Hello Laura,
I have also experimented with these technologies in several different
ways over the past few years, with mixed results.
My collaborators and I used a blog as a form of public outreach over
the years at the West Point Foundry site in Cold Spring, New York.
Between 2002 and 2008, each summer we asked student participants to
volunteer as authors. We would have one blog essay per week that
described the work and discoveries of the past seven to ten days.
Staff sometimes coached or helped the students to focus or edit their
comments. A volunteer at MTU then posted the blog entries on the
project website. Each year's blog is indexed at the main website:
http://www.westpointfoundry.org
This past year, I expanded these practices for the Utah Pottery
Project. While I had begun a project web page years ago, I'd not
developed it. I've been building a community-based research program,
to varying degrees of success. During last winter, I created a new
research blog and a facebook identity for the project (Utah
PotteryProject). You can see the blog here:
http://utahpotteryproject.blogspot.com
The blog and facebook identity were to be extensions of the major
projects, including the installation of a 2200 sq ft museum exhibit
and a major open area excavation and field school. All the events had
interconnected public programming, and during the events I hoped the
social networking and web based tools to do three things:
1. Rupture archaeological process so that the collaborative and multi-
textured nature of research became apparent to a casual reader. I
also wanted to show how much work goes into doing archaeology well,
connecting all the dots from before the dig, during the dig, and all
the way through the lab to the archive.
2. Use social network tools to change knowledge production from
"researcher/expert producing information that could be consumed by the
public" to a new model. I assumed that the social networking
identities would encourage word of the project to spread virally, by
word of mouth from interested person to interested person, via
genealogy researchers, folk art collectors, fans of historic
archaeology, western history buffs, and so on. I hoped to cultivate
these emerging virtual social networks so that individuals could
evolve into a wide community of stake-holders and collaborators who
felt some ownership of the research. My greatest hope was that this
would extend to an increased social and political will to enhance
preservation policy and law.
3. Provide a meaningful way for interested people to contribute funds
directly in support of the project. This lesson I learned from Barack
Obama!
My experiment is still ongoing, so I don't know if I am ready to give
a thumbs up or down yet. Here are some general observations at this
time:
a. Student research team members, both undergrad and grad, were not
always eager to write on the web page, but worked with the facebook
identity without even blinking. I suspect that student's hesitation
to write on the blog was complicated by the fact that we lived in
tents in a canyon and didn't have wireless internet during the
evening. Students found it very disruptive to leave their dig unit
and go to the town's public library to use the internet connection.
b. Learn how to embed your blog/webpage with tracking software like
Google Analytics. This is very, very useful because you can actually
track how your web page was being read. Ours has been read around the
world and people find it through the strangest searches! The readers
also are able to share information with us and I have gotten several
important research clues from our readers.
c. Student's parents will follow along with the dig, since their
children don't call home to say what they are doing. Further, they
will comment on facebook about how their child never eats chicken/
curry/mac-and-cheese/whatever at home.
d. I think video should have been a bigger tool for us. I have since
created a channel on YouTube and I am preparing a set of videos about
the summer. This could have been a very popular addition to the site
and would spread more widely than pictures (which spread more widely
than text only).
e. Make sure that your facebook settings are totally open so that
anyone on facebook can read anything that you put up. Also be sure
that your students know that your privacy settings are like that.
f. keep your professional stuff separate from your personal life.
g. I have not yet found this a very useful fundraising tool. But then
again, I'm no Barack Obama. I also think that more video material on
Youtube, linked to the blog and facebook, will help. Fundraising
should not be the primary drive to do this stuff. People will see
through that.
That's all I have time to write now.
Good luck,
Tim
Graduate Studies Director
Industrial Heritage and Archaeology
Michigan Technological University
On Nov 11, 2009, at 12:23 PM, Smoke wrote:
> Laura, have you checked out ArchaeoSeek?
> http://archaeoseek.ning.com/
>
> You may wish to discuss the pros and cons with Anita Cohen-Williams.
>
> Smoke
>
> On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Laura Seifert
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> hello everyone,
>>
>> I am interested in ya'lls experiences using facebook, blogs, and
>> other web 2.0 applications to gather interest and public support
>> for archaeology. Any luck? We are attempting this in Savannah, GA,
>> a place known for historic preservation (and woefully inadequate
>> archaeology).
>>
>> And now for the shameless plug: Become a facebook fan of "Savannah
>> Under Fire"- our project to rediscover the Revolutionary War in
>> Savannah.
>>
>> Thanks!
>> Laura
>>
>>
>> Laura Seifert
>> Archaeology/Museum Technician
>> Savannah History Museum
>> Coastal Heritage Society
>> Savannah, GA
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Smoke Pfeiffer
>
> "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or
> that we
> are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only
> unpatriotic and
> servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." --Teddy
> Roosevelt
> Proud member of the Angry Mob!
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