the pressure piling on slowly.

This week I have the task to completing a rough draft of what my websites design is going to look like. Considering the dimensions of the story-maps I am utilizing, as well as the sizes of the tables I would like to insert into the pages, I need to pick a theme that will allow the proper addition of these tools without stretching them out or making them too difficult to maneuver. So far, I have not found a design that I actually like; most of the themes that are available to us currently are not what I am looking for — which on that note, I am not quite sure what exactly I am expecting in a theme, but when I find it I will know. I’ve done some perusing in the general web results of WordPress and hope to find a theme that best fits my needs. A lot of the more modern themes require a lot of time to actually set up; I’ve spent a good 3 hours tweaking one theme called Foreverwood and am not able to set up the pages or fonts to fit the sizes of the maps, tables, or Storymap JS at all. So for now I will continue to look for a theme that will allow me to add the tools I have created for the website.

Until next time, Maria.

Please feel free to take a look at the digital COPLAC contract, which I have taken the time to perfect it from its initial form and includes a formal research proposal as well.

Here you will find my working thesis: “The Native American group known as the Wichita Indians suffered through immense forced migration during the 19th and 20th century due to Anglo – American influences in Northern Texas; hence the lack of current representation in places such as Wichita Falls, Texas.”

Until next time, Maria.

Link to MWSU Project Site.

Bibliography

COPLAC Contract.

Posted in Uncategorized

Pages and Prezis

I have shamelessly ignored my blog for the past couple weeks as I have engrossed myself in our project website.  I have been chided a number of time by my dear partner to put my computer down and go to bed.  There have been nights I’ve sat up until 1:30 in morning learning and testing WordPress.  It doesn’t matter how tired I am before I start, as soon as I hit our WordPress site, I can’t stop.  I am so thankful that I have been given the opportunity to learn about this tool and I look forward to applying all my knowledge to create an amazing website for the nonprofit I volunteer for.

In addition to exploring WordPress, we have also been creating Prezi presentations to go into our website.  This is a really exciting and fun way to display our information.  We are giving users the option to take the tradition route and use menus to navigate the information or they can play the presentation under each main title.    We feel that having both options will not only keep our readers interested but also it protects us from future changes in software and technology.  If Prezi should ever cease, users will still be able to access all the information through the menu system.

Joy and I are slowing but surely building content behind the scenes to insert into our website.  Since I have pretty much finalized our site design, it is now a matter of just plug and play.  It is exiting to see it all coming together!

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Progress on “Locals,” Images to Come Soon!

As my research progressed this past week, I began to get a clearer idea of how my “Locals” section is going to pan out. I have already expressed the fact that the menu would be changing slightly, but I have settled on two subtopics: “Land” and “Economy”. “Land” will explore the connection between the Parkway, locals, and issues with land. In many cases locals had to evacuate their land because of the Parkway and in other cases they did not have to leave. I feel this is important to explore because it directly affected the lives of locals and in some cases the agriculture as well. Supporting primary sources for this section are the records of land sales, complaints from locals, and information within BRP documents about other ways locals have interacted with Parkway land. “Economy” will focus largely on the proposed effect the Parkway would have on the local economy versus the actual affect that it has had. This sections is perhaps one of the most notable ways that tourist migration on the Parkway has helped shape WNC. In this section I plan on pulling a goodly amount of information from the visitor reports as well as some of the arguments from primary sources that pushed for the BRP to run through WNC in order to boost the economy that had never quite recovered from the Great Depression.

I also wanted to include a section about culture, but I am still unsure whether or not “Culture” should be its own page or should be combined with another. Would “Land and Culture” work, or is “Economics and Culture” better? Or, as I said, should “Culture” become its own freestanding page? Either way culture will appear on the website under “Locals.” As per the course description on the Cultural Crossroads course website, we are encouraged to look at how our migrant community has influenced music, labor relations, agriculture, and arts and crafts. So far my research indicates that the Parkway has effected these institutions by, well, encouraging them to remain the same. One might even say that in the early days of the Parkway local culture was actually urged to present itself as imbibing all the stereotypes that the rest of the nation had in regards to “mountain folk.” Personally I find this a bit depressing since generations of my family have lived here. I mean, who actually enjoys reading stereotypes about their people? Still, it’s interesting to see how locals and surrounding communities may have played on these stereotypes in order to attract visitors. Clearly I still have some things to work out, but I have a much better sense of direction than I did a week ago and have put up a rough draft narrative on my “Locals” landing page. As I continue working on “Locals,” I am also starting to think more about the “Tourists” section that Liz and I will work on together. But we will cross that bridge when we get there.

The website is slowly—piece by small piece—coming together. Liz has added some information in about COPLAC and the project. We are also toying with the idea of having “Did You Know?” or “Fun Fact” sections throughout the website. These wouldn’t be large. They would essentially be small images that would give our readers some fun facts about the BRP. After all, we have gained quite a bit of random information that doesn’t necessarily fit into our actual narrative, but it would be a shame not to use it somehow! Tomorrow Liz and I will go back to the BRP archives to meet up with Jackie and scan some images. We have chosen a variety of pictures that we thought highlighted the history of the Parkway. I am sure we will eventually find some more, but we have over twenty to choose from as of now. We are looking forward to adding some visual primary sources to the website!

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Going to Newport this Friday

I will once again be travelling to Newport for the third time. While I have familiarity with the sources I have, there are more sources up there that will contribute greatly to this project.  I also have a lot of photographs that will serve as great visual guides for the rest of the project. In addition, these photographs will also serve as a great collage of photographs. What I plan on doing before I go up to Newport is uploading all of the photographs that I have to the website.  If Mary-Lou McGuire is available when I am up in town that day, I would like to get the remaining photographs scanned. I’ll go through the collage on the website to the photos I have that way photos aren’t scanned twice. If she is not available on Friday that is okay, because there are still loads of sources that I have only glanced over. These sources will provide more information about The Finn Hall, the Finnish Boarding Houses, and the Finnish cuisine. Also this weekend I plan on updating and adding in as much information to the project website as I can, and hopefully some timelines.

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Disappointing Days

I’ve spent the last couple days transcribing Irish names that we found on graves in the local cemetery and trying to decipher names and dates. Some things I just couldn’t make out, which was very frustrating. I used the HeritageQuest database to try to find these people, but I was mostly unsuccessful. I have used HeritageQuest before successfully so I know the database is a good one with detailed census and property records for this area, which made the fact that I couldn’t find most of these people really weird. It’s driving me nuts because some of the grave markers had things like “native of Dublin” on them, so we know that they we immigrants. I just can’t find record of them outside the cemetery.

The one name I found records of was one Michael Dougherty, who lived from 1860 to 1934. He was born in Ireland and emigrated in 1875, married Mary T. Sherry in 1890. He was literate. He worked in one of the local textile mills. He owned a house valued at $6,000 and had a radio!

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