Well isn't this an interesting idea. Of course, there has to be some social or monetary profit associated. You have always got to have a good story because creating 'marketable' content for the masses is what really matters.

This is so true. It is so easy to become reliant on something and then come to trust it simply because it feels familiar.

This is so cool! I love these types of creative commentaries to raise awareness and get people to assess their own assumptions.

I cannot say that I am totally surprised. It is truly shocking the conversations I have overheard while at UNBC. Sometimes students are speaking "jokingly" but the subjects are not funny. Other times I have been sitting in the cafeteria and overheard loud homophobic and transphobic conversations. I have heard too many stories of guys going too far, or even just making offensive or threatening comments about women. And so often I see women just going along with what is said. This many be for any number of reasons, but internalized misogyny is one of them. I hope that my generation is getting better about ideas of equality, equity, acceptance, and general human decency, but there are still so many people who seem incapable of imagining an experience outside their own privileged bubble of narrow-minded existence.

Yeah. If these are the types of auto-complete suggestions that search engines are recommending, then how else are search engines filtering or influencing results?

"women should not... wear that which pertaineth to a man" was my auto-complete suggestion.

It is very upsetting to see the same problematic suggestions for auto-completion coming up on all my browsers. I asked my friends to check the auto-complete on different browsers. Three of the five tested had problematic auto-fill suggestions why one had non-problematic suggestions and another had no suggestions.

Wow, I just typed in a couple variations of "why are black women so" and "why are women so" in my browser and the auto complete suggestions NOT good. Very disturbing.

Very interesting. I am taking a gender and environment class right now and we have talked a lot about the representation of the gender spectrum in different spheres. Activity online can be complicated. On one hand, being online means that you can present yourself as you wish to be seen, but given that the information you put online can end up in the wrong hands also puts some individuals at greater risk in the real world. Digital expression or community can give opportunities for the visibility of certain communities but because of the nature of online communication and community, can create distance between lived experience and online identity.

Yikes. This seems very dangerous. I do not like this at all. Culture is something dynamic, evolving, and personal to people belonging to a specific culture, and I believe sacred, or at least parts of culture are.

I would think that digital work would create more permeable boundaries and greater accessibility for all.

This type of work is important for identifying and dismantling systemic issues that continue to oppress certain people or ideas.

Agreed! I think there are so many exciting opportunities for decolonizing the way we tell our histories and for people who have been suppressed to their own stories in there own ways.

With something so complex, learning how to go about understanding and engaging in it is more important than having a specific set of instructions that do not accommodate the many variables. It is like the saying, "If you catch a man a fish he will eat for a night, but if you teach him how to fish, he will eat for a life time."

Just as the speaker does in "No, Thank You, John."

That individual being a man.

This is a significant shift despite still maintaining strict standards for marriage.

In Christina Rossetti's "No, Thank You, John," the speaker tells John that he can find pity and comfort in some other woman, but she is not the one. The speaker seems to feel that John is pressuring her into accepting by using his own hurt feelings to tug on a woman's social role as "emotional support."

That would be a power move.

Digital mapping seems like a really useful tool for learning about current and historic systemic racism. It would allow you to visualize the shadow of history on the experiences of the present.

I guess meta data would become incredibly important the larger the volume of data. Being able to sort sort data that already has identifying markers would speed up the the process significantly. You just have to hope that the data was properly labeled when it was uploaded!

The freedom and creativity also allow people to share their stories away from the standardized storytelling methods of colonizers.

This is really interesting to me because I grew up in a community to which many Japanese families were forced to move during the second world war. Many families have remained in the community. I have of course learned more about the Canadian history of Japanese internment camps but knew very little about the history of internment camps in the US.

I love the inclusion of images and drawings in this project! This was actually really fun to scroll through. Definitely not as convenient to jump around and find information, but also a fun way of integrating writing and graphics in an engaging space.

It is interesting how things like 'story maps' are the sort of things I did in elementary school. It seems that for a long time, the academic journey slowly weened students off of creativity. Creativity was unprofessional and childish. I am so happy to see that creative communication and research has become more mainstream. I am sure that this type of research and work has always been around, but as a student, I have generally been conditioned towards more and more formal and uniform expression of ideas and information such as essays and reports.

This is my favourite definition! Of course access to technology and the internet is still a barrier to many, we are moving towards equity. Once someone has those two things though, anything is possible. The internet is an abstract world that overlays and interacts with the physical world. The internet and digital tools allow people to learn about culture, history, science, art, and politics. It connects people and allows people to tell their own stories with their own voice. Digital humanities by this definition allows for people beyond the academic sphere to engage with the the world of data and records and stories in a meaningful and valued manner.

It does seem that digital tools are really useful for dealing with either very large or abstract ideas. Using technology to make sense of complex data or to visualize and interact with idea is such a cool use of digital tools.

From what I have learned in this course, the use of technology in the study of humanities topics is incredibly creative and diverse.

More circular or spiral timelines do make sense for displaying data that is connected to events that repeat in cycles. I do wonder how effective at seeing change over time clear the shape would be though, as, with the spiral, so much information could potentially overlap and become difficult to follow.

There is so much to think about. Trying to isolate a specific trait in research seems to be a good way of finding out how many influences there are on the human experience of the simplest things.

I like this a lot. Being able to layer information allows you to provide details without overwhelming the viewer. Layering information can also help people to navigate and find the information they need by narrowing the search down, instead of having to sift through a large, unwieldy written document.

I appreciate all of the tool options. I am curious to find out what I might be able to use in my own project. I love that there are tools that help to design for accessibility.

Having a clear outline of the issue in a logical order can illustrate and emphasize the point being made. In this particular instance, the use of a chronological overview of events provides insight into the change (or lack of change) over time.

Narratives can take many forms and often vary between cultures. There is no one perfect way to do something.

Of course. Heaven forbid a simple, organized, and accessible presentation of information be worthy of use by the high and mighty of the West.

It's true. Anytime I hear "timeline," I think of elementary school or early high school. It does not generally seem like it is given as much weight on its own. Usually, a timeline would accompany a larger article.

I love this name! Visualizing history with all of its complexity is challenging. Mapping suggests that this would allow information to be categorized according to scale and relationality.

Having information presented in this way is so important for accessibility. It breaks down barriers to accessing information and simplifies research. Not everyone wants to search through databases or read academic papers, but even children can find and understand graphs, photos, timelines, maps, etc.

I have thought about the importance of adjusting for an audience in storytelling when discussing oral traditions in class and how there has been less and less of that since Western colonial ideas of stories have come to dominate. It's really interesting to think that digital storytelling forms are bringing back a more interactive storytelling style.

I found that a lot of people in my creative writing class last year wanted to write for video games. I had no idea narrative was such a big thing as I have never played video games myself.

Stories tend to be more engaging when the audience can participate in the narrative in some way.

We have to be careful not to let Western colonial ideas of what a story is overtake our perceptions of what a story should look like.

I love this! We all love hearing and telling stories. I ran the children's summer reading program at my library one summer and it was a lot of fun. So many kids just starting their reading journeys. It is really beautiful to see them discover the magic of books as I had.

The stories and storytellers in our lives are so important. I have stories from the radio, stories my mom read to me, stories my grandma has told me about her life, and stories from friends and strangers. Stories are not just special for their own sake but for the sake of who tells them and where they are told. Everyone has stories.

I have listened to CBC radio out of personal interest (not just because my parents had it on at dinner) since I was five. I loved listening to radio documentary programs like DNTO or broadcast storytelling such as Vinyl Cafe with Stuart McLean, news, science, music and culture programming, or radio dramas. Radio was and is a wonderful way to be entertained and informed.

Stories are not defined by what they are told with. Oral stories and written stories are very different, and yet both are stories and both have value. Stories immerse their audience in an experience and it shouldn't matter if that is through spoken word, images, writing, physical or digital. Digital storytelling can be more accessible for some people or there may be a digital tool that makes a story accessible. Even being able to change the font on an ebook to help dyslexic readers is hugely helpful.

It is so cool that so many different people have the opportunity to share their stories creatively (whether fiction or non-fiction). There is so much value in people being able to tell their own stories or access stories that represent parts of their experience that are not present in mainstream media.

Ok, this is terrible environmentally. We have found yet another way to drain away our natural resources. This is infuriating. Instead of putting so much and effort into a non-essential, harmful technology, how about we try to solve the problems that are impacting basic quality of life for millions rather than contributing to the problems.

What exactly are these workers doing to maintain these systems?

This really confused me. What is this trying to say? Why describe horrific scenarios?

This scary. As someone who wants go into journalism and writing, the idea that ideas and writing can be used without my consent by this type of technology is alarming. It is one thing to analyze that which is already written and collect data, but I do not like that programs are being trained to synthesize and replicate writing to create its own material.

Umm...

Ok, this is pretty cool.

Ok. This makes sense. It identifies patterns and recreates patterns rather than copying the exact contents of something.

Any time that people are afraid of something new or dismiss it for its problems they risk missing out on an opportunity to use a tool or allowing the tool to be used poorly. As soon as someone tries to scare you away from exploring something, that should be a signal to immediately learn everything you can I would think.

This is good. If this technology can help place data within the context of a much larger grouping of related data I think could be very beneficial for understanding large-scale themes and overarching relationships between disciplines.

This is fascinating. I am very interested to learn about the use of words over time, changing connotations, and the contexts in which they were used. This is such a cool way of looking at how difference people and issues and people have been recognized by government over the years. Names are so important and I wonder if some words have seen an increase in use as marginalized groups reclaim previously derogatory terms for their own.

It is still so easy to get lost in a jumble of information. I have only just discovered Ctrl + f this academic year. I do not know how I managed before I found that shortcut. It can allowed me to quickly scan long, dry academic articles when researching for papers to see if the information is relevant to my topic. This has also saved me when I know I've read something I want to quote but cannot remember which of my 27 tabs it was in.

Representation is so important in all professions. I may want to do the right thing, but I know I do not have the same cultural familiarity and life experiences as someone from a different background. Preserving everything we can so that the source is still available when the right people want to access and interpret it seems like a valuable use of digital archiving.

It seems to me that only the wrong kind of people choose to manipulate this. Are there internet 'vigilante' groups on the internet that seek to prevent harmful tampering? Is there a way to monitor anything non-specific in such a large and abstract space?

I had no idea this was such a problem or that people would take advantage of it in such a way. I really shouldn't be surprised I guess. It is very concerning and infuriating. Whether or not someone central controls the internet, people will always take advantage of power or a lack of it. Just as some people are 'more equal than others,' 'some free speech is freer than others.'

This is definitely beneficial. This makes it so much harder to destroy information accidentally or intentionally. I think of all of the books burned in Nazi Germany and I am sure during other periods of social and political upheaval. Having access to digital information from multiple sources could help to combat propaganda and misinformation. The problem is that the masses do not always have the tools or knowledge to sift through the volume and complexity of information available. I wonder if work could or is being done in this area.

I have used the William Blake Archive in other classes. It is most useful to have a consolidated collection of an artist's works, particularly for a student who would otherwise have no access to such a treasure trove of artifacts and information. Digital archives are so wonderfully accessible. It is just a matter of knowing they are there.

This is very interesting. I would love to see the editing history of other works. Imagine all of the changes made to great literary and musical pieces. You would get to see not only the finished product but the process of the artist as well. Even being an accident, I think this is such an intriguing discovery. I wonder if anyone purposefully tracks edits for this purpose, or if, like me, they only use the document history if they have accidentally deleted something.

This truly does sound like detective work or a close reading of a poem. The smallest details are more important and interesting than you might think.

I find this so fascinating about physical sources. There is so much to be learned from the material, the written information, the art or pigments. It would be so easy for a single person entering information into a digital system to dismiss the small details that another might be able to find the significance of if they were to interact with the original object. I find that comments written on assignments can be hard to decipher and it can take two or three sets of eyes to figure out a word. This could be even more difficult when dealing with worn artifacts or documents.

It seems to me that there is a lot of room for error. Is there a requirement of any kind to acknowledge the margin of possible error when people are researching using these records as there is in scientific research?

This makes sense, but I had not thought of it before. I can imagine it would be very difficult to determine what information or artifacts should be prioritized in this process when so many interests and values are involved. Having representation from different communities would be so important in this process. Parts of history could easily be brushed under the mat and cultural stories lost if only people of a certain identity are making decisions around what information is important to preserve.

It is incredible just how much information is stored away. Before digitalized collections, it would have been incredibly difficult and time-consuming to access and compare records in different institutions. I often wonder how academics and researchers could ensure a thorough understanding of a topic when there could well be information they did not even know existed. I find it hard enough to know where to start even with the internet.

I think this is an important reminder. When 'evidence' is taken out of context, it can really distort what we see as 'reality.' I believe metadata would be an important tool for contextualizing information to improve the accuracy of our understanding.

What I get from this is that secure funding really allows scholars to prioritize the work and not get so caught up in politics because they are fighting for their livelihood as well.

This is where communication and public education would really benefit research institutions and researchers. Having the public, as well as people in power, aware of the significance and impacts of research work could help influence the right people and organizations to increase reliable funding opportunities.

As someone who chose my degree for the purpose of being a bridge between the academic and public spheres, I think we should be allowed the opportunities to cross traditional discipline boundaries. It is so important for all groups to engage with each other. This can be challenging when people can not all meet on the same level or is the same way. We should be encouraging those communication bridges.

It is important to remember that technology is not a mindless tool. The digital world has a life of its own. It is not just about being able to use technology and digital spaces, but the how and why of employing those tools.

This is interesting. Using digital humanities as a 'middle-state' for publishing seems actually very useful as a sounding board for scholars. Honest criticism and peer insights to further develop and proof ideas could increase the depth and breadth of scholarly publications in other areas.

How can scholarship in the area of digital humanities be monitored to ensure authenticity and quality? What risks and potential impacts are there of using such a public space?