The MIT program Scratch is designed to make programming user friendly as exemplified in the video below:

While Scratch is user friendly and great for any non-programmer to use I think it does lack a few flaws. First off, the interface appears to be straight out of a 1998 Microsoft Paint document. I found it not appealing in the slightest. Perhaps, this is due to the sophisticated interfaces I’ve slowly grown-up. However, I would expect more from MIT.

That being said, perhaps the interface is just that: simple for a reason. In order to give people the ability to program on their own, you have to make it simple and remove all the sophistication from it. Yes, it is possible to program items with fancy decorations. However, I’m pretty sure for the ordinary non-programmer among us (aka. you and me) would be too overwhelmed to do any programming done.

Scratch is a new form of programming that allows kids to delve into programming. Scratch brings programming to everyone, as it notes on their website. That is what is most remarkable about Scratch, aside from the 1998 looking interface. To create your program you simply move block together to create movement, illustrations, or simple video games. Introducing kids to the programming is the main purpose of MIT.

Scratch allows for collaboration between individuals, which not only allows for the sharing of ideas but further understanding of programming skills.

When I was growing up in Charlottesville, Va I went to the computer lab once a week where we had Apple computers donated to our lab. We learned to type and learned the basics of computers by the time I was in the fourth grade. Using a program such as Scratch would have certainly been something my classmates and I would have easily been able to both enjoy and understand. For introducing individuals to programming Scratch gets my seal of approval despite my initial dislike of its interface.

In Roy Rosenzweig’s essay Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era brings up a variety of dilemmas modern day historians and archivists are facing. At first the lack of history and information posed a problem to historians. Now, the problem faced by archivists and historians lies in the abundance of information, rather than the lack of it.

Still, the astonishingly rapid accumulation of digital data–obvious to anyone who uses the Google search engine and gets 300,000 hits–should make us consider that future historians may face information overload…Thus historians need to be thinking simultaneously about how to research, write, and teach in a world of unheard-of historical abundance and how to avoid a future of record scarcity.

If information is not chronicled adequately, then finding the information itself becomes difficult. What historians, archivists, and ordinary people are facing is information being lost in the abundance of it. Access to information is enormous. An ordinary American high school student, as Rosenzweig expresses, can access endless amounts of both primary and secondary research through a quick online search.

While this is an advantage, it’s difficult to tell what is factually correct. Information can be categorized based on personal preferences and ideologies. Individuals can pick and choose their own version of “truth.” Rosenzweig also address this issue, particularly with historical artifacts.

How, for example, do we ensure the “authenticity” of preserved digital information and “trust” in the repository? Paper documents and records also face questions about authenticity, and forgeries are hardly unknown in traditional archives. The science of “diplomatics,” in fact, emerged in the seventeenth century as a way to authenticate documents when scholars confronted rampant forgeries in medieval documents. But digital information–because it is so easily altered and copied, lacks physical marks of its origins, and, indeed, even the clear notion of an “original”–cannot be authenticated as physical documents and objects can.

Information can easily be altered online, in a digital age. How can you then prove if something is authentic if you are unable to compare it to something else? With primary, physical sources one is easily able to distinguish which artifact is true or not. You can look at the ink that was used, you can look at the paint that was used, or you can look at the parchment that was used. In a digital age, you cannot see that. Are we becoming to reliant on the benefits of a digital past recorded, without realizing what we are loosing?

For this practicum, I decided to analyze some of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s letters. His correspondence with this wife, sister, and father. I used three letter sets, not from one time frame.

Using a quick Ctrl+F internet search finder I decided to find how many times music was mentioned in his letters. I want to pick apart the letters that I knew had “music” in them. For this I only chose three letters: Bologna, August 4 1770; Milan, August 31 1771; and Salzburg, Sept 4 1776. I should have focused on one time frame in a shorter span of time. However, some of these letters were written in Italian and German found on the Gutenberg project’s website.

For my final project, I am hoping to use maps and charts to course the tour that Mozart took with his father during his younger years. Mozart went and played for various people in various locations when he was younger. His father had a heavy influence on his childhood and made him play violin in front of crowds to be known as the prodigy he was.

In the three letters I looked at, I used the a Wordle, to highlight some of the words most often used in these three letters. I have already identified flaws in this process, particularly with having no set time frame. However, since some letters were written in German and Italian I skipped those correspondences. Also, some context describing words were not included in this Wordle because it the software only looks at the number of times one word is used, not the description of the word. Below is the Wordle for the three letters I looked at:

As you can see, music is probably the most common word used in his letters. As is write, and violin. What I think was missed in my analysis is that I was looking for the word music, so naturally I found letters that used it a lot. It did not encompass a wide variety of letters nor any other words that would be used to describe music or a type of music.

As such, this Wordle is flawed, but shows how often Mozart thought about his music as well as how many times he spoke about writing letters within letters he was writing.

The Corpus by Brigham Young University, with all of its data is a bit overwhelming. First off, its interface makes it difficult for users to find what they are looking for. In a simple search, one word out of context can add to ones total search results, instead of narrowing them down.

The challenge with the internet and the data mining applications is that to find exactly what one is looking for is difficult. There is a vast amount of information available for people to search for and discover. However, there is a lot of “noise” that gets in the way of finding just exactly what one is looking for. The problem with research is that one either gets too little information or there is an overflow of information.

When I typed in “Mozart” into the Corpus Time Magazine search engine 168 results came up. The interface was too difficult to navigate. What could be a useful too ended up being too bland and overwhelming to use. Unlike the Pro-Quest interface and search engine, I had to dig through all the results to find what I was looking for. In fact, I wasn’t even looking for anything specific. If someone is blindly going to this search engine, they will get lost and find not direction in their knowledge discoveries.

Academic and curiosity research aside, data mining isn’t just occurring when students are scrambling to find sources for a research papers. No, data mining has reached a whole knew level where during the 2012 election, both candidates (Mitt Romney and Barack Obama) spent millions of data in sophisticated data mining.

Now, data mining can become even more consumer specialized. Candidates can now see what television shows you watch, where you shop, what you eat, your volunteerism, your donations, etc to figure out ones “political identity.” However, what is the line drawn between just “research” and “privacy”?

That being said, data mining has become even more sophisticated since the interface use of the corpus from Brigham Young.

For my practicum I decided to pick a topic that I am very passionate about: ending the violence of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Central Africa. A war that has been going on for more than 25 years is hardly known by most individuals. In March of 2012, the film Kony2012 broke and brought this crisis to people’s attention. Despite the praise, criticism, and the like the crisis still continues.

As discussed earlier, I strongly dislike the use of PowerPoint. While it can be an effective tool for a presentation, it is often not used properly. In fact, individuals are usually numbed/bored by a PowerPoint experience. Instead, since my sophomore year of college, I have started using Prezi!

For this Prezi I wanted to make the background dark to reflect the topic. Joseph Kony’s army has been kidnapping and abducting children in the region of Central Africa (Northern Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, and South Sudan). I then decided to formulate the Prezi to reflect the Ugandan flag which is red, yellow, and black.

I wanted to include video and images. What is easy about Prezi is that it allows you to easily add video and images into the presentation. Also, within the presentation there is movement which engages the audiences.

If I was actually presenting this Prezi, I would include commentary to the presentation. I like  presentations that are more about words spoken, not words read. An image will tell me something that the speaker hasn’t told me, but an image or video allows for an audience to get an understanding of what to expect from the speaker or an introduction to a speaker’s point of view/message. Therefore, this Prezi lacks any substantive information that I would normally include in a presentation if I were to be present it. However, below is the Prezi that I made.

As a senior in college I have seen my fair share of PowerPoint presentations. In fact, much like Wired writer Edward Tufte, I too dislike PowerPoint. In his 2003 article, “PowerPoint is Evil.” Often times students see PowerPoint as a way to get their information up in big fancy letters and colors without giving much information. In fact, I would argue it’s the lazy form of presenting. PowerPoint doesn’t allow for an audience to interact with the speaker. Students in many of my classes  have often read directly off of a PowerPoint filled with large paragraphs.

What doesn’t seem to be clear to some presenters is that I am capable of reading.

Tufte concludes his piece by saying,

At a minimum, a presentation format should do no harm. Yet the PowerPoint style routinely disrupts, dominates, and trivializes content. Thus PowerPoint presentations too often resemble a school play -very loud, very slow, and very simple.

The practical conclusions are clear. PowerPoint is a competent slide manager and projector. But rather than supplementing a presentation, it has become a substitute for it. Such misuse ignores the most important rule of speaking: Respect your audience.

I full heartily agree with this. Presentations have become boring where presenters do not seem to respect their audience. When presenters read to me directly off their PowerPoint or not include video or engaging images, I immediately zone out and start checking my phone or the latest Facebook statuses.

Commedian Don McMillan seems to agree with Tufte and myself on highlighting the problems with PowerPoint.

However the internet has started to save the presentation medium.

Free, online presentation sites allow for a more engaging presentation experience for both the presenter and the audience. Since my sophomore year of college, I have used Prezi. Prezi is an online, interactive presentation tool. It allows individuals to embed their own videos and images directly into the presentation. Words stand out by zooming in and out of the content and allows for the audience to move with you as you speak.

In short, I am anti-PowerPoint and Pro Prezi.