At the beginning of the semester, I came in with the idea that studying history was just the task of learning about details of important events from the past. However, I was wrong and over the course of the class my view of history grew with each pasting week. I learned the importance of many different digital history methods and how to use each one to do productive research and analysis. Conducting research before this course, I stuck to limited resources and would only get a glimpse into important topics or be outright lied to. Another problem I had was not doing history with the help of primary sources to check the reliability of my research. However, after the completion of this course, I can confidently say I will be more careful while looking at history with the help of new methods.
With aid from the numerous readings and portfolio activities, this course has helped push me to ask and answer my own questions in history. As I said, I came into this class with an irresponsible view on history and did not use much of the resources I learned about in this class correctly. As I completed each constructive portfolio, I found new questions on topics I thought I knew enough about. This brought a new curious side of me to life and motivated me to find the answers. This goes hand in hand with other portfolio assignments because of which, I believe I have grasped the ability to use each resource effectively to have a hand in forming my answer.
These activities have also helped shape a new historical thinking process in my conceptual approach to history. Bringing forth the need for intensive study to include many methods preventing bias and instead creating a combination reliable research. This entails to not just using multiple sources but using sources with different methods of information to gain the most out of doing digital history. From careful analyzing of articles, readings, and primary sources, I have enhanced my precision on forming strong arguments and being confident in my own research.
I chose to revise my portfolio activity 7, out of my lack of confidence in my research. Having sifted through Frederick Douglass’s autobiography to form a narrative map, I found my self trying to include too much over a short summary of his life. In some instances, I looked for other reliable sources on guidance of my study. This brought up a notion of failure in executing well rounded research. In light of this, I decided to refer back to portfolio 1’s research process journaling methods as well as give my map narrative a website review. In doing so, I was met with conflicting opinions from different sources in connection to his autobiography. This led me to believe my sources should not be treated as accurate as I thought, and I would need to find new sources. I tried my best to only refer to primary sources on the matter and doing so allowed me to share this information reliably. In conducting a website review of my narrative map activity, I discovered I failed to address the audience I was set to present to. I instead wrote with a bias that the reader previously knew about my topic of interest, so in a since and I was only creating this visual site and researching for my own extent of knowledge. I fixed this by putting myself in the shoes of someone with no true education on the matter and telling the story from that point of view. After reviewing my activity with improved historical thinking and digital methods knowledge, I restored the confidence of my research and appealed to my target audience.
I took this class knowing I loved history and the endless stories it can tell. I had no idea what digital history actually was and how prevalent it is in our lives. My major and career path has actually changed from mechanical to computer science engineering (coding) over this semester consequently bringing me closer to roots of digital history methods. Going forward, combining digital history and computer science is a legitimate profession for developing new ways to show and learn history as shown in this class. A typical tool I see my self using more will be computational data analysis. Before this class I would sometimes use google word usage search while curious on a particular topic. This form of digital history method can be a prominent tool in my career as I will be able to sort and upload my own documents for analysis using code. Overtime I would like to develop more approaches of modern digital history for use with modern topics not covered in this class. Because I actually spend a lot of my time “learning” history through YouTube, one that comes to mind is the digital history method on the review or creation of videos. In doing so I feel I would better prevent myself from unreliably learning information and presenting information in a video format as unreliable.