Week 7
For most of my passwords I use the same type of words and names or things that personally relate to me that people would not be able to easily guess. I also use random numbers and sometimes symbols that make my passwords more secure. On my social media such as facebook, twitter, instagram and then email I use the same one just with different numbers. I thought that this was okay to do but it turns out I was wrong. These websites I try to be most secure about to make sure I do not get hacked by anyone or attacked by spam. Throughout my time having social media and email, I have only been hacked once, which was due to me opening up a spam message that was sent from another user that had also been hacked. I have icloud as my backup for pictures and music but for my important family pictures I have an external hard drive to keep all of them on. In the past I have broken one of my computers but luckily they were able to save my documents and files. Ever since then I have been cautious of how I back my computer up and the security measures I take. After last week’s lecture though I have learned the importance of backing your files up in some way and taking security measures to ensure your documents and files are protected. I understand now that it is easy to guess a password if It has anything to do with you and you should come up with something that is almost impossible to guess. It is also a bad idea to use the same passwords for multiple sites no matter what they are. I hope what I have learned will continue for when I get older and have to do banking information, taxes, and etc.
Week 6
This past week we had a visit from Mrs. Lowenwarter from the Blenheim house. She showed us some of our soldiers graffiti and learned more about the houses history and facts about our soldier. It was great to see how much these soldiers meant to someone and that our hard work with this research will pay off in the end. We learned more about researching our soldiers and how to tell if a website is appropriate to use or not which is good information for this class and our other classes as well.
At the end of class we were asked to download Zotero, which is a reference management software that manages bibliographic data and related research materials. I had never heard of this program before but it was easy for me to download onto my computer. I used the firefox program since I wasn’t sure if the mac would be applicable with my computer. After I tried it out it worked great! It was so helpful and gave me so much information about that website I was looking at. I’ve even been using it for other classes which is helpful for research papers. I think this program will be very beneficial to our project as we do more research on our soldiers.
Week 4
When I was researching my solider, I found information on the New York State Military Museum. He was in the 29th Infantry and was mustered in June 6, 1861. Their recruitment was mainly in New York City and was organized by Germans. I found that during their service they performed guard duty at the headquarters of the nth Corps. During the regiments service one officer and twenty-seven enlisted men were killed in action. One officer and fourteen men were wounded during action. One officer and twenty-two men were affected by disease or other causes. The other information provided is where they served and the different divisions they were split up in to. It also gives background on the infantry and where they began. In the end, they were lead by Col. Louis Hartmann and honorably discharged and mustered out on June 20th, 1863. The New York Division of Military and Naval Affairs created this website to inform people of the military history that occurred in their state. It lists the general background knowledge for each infantry and who they were made up of and what happened to them. I did not find OCR to be helpful or easy to figure out. At first, a bunch of characters and symbols came up when I tried to upload one of my images. It took me a couple of tries to figure out what happened but after I did it was clear. I probably would not use this website again though. I would find it easier to type out the site manually.
Week 3
Today in class we got our soldiers! Mine is named Clemens Tretbar and so far he has been pretty interesting to learn about. Along with our files, we can see a lot of their paper work including things such as a master roll or an increase for pension form. From these forms, we can learn about how long our soldier served for and what kind of injury he sustained which is most important for our project. First, we had to review the files and write down important points from each page that would help us to organize and identify these pages. We had to see when they were published and try and make out the handwriting. It’s a little more difficult to read the handwriting then I thought it would be. It gives a good challenge but even sometimes I have no idea what it says. It makes this process a little more time consuming but it’s definitely worth it once you see all of the interesting facts about each individual. I’m really looking forward to seeing what my peers find out about their soldiers. I want to see if we can compare any facts that would relate our soldiers in any way. Going through each document will take a little bit of time but our next step is to make a list of information our soldier that could pretty much count as a bio. Information such as, hair, age at enlistment, company, enlistment date and place, muster date and place, date of death etc. This will help us identify our soldiers a little bit more so we can get a feel for how their lives really were. Like how historians study the past, we need to be able to place ourselves in their shoes during that time. It gives us a better understanding of what they went through and experienced. I’m looking forward to the next couple of weeks finding out more about my solider and working further on this project.
Week 2
On class Wednesday night we discussed many different things from the difference between HTML format and XML text formats, the advantages and disadvantages of using digital history, and how a historian studies and views history. People wonder how historians see the information they are given and how they make sense of it. Historians have to immerse themselves in the world and culture they are focusing on and it’s more important to focus on the value of information instead of quantity. In high school and even the years before that I was taught history in a bland, dry manner. However after learning more in our Wednesday night class into about the true process behind understanding history in a subjective way, I was quite surprised in how much it differed from my high school experience. Perhaps most surprising to me was how many factors can affect the way history is thought about. A person’s bias towards a certain opinion is of course an obvious tip off but things like time, place, and education are much more specific issues. With so many different factors affecting the credibility of history and just as many historians and people placing their own opinions on the topic the truth in it all can be difficult to find. In fact I find it somewhat confusing. At the end of the day it seems history is not a simple fact beyond the time, place, people there, etc. The credibility of actual happenings and intricate details in history are left to personal judgment following a detailed analysis of the various factors mentioned earlier. Especially for when we begin to study our own soldier for our main project. There are a lot of details and factors that go into each and every life that we will be studying. My goal is to portray my soldier’s life in the most factual way possible without including my own bias. It’s interesting to see the views of each historian and the characteristics they value most during their research.
Getting Started: Concepts you need to understand
Concepts you need to know to understand how the internet works:
- web page
- sharing
- networking
- clients
- server
- ISP (internet service provider)
- router
- ip address
- packets
- url
- domain (ex: .comm, .org)
- web application
- social media
- RSS
- web search engine
- single wire
- hard drive
Google search:
When asked by Professor Robertson to google ourselves and look what showed up I was very surprised. My Facebook and twitter page popped up along with the link that would take people directly to those pages. Other things that were found were old volleyball team rosters, and time records from my middle school track days. Other then sports, I could only find articles about my school and my involvement with our DECA chapter. When I clicked images, the majority of my Facebook profile pictures showed up. The most interesting part about the images was that some of my close friends pictures popped up as well. It’s crazy to see how much information people can learn about you from just typing your name into Google.