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Transcriptions
Due: Tuesday, February 19
For this assignment, we’re working in partnership with the Albany County Hall of Records and the new Albany Firefighter’s Museum. Our work for this assignment does an important service for the AFM and for ACHOR by doing the first necessary step of preparing their records for genealogists and future researchers to search and use. This assignment also gives us an up close and personal look at the painful process of data creation and the many questions of historical interpretation it opens up.
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Basic HTML & CSS Assignment
Due: Thursday January 31
For this assignment, you will need a text editor. I recommend Atom, Sublime Text, or Komodo Edit (not Komodo IDE). These are all free and easy to download. Do not try to do this assignment in Word, Google Docs or other wordprocessing programs. Word processors add extra formatting information that will mess things up. Text programs like Notepad and TextEdit should also be avoided.
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Intro to Networks I
Due: Thursday February 28
After you complete the slides above, post a short (approx 300-500 words) post answering the following questions from the slides:
How does the network change over time as you add more years? Who are the major connectors who bring small sub-networks into connection?
How does the network compared by betweenness centrality compare to the network sized by degree? How do the large nodes sized by betweenness compare to the people who connected subnetworks when we filtered by year? Are they the same people?
How do the patterns formed by clustering compare with the individuals who have high betweenness centrality? How do they compare with the small networks that formed and connected when we filtered by year?
You may optionally complete this assignment in teams of two. If you do, each team member must fill out the team assignment evaluation.
Update 2/27: If the website hangs on clustering, you can see the clusters here.
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Intro to Twine
More programming! If you run into trouble, ask in our #twine Slack channel, or bounce around ideas for your story draft. Your story can be as fictional or non-fictional as you like, but it should reference our early 19th century Albany newspapers:
If you’re not sure about ideas, read the advertisements and think about what it would be like to walk through town, or make a non-fiction timeline of how events of the War of 1812 were experienced in Albany.
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Visualization Guide
Due: Thursday February 21
Undergrad: Approx 500 words total, 2 types per person
Grad: Approx 1000 words total, 2 types per person
Visualization guide posts should be aimed at an audience of historians, and should aim to give a basic understanding of what each visualization is useful for to someone who understands basic line/bar/pie charts.
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First Day of Class
Dr. Kane has to be out of town for our first day of class, so in lieu of our normal first day of class meeting, please review and complete the items below. Paper syllabi are available in the History Department office. The reading/assignment schedule and course policies are also available online.
- Download the software or create the accounts listed in the course requirements post.
- Make an introductory post in our course Slack channel.
- Read the articles assigned for January 24 for your degree track (Everyone = undergrads, MA and PhD students, Grad = MA and PhD students only). Post about your thoughts on the readings in the #readings_discussion Slack channel. You can respond to the discussion questions I’ve posted, post your own questions, or discuss other aspects of the readings. Please post your responses by the end of our normal class time, 11:35 on Tuesday January 24.
- Begin the Basic HTML & CSS assignment. This assignment is due Thursday January 31, so try to get through Lesson 1 and at least part of Lesson 2 by our next meeting on Tuesday January 29. We will discuss any problems in class on Jan 29, so it will be helpful for you if you have attempted a large part of the assignment.
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Team Project Guidelines
For the final project, you may choose to work with a team. Teams will be self-selected and may be 2 to 4 members. If you commit to a team project, you may not switch to an individual project.
Project & Visual Design Lead
This person is responsible for coordinating deadlines and ensuring a cohesive looking final product. This includes the creation of a stylesheet for team members to follow, in collaboration with other team members.
Data & Visualizations Lead
This person is responsible for coordinating the cleaning of the chosen dataset and coordinating the creation of all data visualizations for the final project. This person must work closely with the Writing and Code Leads.
Code & Layout Lead
This person is responsible for writing an HTML page from scratch and coordinating embeds with the Data Lead. This person is responsible for implementing the visual design of the project in CSS.
Writing & Analysis Lead
This person is responsible for coordinating drafts of the essay text. This person is primarily responsible for smoothly integrating analysis and reference to figures or embeds in the essay.
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Intro to Data Cleaning
Due: Tuesday February 26
This is a long lesson and pretty hard, so settle in with a snack and join the #datacleaning channel on our Slack.