Galileo Project
When we were assigned our project, we had to decide what to have as our topic. Looking at the areas where history and physics intersect, we decided to make a timeline on Dipity to show Galileo’s life and to highlight his conflict with the church.
Do Da Dipity
As we started to work on our project, we realized that we would often be working together, but in separate locations. Thus we needed to create a way where we could both communicate our ideas. After looking at different collaborative software we settled on making a Google Document because it is an easy program that easily fits our needs. Here are snippets from that Google Document:
“LIBBY: Here are a few things that Galileo researched that were the most controversial->
- He found that bodes of different masses fall at the same rate (gravity).
- He laid the framework for relativity.
- He defended heliocentrism.
- He created telescopes (very profitable).
- He found three of Jupiter’s moons. – Ties back to heliocentrism.
I think the most controversy came with his astronomy findings and his gung-ho-ness for heliocentricism
KATIE: Libs–what form of tech do we want to use? These ideas sound great!
LIBBY: I really want to include not only the facts, but why people are so adamant about why this was controversial.—KATIE: yes yes of course!
LIBBY: So we like the idea of a timeline, lets look up timelines. Dipity is a great timeline maker.
KATIE: I really like Dipity from first glance, let’s check it out in more detail together!
LIBBY: I added his birthdate and found a pretty comprehensive timeline that we can use to get ideas on what to look up.”
It was great because not only could we easily collaborate on our project, but Addy could monitor our progress and answer questions as we went along.
We created our timeline using Dipity. Dipity is a free timeline maker that formats all of our information into a usable timeline or flipbook. There was little to no learning curve.
To create our website we downloaded a free template from Adobe DreamWeaver. Adobe was kind enough to add the Photoshop documents necessary to make the website our own. Once we changed out the text in the website and embedded our video and timeline, we uploaded our site onto BearWeb. The whole process was quite painless.
Luckily there are a lot of sources over this topic so it was not hard to research. We found a more detailed timeline that we used as our guide. We also used other sites to help find more specific dates.
The inspiration for this topic sprung from finding an interesting intersection of history and physics. Libby’s eleventh graders will study Galileo’s contributions to science and Katie, who is teaching tenth grade world history, will surely cover the Inquisition.
We covered three areas of the Technology Cognate with this project. We used data technology when we created the timeline using Dipity and filled out the web page using DreamWeaver.
Using the Computer to Make a Website and TImeline
“Data (Computer) Technology provides interactivity and control. Data technology provides interactive (input/output) functionality to previously linear and/or passive processes. Interactivity dramatically alters knowledge construction and acquisition.”
We made an introduction video to our web page using iMovie and that directly correlates to the video technology area of the framework.
“Video technology provides ‘presence’ and ‘affect.’ The ability to simultaneously capture, modify, store, and transmit visual images is video technology’s potent contribution to the technology spectrum.”
When we uploaded our website onto the Internet, we essentially started a conversation between us and the world. We shared our new knowledge for other people to learn from and in turn we inserted a Google Survey so that the viewer can communicate to us how to make our website or assets in the website better. This follows the spirit of Web 2.0 because we are adding to the cloud of information, repackaging it for further consumption.
“Communication Technology provides connectivity and shared meaning…in an attempt to make information available to anyone without the usual constraints of time, distance, or location.”
Here is a link to our project. Enjoy!
