Week 3

Focus

The Battle of the Somme

My decision to focus on the Battle of the Somme for my final project came from our time over in France while looking that the Lochnagar (as shown above) and Hawthorne craters. The gigantic size of these man-made craters really sparked my interest. These were two of several craters created on the morning of July 1st 1916. The idea of the British was to plant tons of explosives underneath of German front lines. British and French  "argued that the only way to beat the Germans was to punch an enormous hole in their lines, creating a rupture that could not be sealed off." This idea was what created the largest massacre of the entire Great War. The historic relevance of this battle to WWI is what pushed me towards focusing on this for my final project. In my final project the viewer will be able to see how the war played out during that first day and the months that followed until the end of the battle. 

History

The history of The Battle of the Somme is one of the main focuses from my project. Without a solid knowledge base of the occurrences during this battle I won't be able to effectively create a historical timeline. My plan is to look up some books from the McIntyre Library that specifically focus on The Battle of the Somme. Seeing as how I have not gotten that far into my research I decided to start with a book that I have already purchased for my Geography of the Western Front class, The Myth of the Great War. This is a book that focuses on the entire of WWI, but there is a chapter in the book called 1916: Massacre on the Somme. This chapter goes in depth on the events that happened the morning of the 1st of July. Another large source of knowledge pertaining the The Battle of the Somme comes from the information Remi told us. During or trip to France we met up with a grad student named Remi. Remi has been doing research of the crater sites of the Somme. He gave us tours of the sites and informed us of the historical happenings at each site we visited.

This is a photo of Remi (located in the center) relaying information to the group about the specific Somme battlefield site we were at.

For the Battle of the Somme my knowledge base doesn't really extend past the first day at this point. On the morning of July 1, 1916 the British exploded a series of explosives that were supposed to be located directly underneath the German lines. The whole idea of this attack was to create an explosion to wipe out the front lines so that essentially the British could crawl over the top of the trenches and walk across no-mans-land with ease. Their explosions did not wipe out the front lines as expected and the British were slaughtered while climbing over the top of the trenches.

While this is an extremely important day for this battle and for all of WWI there is a lot more information that I will need to gather on the events leading up to the end of the battle several months later. With the information that I recieve from multiple other books focusing on the Battle of the Somme I will be able to accuratle portray the happenings of the Somme from begining to end through a timeline story map.

I am looking at renting several other books to pick apart for information, they are; Forgotten Voices of the Somme by Joshua Levine, The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front by Peter Hart, and The Turning Point: The Battle of the Somme by Sir Harry Perry Robinson. The first two books were written fairly recently on the accounts of the Battle of the Somme, but the third book is fairly differrent. The Turning Point is a reproduction of a book that was written in 1923. I believe this book could be extremely valuable as it was written first-hand by someone living during that time period. I'm hoping to find some books like this to get a better account of what happened over the entirety of the Battle of the Somme.

Story Map

After deciding to base my final project off of the Gettysburg Story Map I found the story map on the ArcGIS Online site and started to look at the layout of the story map. My motive was to try to find a template that could be used to sculpt a story map of the Battle of the Somme. I tried using Google to see if there was a question forum that had the same question as I had and found nothing. I also tried just looking around within the site. After looking for a good amount of time I found nothing. I will have to sit down with my professor to see if we can make this Gettysburg Story Map into something workable for my final project. Finding a template similar to that of the Gettysburg map would be a huge plus into making an awesome/interactive story map.

 Gettysburg Story Map

If that is not possible I may have to use the map tour template that we used from the Google TourBuilder site. This would enable me to finish my project and have something for others to view for my research, but I do not believe this would do my final project justice and would not be as sophisticated as an ArcGIS Online story map. The addition of a timeline (as shown below) would be a great advantage of using the ArcGIS Online story map.

Example of a Tourbuilder story map: Memorials of the Great War

 TourBuilder Story Map

 

 





Story Map Outline

The final project story map will look similar to that of the Gettysburg template. I want to have a map of the Somme area (near Albert, France) as the basemap. There will be a timeline somewhere on the story map that the user will be able to scroll through a series of dates. At each date there will be a description of the significant events that happened on this day with any pictures that are available to me through the internet or those taken by myself and classmates. When you scroll from date-to-date the map will change and the frontlines from the battle will move.

With this the viewer will be able to be informed of the historical happenings of the Battle of the Somme and see how those events effected the outcome of the battle. The battle will be shown through a series of maps and the final map/border could be seen as the final outcome.



Sources: Mosier, John. The Myth of the Great War, pg. 229. New York; Perennial, 2001. Print.

Week 2

Tasks for the Week

1. Create a story map using TourBuilder powered by Google
2. Think about final project ideas
3. Decide whether TourBuilder or the Story Map template would work better for the final project

Using TourBuilder

Immediatly after starting the TourBuilder program I could see how much more user friendly this program is that the Story Map program with Esri.

Determine your Story Map topic

For my topic I chose to focus on the WWI memorials we visited on our trip across Northern France. While the main goal of this project was to become more familiar with the TourBuilder program, I decided to chose a topic with a little more structure and historical information than my last topic; which was a story map of the second day of our trip. This will closer resemble something that I would be producing for our final project.

Upload pictures and information

The TourBuilder program was much easier to upload pictures and place them in their correct position than it was on the Esri program. With the TourBuilder site the user is able to upload several pictures to one point on the map, type in a location, and the program would place those pictures at the location of your choosing. Then once the pictures have been placed on the map you can click and drag them around to map the map more presentable for the viewer. One aspect of the TourBuilder site that I liked that the Esri program didnt have was there was a space to enter in the date that the picture was taken. This makes it easier to keep your tour in chronological order.

Make presentable

While the TourBuilder program is much more user friendly, The Esri site did have the availability of making the map much more personal. On the Esri program you could change background colors and add small descriptions under the title about the place the picture was taken. On the TourBuilder site there is no way of changing the background from the plain default white and if you were to write something about the photo it must all be located in the information section of the photo.

Link to my TourBuilder map: https://tourbuilder.withgoogle.com/builder#play/ahJzfmd3ZWItdG91cmJ1aWxkZXJyEQsSBFRvdXIYgICAgKi6tAkM

Thinking of a Final Project Idea

Historical Story Map

At this point I'm still thinking I will be doing a project somewhere along the lines of a story map of one of the battles in WWI. The idea is to base my project off of the Gettysburg story map that Joe showed us on the first day of class. You would be able to scroll through a series of dates and the map would show you how the frontlines moved around during the war.

The spin I want to put on it would be attempting to explain the reasoning behind the changes in the positions of the frontlines and give the viewer a small historical background behind the shifts. I believe this being able to do this effectively would turn my viewers into informed viewers. This will help them to better understand the shifts in the frontlines and how WWI was played out with the technology they had at the time. I'm simply taking the idea Joe had of making us informed tourists in France and attempting to insert that into my final project.

TourBuilder vs Esri Story Map

There were obviously pros and cons to both of these story map programs. After using these two programs I was drawn into using the TourBuilder site by the user friendliness of the program, but after thinking about what I would need in a site to complete my final project I will most likely be using the Esri program. My reasoning behind this is I believe that the Gettysburg template was located on the Esri program. If I want to do something along those lines I'll probably need to use the Esri site for my final project. Also using Esri will look more attractive to the Geography savy viewers.

Week 1

Tasks for the week

1. Create a Simple Story Map

2. Start thinking of a Final Project idea

 

Creating a Simple Story Map

Determine your story map topic       

For my simple story map I chose to focus on the second day of our trip across Northern France. Because the purpose of this story map is to force us to become more familiar with the template, the topic didn't carry that much importance.

 

Upload pictures and add information

To upload pictures onto the story map template we had to upload our pictues into a Google + picture album, then uplaod that album to Picasa ( a photo sharing site ), and then upload the pictures to the Esri story mapping site. This posed a small problem in the fact that the pictures then were no longer connected to their original coordinates. We just had to place the photos manually onto the map, and while this wasn't a huge problem, once we need to upload more than 20 photos for the final project this could become quite annoying and time consuming. After uploading the photos we needed to attach a title and description to each photo.

 

Make presentable

To make our story map look professional I added a blue background to get rid of the dull grey that was the default color. I added a title to the story map and wrote a small description. I then made sure the map was zoomed in so that the viewer can specifically see where each photo was taken.

 

Link to my Simple Story Map: http://uwec.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapTour/index.html?appid=d6ef908d52b842a38287c9ae5a8bf502&webmap=583fa9f721c4485eaa8e0d06a95bfdea

 

 

Start Thinking of a Final Project Idea

Historical story

Right now for a final project I'm thinking about taking one of the battles and making a story map of where the front lines were located throughout the war. The viewer would be able to scroll through the dates and the front line would move for both sides. Like Joe said this may take some digging to find out where the front lines were on each specific date, but it would make a really cool story map. Especially if I included some of the pictures that we took along the trip of what the battlefield looks like in modern times.