For my final project, I have decided to focus my project on Mr. Abraham Lincoln. As an employee of Lincoln’s Summer Cottage, I wanted to create an online educational experience that projects the values of the cottage. The end goal for this project is to allow visitors to use this activity in-person or online at home. I wanted to make sure that those who are unable to visit the cottage in person have an opportunity to have an in-person-like experience. One of the main ideas presented at the cottage is Lincoln’s humanity. This is the central idea for my project, which is titled “A Day in the Life”. The primary activity on my google site will provide users the opportunity to select how they would like to spend their day at the cottage as President Lincoln would have. They will choose from a variety of these activities and construct their narrative of their day. These activities will include a wide range, from where would you like to have breakfast to will you travel back to the white house guarded or unguarded? At the end of the activity, users will have the opportunity to write what their day consisted of. This would provide practice for constructing narratives. So far, I have selected and categorized all the activities that will be used for constructing the narratives. I have begun organizing my website and figuring out the best placement for all my information. Right now, I am working on the next two steps of my project. The first step is creating the quiz/activity selection. This includes placing the activities in the quiz format. For this, I have been using the site fyrefox. The second step is figuring out a way to provide feedback for the submitted narratives. I am trying to find a way where immediate feedback could be provided. An idea I had would be selecting a “narrative of the week” segment on the website. Each week a submitted narrative will be chosen to be displayed as the “narrative of the week”.
Something I learned from the interviews with former students was the importance of collaboration. Whether it’s for your project or listening to other people’s project ideas. This is incredibly useful when developing new projects. The more feedback/comments you receive and the more questions you ask, the easier it will be to narrow down your big idea. It is also very interesting to listen to other people’s project ideas. Sometimes listening to or discussing something completely different from your project can provide insight as to how your project might work better.
