So this is something that I have been working on for quite some time now.  The most important digital media that I have preserved for my family are digital photographs.  We have about 200 gigabytes worth of photos which have been shot mostly in jpeg format until recently when we started to shoot in a raw format to have greater photo editing capability.  Our digital photos are the most important digital files that we care to preserve.  There are also other files such as doc, xls, ppt, and pdf that I have saved.  Some of these files are important and others are not.

The first step that I have taken in preserving these files is installing an additional internal hard drive into my desktop computer.  This internal hard drive is used just for saving digital photographs.  Knowing that my computer’s internal hard drive is reaching its life expectancy, I have taken the measures to ensure that my digital images do not get lost when this hard drive fails.  The digital images get downloaded right into the second internal  hard drive.

The method that I have used for several years now has been to back-up everything on some type of media that is fixed such as a CD or DVD.  This process has been taking more time as more photographs have been taken and more files have been created.  The best way to go through this process is by ensuring that all of your documents are well organized and properly named so that they are easy to find.  The naming process is key to ensuring that you can locate something after it has been stored.

Once it has been fixed on a media that cannot change I ensure that it is backed up on an external hard drive.  I currently have two external hard drives.  I recently upgraded to a 3TB external hard drive. I did this because when you are shooting photography in Camera Raw each image is very large.  The type of camera that you have will determine the size of your files.  I own a Canon EOS 50D and this camera creates a Camera Raw file that is on average about 20MB.  The first external hard drive is 500GB and it automatically backs up my entire desktop computer.  The second external hard drive which is 3TB is used just for digital images and music.  The second external hard drive works as a network hard drive giving everyone in my house access to it.  No one in the house has the permissions to add or change any files in this external hard drive.  I am the only one with the permissions to add or change anything.  This ensures that the files do not get accidentally erased or corrupted.  If my kids want to do something with one of the files they know that they must save a copy of it on their computer.

There will be a point where my 500GB external hard drive will no longer be able to stored the amount of digital files that I have.  Once this happens I will upgrade to an external hard drive that is larger than the 3TB that I have.  I feel that I have used a pretty good process in backing up all of the digital content that I own.  Something that I have always kept in mind since I have owned a computer is that there is the possibility that the older files that I have may no longer be accessible with newer versions of software.  Up to this point I have not had to convert any of the digital files that I own but in the future there might be the possibility of converting old digital files into new ones.

One avenue that I have not explored since I have had a computer is backing up digital files on the internet.  This might be something that might be great for files that are not digital photographs.  I feel that your digital photographs should be kept in a secured place where no one can access them or corrupt them.  Digital photographs are files that once they are lost or corrupted can no longer be recreated.  Special efforts must be taken to ensure the livelihood of digital photographs or any special documents that you do not want to lose.

For our final project I will use a similar method to preserve the digital content of my research.  There are many things that I have learned in taking this class that will help me in preserving all of my digital files in the future.  Hopefully in the future there will be a method of preserving digital content that will guarantee the safety of your digital files.

I am history major and I am an active duty Marine.  I am extremely interested in all military history and not just our own.  My research project for this class in going to focus on the Battle of Iwo Jima, which has been one of the most significant battles in Marine Corps History.  Marines did heroic things on this tiny island in the eastern part of the Pacific Ocean that are hard to even imagine.  Thousands of Marine lives were lost in short period of time but they never stopped to reach their objective, which was to take control of this island from the Japanese.

This has been one of the most interesting articles that I have read for this class.  Discussing the digital past in the context that we have been discussing all semester has been something to really think about.

I have seen how computer technology has evolved from the first computer that I purchased in 1998 through the present.  It seem like within a year that you purchase a computer it becomes old and begins to slow down because of the amount of changes in the software that you might be running.  Not to mention that soon after you purchase a computer a newer and faster computer becomes available.  It can be overwhelming trying to figure out when to buy a computer and what computer is best for your needs.  This all ties into trying to preserve the past in a digital format.  I first began to use a computer when Windows 98 was the norm.  Since then, I have purchase multiple computers that have had different operating systems and newer versions of software that sometimes works with previous editions.  The bottom line is that with the rapid expanding processing capabilities of computers, new software to support the user needs have been developed to keep up with times.

One thing that I have been thinking about while being in this class is why has there not been a certain file type that has been created to use just for archiving digital files?  There are hundreds of different digital file types such as music, text, images, and many others.  Different file types have been developed by different software engineers to meet user needs.  Why can’t there be a specific file type just for archiving digital files whether the files are photos, music, text, or whatever?  Has there been an attempt to create a digital file type format just for archiving?  Maybe this could be something that a group of software engineers can work on.

Developing a file type just for archiving and making it universal so that it will encompass all file types would be a start into digitizing the past and preserving it.  Archiving files could be made available through the web in a manner that could only be read unless copied.  If the file were to be copied from the web certain binary codes could be removed from it, making it different from the original source.  I know that this might seem easy in concept but I wonder if it ever has been thought of?  In my opinion, I think that engineering a certain file type just for archiving could potentially be a means of preserving the digital past.

Just as mentioned in the article, there are several things wrong with the way digital files are archived in the present day.  One of the most significant problems is the evolving computer technology which can be hard to keep up with if you do not stay informed about new changes.  In my opinion, until a certain file type is developed to withstand the rapidly changing softwares that are available in the market there will always be a threat of the digital past that has been recorded.

I don’t believe that we should ever stop preserving original artifacts because there is nothing like having the real thing.  It does make it a lot easier to have access to the original artifact through the use of the internet.  Sometimes you just don’t have the time or means of traveling the location where the original artifact might be stored.  It is unfortunate that we are at the mercy of software engineers.  They create the software required to read files and work in different media formats.  As computer technology has evolved so has the software that comes with it.

In opinion, there could be a simple archiving file format that can be used for archiving digital material and potentially withstand the rapidly evolving computer technology.  A bigger question such as how this file type could be incorporated into the existing internet and made accessible by everyone without losing its authenticity is something that presents a huge challenge, just as mentioned in this article.  I found it fascinated that digital content that has been saved on different types of media has been slowly become unavailable because that media is no longer available.  A perfect example of this is the 3.5 inch floppy disk. I used to have several disks that I recorded old files from old computers and eventually, I realized that I could no longer access these files because the new computers that I purchased did not have the capability to read this media.  “Completely Tragic!!!”

Photos, music, documents, and other types of files were lost forever on those disks.  In my life time I have used Beta Cassettes, VHS Cassettes, 8-Track Tapes, and Cassette Tapes which are longer used on a regular basis.  I am sure that you could probably find an old player online somewhere if you really wanted to use these types of media formats.

There are many other cassette formats that I have also used in the past that are no longer used.  We have had all sorts of different media formats that have been used through time so why can’t there be a certain type of digital file type format used specifically for archiving digital material but that can withstand the hands of time?  Hopefully here in the near future some software engineer will come up with a concept for creating a specific file type that can be used to preserve all digital archives.

This week’s practicum was a lot of fun.  I tried many different words starting out with my wife’s name and mine.  The results were very interesting.  My name has been well used as far back as I could go.  My wife’s name (Sara) on the other hand has just recently become popular in the last few decades has it become popular.  After getting serious I was interested to know what correlation the word war, battle, and engagement had?  So this is what my Google Ngram looks like.

The results were very interesting. War apparently had been used quite a bit in the 1700s and it took about 60 years for the use of word war to taper off for well over a century. Once I have more time in my hands I am going to go back and look up a few more words to see what kind of results I can get.

I choose to do a presentation of The Battle of Iwo Jima.  It was hard to decide what information to use to put in just three slides.  I wanted to drive home the significance of what Marines did on a tiny island in the Pacific that changed the course of history in the Pacific.

I hope that a moment is taken to remember those that have fought for our freedom.

Well in my opinion I believe that PowerPoint is both good and evil.  In the Marine Corps we like to say “death by PowerPoint”.  It is true that an instructor or anyone who is presenting a class or presentation can be easily persuaded to read from the same slide show that he or she might be presenting.  PowerPoint is a great tool to make any presentation visually appealing and to help keep on track whoever is using PowerPoint.  Of course, at the same time it can also overwhelm you with too much information on a single slide.

I have plenty of experience using PowerPoint.  It is what we use in the Marine Corps to give  the Commander briefs, give instructions, and all sorts of other things.  I have also had awful experiences with instructors who have given classes and presentations by reading from their slide show.  This is where the term “death by PowerPoint” comes from.  Those that do the best using PowerPoint do it by keeping the amount of information on a single slide to a minimum.  I am sure that you have experienced watching a slide show that had a slide with at least 100 words.  Why would anyone want to read that many words from a slide and who wants to hear anyone read a slide with that many words?

PowerPoint is a great tool when it is used properly to enhance any presentation.  How good is a presentation, is solely the responsibility of the person who is giving the presentation.  It is also important to keep in mind that preparing to give a presentation is the most important step before giving the presentation.  This includes preparing the slide show that will be used to give the presentation.  The presentation needs to be easy to read and should only have key points that need to be taken from the presentation.  If there is a lot of information that must be used to drive a certain point home then multiple slides should be used instead of trying to cram everything into one slide.

One of the great things about PowerPoint is that you can import almost anything that is digital into a slide show and turn it into a presentation.  There are also many templates available when using PowerPoint.  Just like anything else, the more that you use something the easier it gets to use; PowerPoint is no different.  It can get very complicated to use PowerPoint depending on what it is that you are trying to do.  There are also very complex graphics that you can create using PowerPoint.

So as mentioned in this article, PowerPoint is quickly becoming the standard for teaching.  It is the simplicity of creating a slide show and presenting it to a class that has become the standard.  Gone are the days when teaching is strictly done using the lecture method without the aid of PowerPoint or some form of media.  When I was working towards becoming an instructor, of many trades, in the Marine Corps one of the first things that I was taught was to be confident about the instruction that I was giving.  This was only possible by actually knowing the material that you are teaching.  Have teachers become less prepared to give instruction because of the use of PowerPoint?  Well, I think that it is hard to say.  There are many great teachers out there that use PowerPoint only as a tool and do not completely rely on just reading what is on their slide show to teach.  I believe that PowerPoint is a great tool that can enhance the learning experience but at the same time it can burden those that are trying to learn by inhibiting the ability to learn.

Here is the chart that I put together using the historical data of gold.

Using raw data was a bit of a challenge because the value of gold did not change much until the later part of the 1900s.  I only used data for every ten years starting in the year 1800.  It was interesting to see that the value of gold did not change much for almost 130 years.  In the late 1900s gold really started to become more valuable.  I ran into problems trying to make the years in increments of ten.  I was not able to to represent every ten years as I wanted but you can see the change in the line every ten years.  I could have added more data points to depict more change in the line because in every year after the 1930s the price of gold changed.  I wanted to show how dramatic gold’s value has changed in the last 30 years compared to the last 200 years.

So just as many have felt that there is way too much information in a single Feltron Report, I too feel that there is a lot to digest when looking at one of these reports.  In each one of the pages there is a ton of information that you must make sense of and you must look at a page for a couple of minutes to really get what the page is trying to tell you.  Take for example the following page of the 2009 Feltron Report.

When you first look at this page you immediately wonder what is all of the information that is being reported on this page and what is its significance.  This is a page that you must look at for a couple of minutes to really understand the information that is being reported.  Once you know about the information that is being reported you can then look at this same page with a little more understanding and make sense of it.  Initially it is just not very appealing to the eye and you have to zoom in to see everything that was reported in this page.  It was the designer’s intent to make the report in this manner which is the reason why it is so visually unpleasant and requires time to really understand the information that is on this report.

Not all of the report was bad.  I felt that the following graph was well put together and was easy to read.  The colors and lines that were used to compile the information that was gather was well put together.  This graph is also easy on the eyes and you can easily distinguish one line of information from the other.  The only problem that I had with this graph was the amount of relationships that were actually reported by the peaks of each line.  If there would have been a set of numbers on the left hand side of the graph this graph could have been more powerful in making the information gathered easier to read.

The 2010/2011 Feltron Biennial Report is a bit overwhelming.  There is so much information   that is reported.  One can’t help but to wonder if the person that is reporting all of this information has anything to do during the day other than taking notes of what they are doing.  If I happened to be interested in what this individual was doing I think that this report would be extremely effective in reporting those details.  The only problem that I have with this report is that there is too much information in such a small space.  Maybe this report was designed in this manner with the purpose of cramming so much information in such a small space to cue the viewer that there is a lot of information here.  The viewer of this report will have to make sense of the information just like in all of the other Feltron Reports.

I felt that the following graph was well put together and was easy to read.

The information that was being reported in this particular graph was very easy to read and what I liked most about this graph was that you can immediately tell that there are two distinct numbers that are being reported for each place that was visited.  Unfortunately there was only one number that was reported so you are left to wonder what if the difference is the number that was given or was that number for a particular year.  What would have made this graph more powerful would have been to put both numbers of each each year.  On the left 2010 and on the right 2011.  The colors that were used were also easy on the eyes.  When comparing two different things in a graph it is important that there are two distinct colors that are easy to tell apart.

I do not believe that I will ever gather so much information about myself and those around me.  The information that was complied in the Feltron reports is just overwhelming and it really makes you wonder why would anyone gathered so much information about themselves.  What would be the purpose for so much information and is there something to gain from gathering all of this information.  These are some of the questions that I have about the Feltron Reports and I am willing to bet that for many who read these reports for the first time they might ask similar questions.