Time II Assignment - East Asian History

Starting with this lesson plan, we’ll be using a variety of different digital resources that may be new to you. Please ask questions on the General Discussion board as soon as you experience difficulties. NEVER SUFFER IN SILENCE!

For the Time Module (and many other modules this semester) we’ll be using a content management system (CMS) called Omeka. A CMS is like a bookshelf where you store digital information. It has a specific structure and specific rules for what you can do with the digital information. What the CMS looks like is it’s user interface, or UI. The same content can look very different depending on the UI. For example, look at these two blogs: Lincoln Mullen and Roopika Risam Both are just blogs, with the same CMS, but very different user interfaces.

Most people invest their interests in the UI (think how much trouble Facebook gets in when the company changes how the Facebook pages looks). As historians, we want to build stories about the past- the UI is less important. To extend the book metaphor, we’d rather have 100 books on a sturdy bookshelf in an ugly store than 2 books on a flimsy shelf in a beautiful store.

You already work with at least one CMS: we call it D2L (now Brigthspace by D2L).

For digital history, we want our CMS to pay attention to the things historians care about: why, where, what, when and who. In particular, we want to be sure when is closely tied to a where.

So, as a class, we’re going to create a single map and timeline with information from the readings for the Time module. This weeks lesson is fairly simple, and we will build on it for next week.

Getting Started

  1. To compete the lesson, you must accept the invitation from Omeka sent to you at your Normandale email. Once you’ve accepted the invitation, you may log into Omeka the website: http://jacknorton.org/EastAsiaSpring2017/admin/users/login

Once you’ve logged in, you should see a page that give you the option to click on a link for Neatline.

Open Neatline

Click on the text of “Imagining China” to access our exhibit editor page.

New Record

Once you’re in, you’ll see an edit page that looks like this. Click on “New Record.”

Next, go back to your readings for this week and chose a person, idea, quotation, or place that has a defined date, either a start date (such as born), and end date (such as when an empire falls apart) or a date spread (such as 2019–2001 BCE). Only one person can do each item, so if someone has chosen the person, idea, quotation, or place you want, you’ll have to find another.

Title, text, style

Turning on timeline

Clicking on the “Widgets” text box, select “SIMILE Timeline”

Dates

Scroll down the left hand side bar until you see “Dates.”

Enter the date or dates of your item. If a person with birth and death dates, use start and end date, if something that has a set date, just use a start date. NOTE: Omeka uses a format that has two zeroes (00) before all CE and BCE dates. BCE dates are expressed as negative numbers. As well, there is no zero in this format, so –001563 is 1564 BCE. (See the pop-up that you get when you click on the ? next to the titles.

Map points

Questions

I can’t see a map.

- You may need to hit the "+" or "-" on the map link to get the map to scroll in or out or click on the stacked sheets of paper in the upper right hand corner of the screen to alternate maps. 

Grading Criteria

Grading Rubric