Next On the List

Hello All,

It's hard to believe that it is already week five, it's going by super fast! I've started actively working on the digital part of my project and hope to have it done by the end of the month. It's a little slow going. I've written quite a bit of the narrative, and I also have chosen most of my photographs but I am still having trouble with the layout and what I want it to look like - also the color choices are really limited and although this is a trivial thing it's a bit bothersome. I'm also continuing with my writing and trying to expand on what I already have, finding the correct layout of the paper is also proving difficult (I guess layouts in both digital and physical form are my nemesis for the week), but I have been switching paragraphs around and I think I am on the right path. I also want to go back in the next week or so and take another look at my lit review. There are some parts that I think I need to scrap and other areas that I can expand on.

Next On the List

Hello All,

I hope everyone had a nice and relaxing break! I spent most of my time working on my graduate applications and visiting family.

I have been making some progress with my thesis project. I have created my account and started working with ARCGIS. Everyone warned me that it was not the easiest software to work with and I have to agree! I'm spending a lot of time reading articles and manuals on the software to try and understand how everything goes together. I was a little discouraged coming back from break, but after meeting with individuals and scheduling other meetings I hopefully will be able to start making major headway soon.

I will also have my thesis board meeting this week, and I'm excited to sit down and chat about my paper and hear any new ideas that they might have. I always find it helpful to discuss my project out loud and go over it with a group instead of trying to run through it in my head, if that makes sense.

I'm also starting to work on my eight pages for this Thursday which is really exciting and also mildly terrifying. I have this great fear that I'm going to run out of things to say (which I know is super unlikely). It's kind of fun to just start your paper in the place you're the most confident in and just roll with it. It's bringing back happy memories from my time at camp and I'm really enjoying it.

Revised Topic Discussion

Research Question: Through the use of interactivity, can online guided tours create a meaningful experience and allow participants to easily move about the digital space?

To promote interconnectivity I would like to introduce an online guided tour for the 100th year anniversary of Camp Kawanhee, connecting those who cannot be at the reunion to the camp, and promoting the historic milestone that the area is celebrating. The online guided tour would be centered on a map, providing a useful way for individuals to move about the space, and recognize areas from the past. The map would enable the experiencer to be taken through a digital tour, that allows visitors to look through photographs, audio, and archival material in the hopes of simulating an experience that reminds them of camp life. The map would look at both the past and present in an effort to replicate changes made over time. My research question centers on how these interactives play a role in digital tourism, and how the material presented makes a strong personal connection between the “visitor” and the digital space, creating a more authentic and impactful experience. 

By utilizing ArcGIS, I will create an interface, where participants are able to easily review various mediums, while also remembering and reflecting on the camp site. Reviewing where past activities were and where they are now, and listening to well known individuals at camp discuss their own memories, allowing for nostalgia and wistfulness to take hold. Connecting individuals to a place that they are not able to visit at that time. 

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Sources: 

1. Benyon, David, Aaron Quigley, Brian O’Keefe, and Giuseppe Riva. “Presence and Digital Tourism.” Ai & Society 29, no. 4. 2013: 521–29.
1. This reading provides insight on how digital tourism blends with physical material, and provides a definition and introduction to what the authors define as digital tourism. 
2. "Digital Huntsville, AL, History Tour Offers 24/7 Online, Guided Tour of City Center." PRWeb Newswire 6 Oct. 2014. Business Insights: Essentials. Web. 21 Sept. 2019.
1. This is a great example of a project that is similar to the one I would like to do. The tour is guided and includes photographs and other archival material. 
3. Grau, Oliver, ed. Museum and Archive on the Move : Changing Cultural Institutions in the Digital Era. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, Inc, 2017. 
1. This article reviews how the digital space has impacted cultural heritage. I thought it would be interesting to note the different thoughts about digitization of archival material and other artifacts for my thesis. 
4. Kennedy, Michael. “Introducing Geographic Information Systems with ArcGIS: a Workbook Approach to Learning GIS. Hoboken.” NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2013.
1. This will help to guide my work in ArcGIS. The source provides information on the system and explains different features that users are able to access. 
5. Schoenau-Fog, Henrik. Interactive Storytelling 8th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2015, Copenhagen, Denmark, November 30 - December 4, 2015 ; Proceedings. Cham: Springer, 2015.
1. This reading had a number of articles that spoke to the topic of interactive storytelling, which I think might be an important part of my own thesis. Individuals can connect with the story and be able to share their own thoughts.

A Thesis Topic

Mapping the Past: The role interactivity plays in digital tourism

Research Question: Do interactives play a large role in online guided tours? 

To promote interconnectivity I would like to introduce an online guided tour for the 100th year anniversary of Camp Kawanhee, connecting those who cannot be at the reunion to the camp, and promoting the historic milestone that the area is celebrating. The online guided tour would be centered on a map, providing a useful way for individuals to move about the space, and recognize areas from the past. The map would enable the experiencer to be taken through a digital tour, that allows visitors to look through photographs, audio, and archival material in the hopes of simulating an experience that reminds them of camp life. The map would look at both the past and present in an effort to simulate changes made over time. My research question centers on how these interactives play a large role in digital tourism, and how the material presented makes a strong personal connection between the “visitor” and the digital space, creating a more authentic and impactful experience.

My thesis project

Immigration is currently one of the most hotly debated issues in our current political climate. With the recent news about DACA and Trump's comments on Latin Americans, Mexicans in particular. I find that no time is better than now to do a project centered around Latino immigrants. My senior thesis idea is to make a website with a collection of immigration stories straight from the mouths of immigrants. I will most likely be narrowing this idea down even further to have the stories of immigrants in the Rochester area. 

This topic is incredibly important to me as an immigrant and the daughter of an immigrant. So often people are detached from this issue and look at it as something that is black and white. I think that by handing the power back to the people whose story this is and giving them the chance to tell it, we can lessen the vilification that has been happening to the Latino community. Being bilingual will also help me gather these stories because I would like to make the interviewees as comfortable as possible in sharing something so intimate with me. I am hoping to provide transcriptions of these interviews as well as audio recordings to make the information as accessible as possible. I am incredibly excited to begin this project and cannot wait until I can put some leg work behind it.