Digitized History and Interactive Timelines: Lots of examples and links for your exploring pleasure!

One of my tech-savvy daughters is a history buff. She decided to research our family's genealogy, and through this process, has uncovered a treasure trove of interesting things during her on-line research.  

Technology has made it possible for historians, archivists, genealogists, antiquers, and other to digitally curate and share items on-line.  One example is the work of the 2 million-plus members of Ancestry.Com, a website that provides a fairly easy way for novices to create their own family trees, search digitized records, and share their findings with cousins, near and distant, about the stories they've come across along the way. (Please excuse the formatting problems!)

My daughter discovered that one of my great-great grandfathers worked as a conductor and yardman for the railroads before he became a miner and prospector, who apparently died penniless, according to an article she found in the Chronicling America website. This website is part of the Library of Congress and supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. (The picture of my great-greet grandfather was taken from an article in the Salt Lake Tribune)

Screen Shot:  Chronicling America

Knowing that my great-great grandfather worked for the railroad in Utah led to the discovery of related information on-line. Below are two screenshots from the interactive timeline of the history of the Union Pacific railroad.  This website provides an opportunity for people to share their stories about the railroad's history. The timeline provides multiple means of accessing content related to the the railroad and the role of the railroad in the history of the United States.

Screen Shot: 150 Years: The History of Union Pacific

By clicking on the timeline, the viewer can dig in deeper into each specific era or location by viewing pictures, watching video clips, and reading text, as shown above. The timeline can be downloaded for use on iPad's iBooks 2 or on any computer with iTunes.

Screen shot: Golden Spike Ceremony, Promontory Summit, Utah

  

After my daughter commented that many of our relatives died at a very old age, without the benefits of the life-extending know-how of modern medicine, I wondered what old age might have been like for my elders. This led me to the Elder Web site, which provides an interactive timeline of the history of elder care.  The timeline links to a wealth of pictures and tidbits of information. Links include information obtained from the Library of Congress American Memory Collection. 

For those of you interested in timelines that focus on more recent events and history including the history of the arts, the following examples are fun to explore:

Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music (swf), v2.5 (I'm waiting for 3.0)
Note: Ishkur uses colorful, strong language to express his viewpoints and opinions about musical trends.
History of Modern Music: All Genres (Guardian UK)
Interactive Modern Art Timeline
CNN's Interactive Map and Timeline of Iraq and Afghanistan Casualties "Home and Away"
New York Times:  10 Weeks of Financial Turmoil (the credit crisis of 2008)
New York Times: The History of Overhauling Healthcare
New York Times: European Debt Crisis
New York Times: Major Events in the Afghanistan War
Screen Shot: Hard Rock Cafe Interactive Memorabilia


RELATED
Digital Heritage
The American Memory Project
The Ninteenth Century in Print:  The Making of America in Books and Periodicals
Chronicling America
I take up my pen:  Letters from the Civil War
Digital NC: North Carolina's Digital Heritage
Digging Into Data Challenge and List of Online Data Repositories for Humanities and Social Sciences (Includes lots of links!)
U.S. Yearbooks (searchable via Ancestry.com)
What Was There: Digital versions of historical photographs of places are compared with locations on Google Maps, with the goal of creating a means to explore history through photography.
ImageFlow: Streaming Image Search (Microsoft)
Interactive Timelines using Timemap.js
Digital Storytelling Platforms and Multiple Perspectives:  A look at the work of Jonathan Harris (Food for Thought for Interactive Timeline Design)
List of Digital Preservation Initiatives (Wikipedia)

DIY Timelines (more to come)
Tiki-Toki
Dippity
Timetoast
The Best Tools for Making Online Timelines (Larry Ferlazzo)

Comment:
One unfinished project on my "Tech Bucket List" is a multidimensional, multidisciplinary. multimedia interactive timeline.  Although the concept is far-reaching, it would be a useful tool for students, historians, genealogists, and more.

Please excuse the formatting problems!

Words of Wisdom from Ira David Socal: "Writing without the blocks" using free/low cost technologies.

"Liberate students from the cognitive waste going to mechanical issues which have nothing to do with effective communication. Help them to become communicators and storytellers, and let your teaching focus on construction of effective writing, and what separates "writing" from "talking" in our culture." -Ira David Socal


You don't need to be a student to appreciate this approach to writing and communication!


WRITING WITHOUT THE BLOCKS
Ira David Socal, SpeEdChange 3/10/11


Ira Socal starts out his thoughtful blog post by mentioning that he dictated it using a Jawbone bluetooth headset and Windows 7 Speech Recognition, which is a free component of the operating system.  He's found that this is a great approach to use with students who struggle with the writing process.   He points out that there are many barriers that students face when attempting to write, especially for those who have difficulty holding a pen or using a keyboard efficiently.  He also points out that "keyboards injure more people each year than any other workplace tool."


Below are two videos Ira Socal shared on his blog:

RELATED/SOMEWHAT RELATED
How to set up Windows 7 Speech Recognition
MIT Freedom Stick (Michigan Integrated Technologies Supports)
Freedom Stick and Firefox Accessibility
"The MITS Freedom Stick is designed to provide students with information and communication access on any computer using a Windows or Linux operating system. When you insert the USB Flash Drive into the computer the LearnApps software should load giving you a menu in the toolbar on the lower-right corner of the screen. Please note, however, that when using the software on some computers you may need to open the drive and click directly on the LearnApps icon to open."

Cross posted: TechPsych

Transit: Digital Video Dance Storytelling on Large Displays at the LAX Airport, by Scott Snibbe and Francesca Penzani

Scott Sona Snibbe, an interactive artist, created a large-scale video installation on twenty-nine connected HD displays that curved around at the Tom Bradley International Terminal at the LAX airport in 2010.   The video tells a story of groups of people traveling through an airport who eventually begin dancing in interesting ways.  

Francesca Penzani was the choreographer for this project. Noah Cunningham was responsible for the cinematography, editing, and post-production.




RELATED
SNIBBE INTERACTIVE
The Snibbe Interactive website has lots of great photos and videos of the company's work.

Thanks to Daniel Chen for sharing this video!

Telling a Story: Slideshow of Old/Historical Content

I don't usually share much about my family on this blog, but I was so impressed by my daughter's photos of historical and old/run-down structures that I had to post a slideshow of what she's passionate about.


Lauren is a history buff and enjoys exploring around to take pictures of anything old that has a story.   Whatever it takes!



The photos in the slideshow were taken with a Sony SLR, with no extra equipment.  None of the photos are photo-shopped. 


Lauren is great at "point and shoot",  and her technique draws the viewer in to her personal POV.  Lauren just had a little baby, so it might be a little while until she can finish researching the stories behind her photos.  When she does, I'll be sure  to share her finished work!


(If you were wondering, Lauren stopped going on risky explorations after she learned a baby was on the way.)

Interactive Video Stories for the iPad, via Interactive TV Today

"Touching Stories" - iPad Demo + Behind The Scenes from Tool of North America on Vimeo.

"TOUCHING STORIES" APP OFFERS FOUR INTERACTIVE SHORT FILMS, DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE IPAD -Tracy Swedlow, 6/29/10

More later!

Thinking Like a Storyteller: Words of Wisdom from Cindy Chastain on the use of storytelling in for interactiondesign (IXDA 10 Video)

Cindy Chastain is a Creative Director, Experience Architecture at Rapp, a global, full-service agency in NYC. Her background is in screen-writing. She also is a film-maker and technology consultant. The video below is of her presentation at IXDA 2010. It is well worth the 47 minute watch!


Here is a quote from Nasir Barday's post on the IXDA blog about Cindy Chastain's presentation:


"Designing with a narrative in mind can make a difference between a product that merely functions well and a product that engages the minds, emotions and imaginations of users." Nasir Barday, IXDA 2/26/10


Here are a few quotes from the presentation:
"How can we, as designers, provide cues that will deepen that narrative connection?"


"What can we learn from the discipline of storytelling that will help us design for more meaningful and engaging product experiences?"

"If we can move away from thinking of products in terms of interfaces and start thinking of them as representations or environments, in which agents perform actions,  we will get us to a place where we can design more fluid and engaging dialogues/experiences."



Cindy Chastain-Thinking Like a Storyteller from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.

Near the beginning of this video, Cindy discusses the concept of the user's narrative, described as a stream of self-talk occurs when someone interacts with a design product. Two types of narratives are likely to occur.  According to Cindy, this phenomenon was noted by cognitive scientists.  One is narrative of use,  and involves the person's self-talk about  the products features and affordances. The other is a personal narrative, which focuses on what the product means, how it might fit into one's life, and how it might be used.

TellTable: Collaborative Creative Storytelling on a Multi-touch Table, from Microsoft Research, UK.

The TellTable is a collaborative digital storytelling application designed for Microsoft's Surface interactive multi-user multi-touch table. It was used by children in a school library in the UK, and was quite successful. The video below provides an overview about the way the TellTable worked. I think every school library/media center should have something like this!

"TellTable, a system developed in the Soci-Digital Systems group, uses Microsoft Surface technology to provide an interactive storytelling experience, similar to how children would tell stories using physical toys. Children can create various digital characters and sceneries on Surface, made out of photos taken of real world objects and environments as well as finger paintings. By manipulating these characters using multi-touch gestures, children can narrate, act and record imaginative stories together, before sharing them with friends later on.

TellTable was deployed in a primary school, and received overwhelmingly positive feedback. It has seen crowds of kids create stories featuring characters as diverse as Ninja chickens and rampaging teddy bears. Teachers were also enthusiastic about the potential of TellTable as an education tool, to help children develop communication skills and to create interactive tutorials when teaching foreign languages." -- Microsoft Research UK

Publications

Xiang Cao, Siân E. Lindley, John Helmes, Abigail Sellen. (2010). Telling the whole story: Anticipation, inspiration and reputation in a field deployment of TellTable. Proceedings of CSCW 2010, ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. p. 251-260.

John Helmes, Xiang Cao, Siân E. Lindley, Abigail Sellen. (2009). Developing the story: Designing an interactive storytelling application. Proceedings of ITS 2009, ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces. p.49-52.

The Importance of Storytelling and Multimedia Content (UPDATED)

Storytelling has been an important part of human culture for centuries and remains important, even thought it has been transformed by advances in technology.

It is transforming how young children think, communicate, and learn.

The following video from the University of Southern California's Institute for Multimedia Literacy (IML). In October of 2009, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting released a report that said that four and five year old children who had access to media tools had increased literacy levels as they entered kindergarten. A group of four-year-old preschool students were provided the opportunity to participate in the IML's workshop, Digital Storytelling and Recombinant Narrative, a workshop that is usually geared for adults.  Of course, the workshop was revised to meet the needs of a much younger group.

Here is the clip:

Digital Storytelling With 4-year-olds from IML @ USC on Vimeo.

Summative Evaluation of the Ready to Learn Initiative 
"The study, which was conducted by researchers at the Education Development Center, Inc. and SRI International, evaluated educational video content and associated interactive games from Super Why!, Between the Lions and Sesame Street, which are produced as part of the Ready To Learn (RTL) initiative. RTL aims to increase literacy skills for children aged 2-8 living in high poverty communities, by utilizing multiplatform content"

"The researchers examined the impact of the curriculum which included public media content in a randomized controlled trial with 398 low-income four and five-year olds from 80 preschool classes in New York City and San Francisco. The children who had public media content in their classes developed significantly more early literacy skills -- the ability to name letters, know the sounds associated with those letters and understand the basic concepts about stories and printed words -- than children who did not have public media content in the classroom."


Below is a collection of articles and links about issues related to storytelling in our digital age, from various perspectives.  The game is changing for everyone, especially for traditional teachers and journalists.

Better User Experience With Storytelling, Part One
Francisco Inchauste, Smashing Magazine, 1/29/10    (also read the comments to the article)


The Art of Storytelling
Christian Saylor, O'Reilly InsideRIA 3/23/09

Transmedia Storytelling and Entertainment - A Syllabus
Henry Jenkins, 8/11/09 
 Henry Jenkins is the Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. He arrived at USC in Fall 2009 after spending the past decade as the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. 

Henry Jenkin's syllabus includes the reading list for his class at USC of the same name, aong with great links to on-line publications related to the course. If you are pressed for time, take a look at Transmedia Storytelling 101.

Here is a link to a post I wrote in 2008 that provides a few good links related to storytelling:
Digital Storytelling, Multimodal Writing, Multiliteracies 

RELATED

Video from USC's Institute for Multimedia Literacy:


IML: Background and Philosophy from IML @ USC on Vimeo.

The Center for Digital Storytelling  


Multiliteracies

Interactive Narratives

Innovative Interactivity's Top 50 Multimedia Sites of 2009

USC Institute for Multimedia Literacy

Knight Digital Media Center Presentations  Example: Old Journalists in New Media:  Collaborating with Writers


O'Reilly Digital Media Blogs

Interactive Motion Graphics Showreel from Filmview Services - great content!

Here is a showreel from Filmview Services that simulates how tech-usability in an interactive gesture/touch world should be!



Here is a quote from the Filmview Services blog:


What Are Screen Graphics?

"...So it works out more cost effective for the films to actually have someone put the graphics on the screens for real. It also greatly enhances the performance of the actors. You only have to watch any of the Star Wars Eps 1-3 to see how wooden acting is when you don’t actually know what is in front of you. Actors love to be able push buttons and bang touch screens during their scenes. Having to actually do it in a certain order can stretch their capabilities mind you, and I am pretty gob smacked at how absolutely computer illiterate some of them are. Don’t they use email?


Anyway, due to this diminished ability to hit and bang things in any certain order, it is our job to make it impossible to mess things up. That’s why they are all genius typers. We make it so they can type any old thing and the letters still come out the way they are meant to each time. We also put little locking codes into our programming so they can’t accidentally escape the graphic mid job. It’s amazing how many of them can type the Esc button when they are meant to be spelling LOGIN."

Thanks, Tim!

SOMEWHAT RELATED
Coincidentally,  when I was visiting the NUI-Group forums this morning, I came across a link to Jakob Nielsen's "Usability in the Movies -- Top 10 Bloopers", which are worth taking a look at. I've posted the list, but you'll need to go to Nielson's web page to read the descriptions. You'll smile.

1. The Hero Can Immediately Use Any UI
2. Time Travelers Can Use Current Designs
3. The 3D UI
4. Integration is Easy, Data Interoperates
5. Access Denied/Access Granted
6. Big Fonts
7. Star Trek's Talking Computer
8. Remote Manipulators (Waldo Controls)
9. You've Got Mail is Always Good News
10."This is Unix, It's Easy"

Keeping up with technology: Journal for Computing Teachers latest articles.

The Journal for Computing Teachers (JTC) is an online publication of the Special Interest Group for Computing Teachers, which is part of the International Society for Technology in Education. Although most of the articles focus on K-12 education, I think they would be helpful to community college and university instructors as well, particularly those who might be graduate students charged with teaching introductory computing classes for the first time.

For your convenience, I've posted the links to the most recent JTC articles in PDF format below:

JTC Spring 2009

Peer Reviewed

Factors Influencing Technology Integration in the Classroom
Lynette Molstad Gorder, Dakota State University

Declining participation in computing education: An Australia Perspective on the “Gender and IT” Problem
Julianne Lynch, Deakin University

Designing a Computer-supported Project-based Learning Environment for High School Students: A Case Study
Quek Choon Lang, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technologies University

Trends, Tribes and Territories in Computer Science Education Research
Justus Randolph, Walden University
George Julnes, University of Baltimore
Erkki Sutinen, University of Joensuu

The Connection of Digital Media with Curricular Goals - Innovative Use of Digital Media Portfolios and Cultural Content in Standards-based German Project
Peter Schultz, Kennesaw State University

The Current State of Computer Science in U.S. High Schools: A Report from Two National Surveys
Judith Gal-Ezer, The Open University of Israel
Chris Stephenson, Computer Science Teachers Association

An Empirical Investigation of Visual Computer Programming Language Effects on HBCU Students’ Problem-Solving Capabilities
Mike Unuakhalu, Kentucky State University

From the Field (editor reviewed)

Analysis Techniques for an Online Class
Erlan Burk, Park University

Women and Computing
Barbara Ericson, Georgia Institute of Technology

Knowing the Flow: How Flowcharting Can Help Visualize Software Application Development
Joe Frantiska, Fitchburg State College

To End Reading Failure in America’s Schools
Bob Lemire, Lexia Learning Systems, Inc.

Picture This: Students find their Voice through Digital Storytelling
Lauren Cummins, Youngstown State University
Regina Rees, Youngstown State University
Kelly Bancroft, Youngstown State University

Announcements

Information Age Education Newsletter

Publish Post

Dave Moursund

JCT Editorial Review Board

Digital Storytelling Platforms and Multiple Perspectives: A look at the work of Jonathan Harris - Food for Thought for Interactive Timeline Design

I'm in the process of creating an interactive timeline, and as I revisited my links and bookmarks, I came across a link to a video of Jonathan Harris discussing his ideas regarding digital storytelling, overlapping threads, and multiple perspectives.

Jonathan explores real-life stories and celebrates the interconnections between events, ideas, feelings, and people. Linear narrative and linear time lines do not do justice to the richness and complexities of human experience.

"Combining elements of computer science, anthropology, visual art and storytelling, Jonathan Harris designs systems to explore and explain the human world."

@ Yahoo! Video

"Jonathan Harris is redefining the idea of what it means to tell a story. Take a ride through an arctic whale hunt and plunge headfirst into the feelings Harris finds running rampant in cyberspace as he describes what he calls “storytelling platforms.” "

Below are links to two story-telling platforms described in the presentations. The Whale Hunt is organized so that the user can explore the story through a variety of perspectives and interfaces, and at different points in time.

The first screenshot shows how the user can select one of the "cast" members to see how the story unfolds from that person's point of view.

The Whale Hunt

"Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved...The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day. Using a series of playful interfaces, the feelings can be searched and sorted across a number of demographic slices, offering responses to specific questions..."

Jonathan Harris also presented at the December 2007 EG Conference. The video and related information can be found on the TED website.

Jonathan Harris: The art of collecting stories

If you have some time on your hands, explore Jonathan's Universe project:

This photo depicts the nine stages of the Universe environment.

"Universe is a system that supports the exploration of personal mythology, allowing each of us to find our own constellations, based on our own interests and curiosities. Everyone's path through Universe is different, just as everyone's path through life is different. Using the metaphor of an interactive night sky, Universe presents an immersive environment for navigating the world's contemporary mythology, as found online in global news and information from Daylife. Universe opens with a color-shifting aurora borealis, at the center of which is a moon, and through which thousands of stars slowly move. Each star has a specific counterpart in the physical world — a news story, a quote, an image, a person, a company, a team, a place — and moving the cursor across the star field causes different stars to connect, forming constellations. Any constellation can be selected, making it the center of the universe, and sending everything else into its orbit."

Universe was created using Processing, which is an open-source software that is used by people from all sorts of disciplines to create interesting interactive information visualizations and more. The data used in Universe is from Daylife. For more information about Daylife, visit the Daylife Labs.

Sidenote:
Jonathan Harris collaborated with Sep Kamvar on the We Feel Fine project. Sep Kamvar teaches classes like "Social Software" and "Computational Methods in Data Mining" at Stanford University. Sep is part of the Stanford Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Group.

Stanford's HCI group's weekly seminars highlight a variety of interesting speakers. Current and previous talks are available via Stanford OnLine. You can link to current presentations and videos from the Human Computer Interaction Seminar website. If you are curious, past presentations/abstracts can be accessed on-line alphabetically or by date, going as far back as 1990.

Dan Saffer, author of Designing Gestural Interfaces, presented "Tap is the New Click" on January 23rd, 2009 at Stanford.  You can access the video directly.

Pop! Tech PopCast

Special Issue on Multimedia, Media Convergence, and Digital Storytelling (RCETJ)

Mark van 't Hooft, the chair of ISTE's SIGHC, recently shared information and links to an interesting special issue of on-line publications about multimedia related topics:

An Introduction to the RCETJ Special Issue on Multimedia, Media Convergence, and Digital Storytelling (Journal of the Research Center for Educational Technology, Fall 2008 Special Issue)

Video-Based Additional Instruction (Marc Franciszkowicz)

Design and Assessment of an On-line Pre-lab Model in General Chemistry: A Case Study (Juan Antonion Llorens-Molina)

The iPod Project: A Mobile Mini-Lab (Nikhil Sathe and Jorg Waltje)

Media Convergence in a College Newsroom: A Longitudinal Study of Identification and Commitment to a Collaborative Web Site (Fred Endres)

The Educators Coop Experience in Second Life: A Model for Collaboration (Leslie Jarmon and Joe Sanchez)

The Creation and Refinement of a Sustainable Multimedia Process in a Higher Education Environment (Megan R. Bell and Larissa Biggers Schraff)

Using Virtual Worlds to Launch Ideas, Research and Teaching (Anne-Marie Armstrong, Darryl Shreve, and Josh Neds-Fox)

Electronic Portfolios: Engaged Students Create Multimedia-Rich Artifacts (Gail Ring, Barbara Weaver, and James H. Jones, Jr. )

Digital Storytelling as a Gateway to Computer Science (Amy Csizmar Dalal)

Interesting reading!

Umajin Creative -Digital Story Telling for Interactive Whiteboard or Touch Screen- free demo available

Umajin Creative is an application designed for digital storytelling. I haven't had a chance to preview it. I was impressed with the pictures on the website. If you use this application, please leave a comment. It looks kid and teacher friendly. I can see that it has potential!

According to the website, you can "compose multi-page digital documents with rich text, digital photography (including blue screen support), illustrations, sound, video, 3D models, particle fx, interactive functionality, and so much more... runs on both a Mac and PC. It also supports interactive whiteboards and touch screen PC's.. so you can interact directly with the content. With the HP Touchsmart PC you can use real brushes on the screen..to experience digital painting with variable width brush strokes!

Interactive Digital Storybook:


Below: Cool-looking digital brushes.

Above- Sample 3D models
Below- Sample of blue-screened cutout images

Below: Samples of animated particle effects

Seven Custom Functions:

I think the people from Fingertapps are responsible for UMAJIN. Below is a video highlighting multi-touch applications:

Flickschool: Quick "how-to" videos for digital media production for teens - and teachers of teens

Flickschool: "a quick way of learning how to produce flix, take pix, and share your mix"

Flickschool is the work of Marco Torres, a history teacher at a large high school in San Fernando who works with students in the area of digital storytelling and other creative endeavors. At the Flickschool site, numerous short "how-to" video clips are provided that contain mini lessons on topics such as script-writing, story-boarding, photography techniques, music technology, and film-making. A true gem!


Ewan McIntosh, an edu-blogger, has a nice blog post describing Marco's great work, if you'd like more information.

Marco Torres directed the video parody of a monster.com commercial, during the Apple Summer Institute at Lesley University. The video provides humerous examples NOT to do if you are a teacher, or are planning to become one someday.

When I Become A Teacher:

Link to Mechelle De Craene's Blog

Mechelle De Craen is a special education teacher who integrates technology into her work with students. Some EduSpaces e-Learning 2.0 Blog. She is a member of the following on-line communities: #
Community memberships

* MirandaNet
* Blogs, wikis, and social software for teaching and learning.
* Pedagogical impact
* Digital Storytelling
* eportfolios
* nanoHUB for Kids
* K-12 Education
* Multimedia Development