Transform College

Hello Everyone,

Today I will be talking about how my project can be transformative. For me the word “transformative” itself has a very broad meaning and I can talk about almost every part of project that relates to “transformative.”

First of all, my main topic of the project is the Gettysburg College Campus Change over Time. I am working on how our school campus has changed in the past and now my current scope are the years 1890s to 1920s. I am mainly focusing on external appearance of the campus and what affected the changes of the campus and how it resulted in after the transformation.

Secondly, the way I am presenting history is not through a traditional paper, but I am using a digital tool to present my results. My project includes a website where I am presenting my data and I will also be talking about my process throughout the 8-week work, during which I have encountered many difficulties and how I tried to resolve those issues. Moreover, I am presenting my data using a mobile application connecting with augmented reality, where I will try to provide more information (facts and images) linking to each specific building using the camera of the mobile that is pointing to some building on campus.

Thirdly, what I am aiming to transform is the general audience. I would like to both transform and increase the audience. Because of the choice of developing an application on the mobile, I try to reach out to a broader audience. Almost everyone on our campus possesses his/ her own mobile phone, so I try include everyone on our campus to be able to access my application. Moreover, people who are also not from our campus, but are visiting our campus can access the mobile app and also use it on campus during the stay and have their own personal campus tour. Furthermore, having developing an application on a mobile, I want to increase the interest of my audience to just to even try the application as the technological novelty, rather than just having on a traditional paper. Next, my project can be transformative concerning the content of my project. As the history of the campus is very unlimited and always increasing, the project is flexible and more data can be given to the project to be more cohesive. For example, the scope of the project can increase in time, more interesting facts can be added, and also the changes of the interior of the buildings can be included.

The DSSF program does not have to transform at all as I do not feel that DSSF is limiting itself in any ways. The only thing that DSSF can improve is to trying increase its reach and have even more people be interested in being part of DSSF and being interested in DSSF project. As I really do not like to differentiate gender or sex, but DSSF this year in a group of 6 fellows, only 1 person is a white male. This program is really open to anyone and welcomes everyone.

Have a good weekend,

JHA