At this point, I am so proud of how my group is working. This week, members of my group actually stopped to ask our professor whether they could continue to add to the project after the due date just for fun because they are so interested in the topic. They are every TA’s dream. I feel really good about where they are in their individual research, their planning of the digital synthesizing of their ideas, and the personal dynamics between team members. I think that they have done a great job creating deadlines and sticking to them. I’ve also been very impressed at how well they’ve coordinated this one single topic to showcase each individual person’s strengths. I am honestly shocked at smoothly this process is going. If I worry about anything with my team, it is that I worry they are biting off more than they can chew (Tongue group…ha…ha…) with building the Tandoor oven, but they are planning to get the first round of cooking done this weekend after building it this weekend so I do think they can stay on track. I admire that they have been trying to go so above and beyond and have really embraced how much they care about this project. I have tried to push them to remember to start drawing the lines on what is going to be too much to cover and just focus on completing the tasks that they have already started.
 
The TAs started working with Tierney this week about creating our project in the Google MyMap section. I am a little nervous to see how my group’s project comes together to create my part, since my group has chosen to mostly abandon the StoryMap program and are focusing considerably more on tracing things through time, rather than a linear geographical narrative. I think it will definitely be doable to translate it into points that will work on our Google MyMap, but I think it will take a bit more digging and decoding for me to find the points—making sure that I pick out the locations within their narrative. I also think that I may have a lot more use of individual points with icons and without connections than other groups.
 
Below, I am attaching a view that explores the idea of digital humanities. We will be presenting the findings of our class at a faculty development program in the near future, so I have been thinking more and more about the concept of digital humanities and how that can be integrated into the future of education.