Here are my five project possibilities:
1) Studying the trending topics on smithsonianmag.com. What appears most frequently? What are bloggers saying about them? How often are visitor experiences and/or the actual museums mentioned? How well does the magazine website integrate current exhibits in promoting discussion or suggesting a visit? This would likely go with the collaborative web.
2) HBO history productions- looking at one or several historically based shows by HBO and how much information they provide on their website to historical sources. What suggestions do they make if people want to know more about a topic? This would go with the collaborative web.
3) Evaluating the peer review process for Wikipedia. How effective is it? How would you know if the person reviewing your work is a professional in their field? Can a non-academic peer review elevate the quality and accuracy of an article? What determines a high quality article from a low one? (focus on history articles) This would go with databases.
4) Looking at the top ten google search results for “online history games”, who is sponsoring the websites? Are they professional organizations? amateurs? etc. How do their games and references to historical sources compare to one another? This would go with discussion of databases.
5) Looking at websites that discuss passionate topics such as 9/11 or the Civil War, topics that have groups who want to point fingers and blame a specific category of people, what do the blog administrators do to promote discussion rather than angry rants? Do they state on their blogs what types of comments will or will not be accepted? How do they keep comments focused on the history rather than personal greivances? This would go with discussion of digital collections.
Kelly C