For my final post and activity of the semester, I decided to revise my portfolio activity # 7 which was the construction of a story map. I have included an embedded version of my revision below.
For this final assignment, I decided to revise my portfolio activity #7 for a variety of reasons. The first reason I wanted to revise this particular assignment is because out of the four options we had, I had the most fun creating and sharing this one. As well as this, I felt that the revision for this assignment would go the most smoothly as I was the most interested in the information at hand. My last reason for choosing this assignment is because I felt as if I left a few important pieces to Henry Brown’s story out that I needed to share. The first time I went through this assignment I may have been rushing to complete it and lacked some of the effort I wished I put in. This gave me the chance to do that now.
The basis of this portfolio assignment was to gather information from many online sources on our choice of a formerly enslaved person. For my assignment I chose Henry (box) Brown. To consider this assignment complete, we needed at least 5 significant elements that would make up the map. To acquire all of the data from these sources, and make sure they were primary sources, it takes a good amount of knowledge on research. I feel the knowledge that I have taken in from this class on researching and using sources to get good data really helped me to be able to revise this assignment the second time around.
To begin this final assignment, I needed to look back at what I had already created and put out to the class. I reviewed my previous work and noted a few things that I would either like to change or like to add to my map. For my map, I used Story MapJS because to me it was extremely easy to navigate the site and create what I wanted to. As I stated earlier, my map is outlining the story of Henry Brown’s life. I decided to go with Henry Brown over the other options because his story seemed the most interesting and different to me. My first step in revising my story map was to change and add some of the pictures that were on the slides. For the majority of the photos in my original version, the photos were either repetitive or a bit random. To change this, I used my newly learned researching skills to dig deeper into the web to find photos that matched each event well. For some of the slides I even decided to make the photo funny to make the learning experience a little more interesting. I have noticed during this semester that in the creations we have completed, the best ones often have something that is different or more creative than the others. To me these funny pictures were a way to stand out and make people more interested in learning about this information.
For my next revision of this assignment, since I felt as though part of the story was missing, I decided to add in 4 extra slides to the story map. In these 4 slides I made the map flow much better to create a more fluid experience while learning this material. Each slide has extra information that ensures any reader will not miss out on the important details of Henry Brown’s life. To gain some of the information that was put into each of these slides, I had to dive deeper than I did before into primary sources that could help me with this story. My experience in this class helped me a lot with this as much of the information was hidden deep in websites. The first slide that I added to the map was one explaining how once Brown became a free man, the man that freed him tried to do the same for others. He failed and was arrested. I felt this was important to the story as it shows the effort that was put in even after one man was freed. The next slide I thought was important to add explains how after Smith is arrested, another man still tries the same shipping technique and fails once again. Similar to the last slide, this adds information between the time that Brown is freed, and his later life as a free man. In this slide, I also added a photo of a man with handcuffs as this gives a viewer something to wonder about before beginning to read. Another revision that I decided to make to my assignment was a slide about the end of Brown’s life and his death. I am not sure why I never included this in the first place, but upon reviewing my work I believe that this was really important. The end of someones life can show a lot, but unfortunately his death date is unknown. The good piece of information I did get however was the date and place of his final performance.
Overall this semester, I feel that I have learned many valuable lessons in this class about how to approach history research, digital methods of learning, and historical thinking as a whole. Beginning the semester, I really struggled to navigate through many digital devices that would have been very useful for me to understand. I feel that completing this course has given me a chance to improve the way I do research as well as improve my understanding of historical research. I have always struggled to do research and write about it, so this class seemed like it would be very tough for me. History is one of my worst subjects and I was not looking forward to learning this material. Now that the semester is almost complete, I feel that it was very important for me to complete this class for the future of my education and work life.
Going forward in school and life, I am excited to use many of the devices and tools I learned about during the course of the semester in this class. I feel that I will be using this new way to research in every way I can to ensure my research for any class is reliable.