Finally!

This website finally let me on so I can blog. Billy and I called the people we are supposed to interview this afternoon, but the tone on the other line for my individual indicated that it was either a fax machine or an internet connection. Billy, however, was able to get through to an answering machine and leave a message. I will give my guy another call this evening hoping that the tone i heard earlier was an internet connection. Yet, if it was a fax machine, I think that I will go over to Mr. David Young's house to see him in person and set up an interview. These next couple of weeks should be quite interesting.

Earlier in the semester I tried contacting the retired firefighter to which I was assigned to. After making frequent phone calls to the listed number it became clear that either the firefighter is dead or he does not like to answer calls. I proceeded to contact a different firefighter on the list, who at one time was the fire chief in Winter Park. This man now assumes the fire chief responsibilities in a community about an hour from Winter Park. When I talked to him earlier this semester he seemed very willing to sit down and talk to me about his experiences as a Winter Park fireman. Throughout this week and the following week my partner and I plan on revising our first draft and continuing further research surrounding our topic.

This will actually be my blog for this week. Sorry it's late. So, I haven't gotten in touch with our firemen yet, but I'm going to speak with them either earlier tonight or tomorrow. For our paper, I think we have a good start, we just need to fix a few things like the introduction and find some more sources for background information. Also, most of our pictures are coming from the newspapers, and they aren't that great quality. Maybe the archives at the fire department will have some nice pictures for us to use on the web page. For class, I liked going over the Cold War policies. It's one of my favorite topics in US history.

b L O g .

In response to the post below me, there is a WWII class being offered (as of right now) for next spring! :) Anyway...Rachael and I are revising our web page paper that we got back. Even if it's not always the best thing to receive papers that are marked up by the professor, I'm glad we have feedback to base our changes on. It is hard to know what we need to change and get a feel for how Prof. Chambliss wants things done if he doesn't write on our papers, so I'm glad he did on this one. My interview is getting there, although I must admit I'm not really looking forward to it. I don't particularly like interviewing people, much less some random person I've never met before :P O well, there's a first for everything!

bloggggg

So I finally have someone to interview since my original interviewee has passed away. Although I'm kinda dreading the phone call to the retired firefighter because I'm an awkward person.
Anyways, I really just want to get this over with, because I see myself putting this off for a couple weeks and I'd rather not have a mental breakdown. So hopefully I can reach my interviewee and set something up for as soon as possible.
And also, I don't like that we rushed through WW2, but I understand why we did. It just sucks because that's one of my favorite topics and we hardly spend any time on it. Hopefully we will cover the Cold War more in depth.

interview

Like my partner Ashley, I too am focusing on my questions for the interview this weekend and I hope to conduct the interview sometime next week. Since she and I are focusing on the history of the department, I hope to get some background on the department when my interviewee was active. I'm really looking forward to it, to hear his stories and see what he can contribute to the project.

Blog 3/28

Next week will definitely be the week of the interview which means that we need to come up with the questions this weekend. Since our paper already has a solid direction this shouldn't be too difficult. Hopefully we lucked out with a talkative interviewee. It's probably also time to start figuring out dates for the fire station archives. Though we already have more than enough information from the library archives, the sources are completely limited to newspaper articles and so we could use some variation. I'm also going to have to start working on the secondary reading assignment that's due next Friday since I won't be in class to turn it in.

Our paper is coming along really well... We have started editing our paper and I think that we have made some good improvements. I think that we still need to add a few more sources and expand on some of the thoughts, however, I think that we have made good progress. I am very excited to interview my firefighter and to see what he has to say. Goodbye!

I thought that Brittiany and I did well on our paper but still have some work to do. We are slowly finding more information and we are going to go to the fire department to try and get some specific answers to certain questions. I tried calling the person I am interviewing and did not get an answer so I am going to call back soon. I need to get some questions to ask them but I am not sure where to start with thinking of specific questions.

This week i started to think about my interview. Since i have the wife of a fire firefighter, im going to have to direct my question towards HER experience with the department. I am trying to come up with a series of questions about the effects on family life, etc and i hope to contact her within the next week

Week 11 (March 24-28th)

I tried contacting the retired firefighter who was assigned to me. There was no answer and I left a message. I am going to call back tomorrow. In the meantime, I started to formulate some questions to ask him. Some of our secondary reading exercises helped with a few questions as well. I am a little nervous about this interview, but in the end know it will be interesting and beneficial. The work on our paper is still progressing nicely. There are just a few loose ends in the information area and after that we are ready to work intensively on the rough draft and editing process.

I am quite nervous about this interview/biography project. Where do I set up the interview? when? and what do I say? I'm afriad it will be awkward. I have to get started soon because it's approaching quickly.

Me and Shannon seems to be heading in the right direction for our paper.

Paper

When i went down to the archives i found a bunch of things on three main fires on campus. There was one other smaller fire but there wasnt a whole lot of information on it so i didnt include it in the rough draft. However, there were many pictures of the houses that burnt and of their backstory.

Our paper is coming along nicely. I think that we have a really well formed essay so far. Obviously it still needs work, however, I believe we are on the right track. We are planning to go over your notes on our paper this week and to begin editing and improving our paper as soon as possible.

After receiving the first draft of our digital history projects back last week I found that there is much room for improvement. The one aspect of Dave's and I project where we could improve the most in is the substance of our historical narrative. One of the biggest problems we encountered over the course of the project was finding sufficient numbers of arson cases that have occurred in the Winter Park area. The Winter Park Public Library was probably our best source when it came to finding past cases of arson. In order for our final draft to be successful I feel Dave and I need to continue to conduct further research relating to all aspects of arson and the Winter Park Fire Department. We also need to refine our first draft and clean up certain areas of obscurity.

Week 10 (March 17-21)

Sorry I am a little late on this blog, my computer decided to not function last week. Our project is coming along nicely. I am glad we got the outline done and turned in. After getting it back, it looks like we are heading in the right direction. Shannon and I need to get a little more information on Walter Sachse. We went to the Rollins archive and found some more information on the firemen. Next, we are planning on finding some good photos to put in our project. The archives from the fire department had some great ones, which we plan on using. Overall, I am not too nervous about the funal product because I think my partner and I are progressing well.

Blog #?

Sorry I've been forgetting about this blog thing over and over again...
Anyways, we got our draft back, and it was pretty good. Our research was not complete, and hopefully we'll put in more stuff in our articles later on. And working with Nicole is awesome~lol!
We now start to think about the interviewing project. We're planning to call them next week and possibly meet them over the weekend.

sorry

I sincerely apologize for not posting these last several weeks Dr. Chambliss. I guess that I was excited for spring break and completely spaced it. In any case, Billy and I got the research done and the majority of our document written, which you have seen. We are happy with our first draft and will perfect it to no end. After getting it back today, I am supremely confident that our online project will be immensely interesting, while being very historic at the same time. Again, I apologize.

In class, we are learning about the policies of FDR. I think it's interesting because they began our modern activist government. I think that he always seems to have a positive association with his presidency, yet he placed Americans in internment camps!! I guess because he provided relief to some and lead the US through WWII (which, for his involvement in the GD, I don't even think was good because of how he changed the role of government) people view him as a great leader. If internment happened today, I wonder what his approval rating would be. I guess there already is a modern-day internment going on in guantonamo, just not with many American citizens, but the current president has already has a low approval rating...
This weekend, Mengdi and I are going to try to start our interviews. One of ours is located in Sandford...I guess it will be interesting to learn about these firefighters. It would be great if some of them were involved in the Mall Fire. Maybe we could add their comments about the Mall Fire to our paper.

This week syd and i honestly slacked a little on our project with spring break and all. But i feel we're headed in the right direction, and now that we have feedback on our outline, we can move ahead to complete our draft of the web page. We have a good amount of research but still we want to try and find where all the artifacts from the old display at the historical society has gone.

yet another blog...

So I'm glad the project is finally underway... I am not a procrastinator, but for some reason, group projects always seem to be completed last minute for me. Hopefully, the person I am supposed to interview is still alive. I don't really want to interview his wife because it is not coming from first-hand experience.
I like the topics we are discussing in class, the Great Depression is very interesting to me. I can't wait to begin WW2 discussions, that is my favorite history topic.

Blog 3/21

I'm glad that there has finally been mention of the dust bowl. Reading through the chapters on "the roaring twenties" and the great depression, I was expecting to see the farmer's migration and soil depletion at any moment. So when chapter 24 didn't bring it up at all, I was confused. Chapter 25 has definitely addressed it now and I feel comfortable and familiar with the content. Even though I've heard them all and learned them all before, I know that keeping track of all the three-letter acronym's of the new deal is going to be tough. Even FDR is a three-letter acronym!
The feedback on Julie's and my rough draft for the final project is pretty much what we expected. We plan to visit the fire station and complete our interview during the middle of next week so that we can round out the information and put it into a broader context.

Next Phase

As the next phase of this project begins, I am really looking forward to it. I hope that the person I am interviewing is interesting and not an old angry man. Hopefully they will have a a lot to talk about if the paper must be as long as our last one. I think it will be fun in the end to hear someones story.

Well, this next part of the project should be interesting with our interviews. I'm looking forward to finding out whether or not my person is still alive (as Prof. Chambliss put it!) I need to re-read the guidelines to be sure of how the interview should go - I honestly haven't done one of these before. I think this will be more interesting than the research since it will be talking to a real person, and hopefully mine will have some interesting stories and information to share!

Project

Yeah a little late for the post but here it goes. Drew and I made some major headway on our project being able to finish close to two thousandwords. The last couple of days working on it I felt pretty bad since I got really sick and Drew had to finish the draft. The test went over history I really understand. In all its pretty good but we shall see when it comes to setting up interviews with the firefighters.

Blog 3/7

Our writing consultation yesterday went very well. We knew there were some problems with chronology and fluidity and Vincenza was very helpful. For a rough draft, I'm pretty impressed with our progress on this project. I don't think I've ever had a paper as nearly complete as this one is so far in advance. Of course there is still a lot of work to be done. We haven't interviewed our retiree and we're still a ways away from formulating a coherent conclusion that incorporates all the information of our paper. To be honest, I don't plan on thinking about it over spring break but when class starts again we'll definitely begin working on those things in particular.

So Syd and I have gotten off to a pretty good start with our research. We have found mostly newspaper articles in the archives at school and the Winter Park library. Through the newspapers, we discovered that the Winter Park Historical Society held a huge exposition on the department and we hope to have an opportunity to look through all the artifacts and information they have.

Upon going to the archives at the library, I found lots of information regarding the fires. However, I think I am going to have to return there at some point before the final product is due because of lack of information given. Some of the files were miss placed so I think if I go back I can get more out of it

I don't remember if I posted this or not, but my partner and I went to the WP library's archives and got some really great articles there. I think I forgot to post last week too. We found one from the Orlando Sentinel about the mall fire which was front page news for Monday's paper in 1969. After reading all the articles, I think I've got a pretty good idea of what went during the mall fire. I guess I should though because our paper is due tomorrow. Anyways, we found little information about how the WPFD was directly affected. There's a few things about how the WPFD Chief Bair suggested some regulations, such as fire sprinklers, for rebuilding the mall. It was a collaborative effort among the fire departments, but, fortunately, there's a lot more Winter Park newspaper articles that focus on the WPFD rather than the other departments.

Research

So Ashley and I have really found some great research at both the Olin Archives and the Winter Park Library Archives. We have found pictures, books, and newspaper articles that give us great descriptions of the evolution of the Winter Park fire department from 1900-1930. We have learned that the Winter Park and the fire department grew together, and there is a real sense of community respect for each other. The Winter Park museum a few years ago just celebrated the fire department with an exhibit, and had a party for the firemen at the opening of it. Going there will give us great information and pictures of the beginnings of the department.

Blog

My partner, for the historical web page, and I traveled to the wp fire station and searched in the archives for information regarding important figures. We found a lot of information provided mccabe's collection. We then went to the archives at wp library and found even more info. The wp fire station website provides helpful information of the biographies for the people we were researching. Our paper is coming along.

Firefighter Project

Last week I tried to contact the Orlando firefighter that I am assigned to and I found that he now lives up near the panhandle of Florida. He seemed to be very old and he had a lot of trouble understanding what I was saying on the phone. I was not too successful in organizing an interview, apparently because he couldn't understand a word I was saying. However, I plan on calling him again sometime early this week to schedule an interview date. Last week I stopped into the archives to find some background information that would help me understand the era in which he worked for the Orlando Fire Department. I got a feeling that the most difficult part of this project will be gathering resources, rather than the actually writing aspect of the project.

another blog.

So I've finally begun to make progress on the much anticpated project. I haven't been able to find a ton of information, but hopefully between me and my partner we can pull everything together. I'm hoping to get most of it done tomorrow and tuesday because I have way too much going on this week.
I'm scared about the test because it's gonna suck way more than the first one. ew. Hopefully he won't be too hard on us since our rough drafts are due that day too.

Thanks to a tip from some classmates, Shea and I finally hit the source jackpot at the Winter Park Library. We found tons of really great information and quite a few different sources which is great because now we can get down to writing the actual paper. Yay! We are off to a great start with a solid introduction and good direction. We are going to the writing center this week to further shape our essay, and should have a really good first draft to turn in on Friday.

i am so grateful for the extension on the rough draft since ive had so much work! This past week syd and i have visited the archives in the library, which was rather intimidating, and have a pretty good idea of the direction we're going.