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We had a fantastic time running a station for the Keweenaw National Historical Park's 2019 Copper TRACES program. This program is funded through the National Park Foundation and introduces area 4th graders to:
- Technology
- Research
- Art and Music
- Community
- Environment
- Service
This is our third year introducing students to the Keweenaw Time Traveler using GPS-enabled iPads. We teach them how to read and interpret the historic fire insurance maps within the Time Traveler by leading them on a walking tour along the Village of Calumet's Fifth Street. During this tour, they learn how to play detective, identifying which buildings are original, replaced, and altered. They also investigate the changing types of businesses that used to line the street. The enthusiasm of these young detectives is contagious! Big thank you to the Calumet Unit of the Keweenaw National Historical Park for hosting Copper TRACES and to all of the station leaders, teachers, and chaperones that make this happen each year.
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For the 3rd year, the Keweenaw Time Traveler joined the Keweenaw National Historical Park's CopperTraces program to introduce the region's 4th graders to how to read historical maps and to learn about heritage-making.
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Congratulations to Dr. Dan Trepal, HESAL Senior Research Associate who defended his PhD dissertation entitled "The Archaeology of the Postindustrial: Spatial Data Infrastructures for Studying the Past in the Present.
Dan's dissertation work made use of the Imagining London Historical GIS and the Copper Country Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure (the backbone of the Keweenaw Time Traveler). He outlines the benefits of a big data, GIS approach to archaeology, to heritage building, and as an analytical tool for identifying cumulative industrial hazards across a city.
Congrats Dr. Trepal.
Dan's dissertation work made use of the Imagining London Historical GIS and the Copper Country Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure (the backbone of the Keweenaw Time Traveler). He outlines the benefits of a big data, GIS approach to archaeology, to heritage building, and as an analytical tool for identifying cumulative industrial hazards across a city.
Congrats Dr. Trepal.
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Sophia Ford, Don Lafreniere, Sun Nguyen, Rose Hildebrant, Dan Trepal, and Tim Stone
Faculty and students from the Human Environments Spatial Analytics Lab traveled to the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting in Washington DC last week to present their research.
Don Lafreniere (Director) presented a paper about the Keweenaw Time Traveler entitled "Public Participatory Historical GIS to Build a Spatial Data Infrastructure of Historical Landscapes and Environments"
Dan Trepal (Senior Research Associate) presented a paper using the Imagining London HGIS entitled "Using Historical Spatial Data Infrastructures as a Tool for Hazard Assessment in Urban Industrial Archaeology"
Rose Hildebrandt (Research Associate) presented a paper on the GRACE project entitled "Empowering Youth to Be a Voice in Neighborhood Change Through Geospatial Technologies"
Tim Stone (Research Associate) presented a paper using data from the Copper Country Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure and the Keweenaw Time Traveler entitled "Exploring the Social and Built Determinants of Health of Children in Early Twentieth Century Calumet, MI"
The HESAL team was joined by two MS students from the Department of Social Sciences:
Sun Nguyen (EEP MS Student) presented a paper entitled “Citizen Engagement in Minnesota Environmental Decision Making”
Sophia Ford (EEP MS Graduate) presented a paper entitled “Mineral Property Law as Exclusion: Obfuscating Mineral Ownership”
Don Lafreniere (Director) presented a paper about the Keweenaw Time Traveler entitled "Public Participatory Historical GIS to Build a Spatial Data Infrastructure of Historical Landscapes and Environments"
Dan Trepal (Senior Research Associate) presented a paper using the Imagining London HGIS entitled "Using Historical Spatial Data Infrastructures as a Tool for Hazard Assessment in Urban Industrial Archaeology"
Rose Hildebrandt (Research Associate) presented a paper on the GRACE project entitled "Empowering Youth to Be a Voice in Neighborhood Change Through Geospatial Technologies"
Tim Stone (Research Associate) presented a paper using data from the Copper Country Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure and the Keweenaw Time Traveler entitled "Exploring the Social and Built Determinants of Health of Children in Early Twentieth Century Calumet, MI"
The HESAL team was joined by two MS students from the Department of Social Sciences:
Sun Nguyen (EEP MS Student) presented a paper entitled “Citizen Engagement in Minnesota Environmental Decision Making”
Sophia Ford (EEP MS Graduate) presented a paper entitled “Mineral Property Law as Exclusion: Obfuscating Mineral Ownership”
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Three former GRACE students have received ‘Making a Difference’ scholarships from the Portage Health Foundation (PHF). This scholarship is awarded to local students attending Michigan Technological University and pursuing health sciences or engineering degrees.
The GRACE (Geographic Information Systems & Technological Resources and Applications for Career Education) program aimed to put career skills (in the form of GIS) in the hands of high school students and was funded by the National Science Foundation. From 2016-2018, students participated in summer internships which taught them GIS skills and allowed them to apply those skills in a variety of ways.
Leah Riutta was a GRACE student in 2017, and Kiasa Nagel and Andrew Escola joined her in 2018, and each has earned the ‘Making a Difference’ scholarship from PHF. We’re so proud of these students and wish them the best as they continue their education at Michigan Tech!
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Dan Trepal, HESAL Senior Research Associate recently won a 2019 Michigan Space Grant Consortium Award for his project entitled "Using Historical Spatial Data Infrastructures as a Tool for Hazard Assessment". His work is utilizing the Imagining London HGIS to predict accumulations of industrial pollutants over time in the post-industrial city of London, Ontario.
Dan also recently won a Doctoral Finishing Fellowship from Michigan Tech's Graduate School. Read more about his work here
Dan also was named the Department of Social Sciences 2018 Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award winner. This award recognizes graduate students who have exhibited outstanding dedication, instructional skills, received excellent evaluations from students and gained the respect of faculty in the department.
Congrats Dan!
Dan also recently won a Doctoral Finishing Fellowship from Michigan Tech's Graduate School. Read more about his work here
Dan also was named the Department of Social Sciences 2018 Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award winner. This award recognizes graduate students who have exhibited outstanding dedication, instructional skills, received excellent evaluations from students and gained the respect of faculty in the department.
Congrats Dan!
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Michigan Tech's magazine Research comes out every spring and the Keweenaw Time Traveler team is thrilled to be included in the current issue! The article highlights some of the project's history, our future plans for design and visualization improvements, and our research goals about HGIS as a tool for community-driven heritage. To see the article, scroll down to the bottom of the "Research In Brief" section. Plus, they made a great short video. Check it out!
Thanks to Kelley Christensen, Ben Jaszczak, and Allison Mills at University Marketing and Communications.
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The Keweenaw Time Traveler Team, lead by Dr. Don Lafreniere, recently published an article entitled "Public Participatory Historical GIS" in Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History.
The article outlines a set of best practices for collaborating with the public to build historical GIS datasets to understand past people and places. We outline how the 3 'builder' apps were created with help from the community during charrettes in 2017, how the Explore App allows immediate access to publicly-generated data sets, and how the story submission tools function.
The article outlines a set of best practices for collaborating with the public to build historical GIS datasets to understand past people and places. We outline how the 3 'builder' apps were created with help from the community during charrettes in 2017, how the Explore App allows immediate access to publicly-generated data sets, and how the story submission tools function.
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You've almost done it!
Citizen Historians like you have been categorizing buildings from historic maps in the Keweenaw Time Traveler. You have almost completed all the maps! When you identify the materials for individual buildings on Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, that valuable information becomes a permanent part of the Time Traveler database, which you can access in the Explore App. You make it better for everyone!
Complete the Maps... Win a Mug!
Let's get together to complete the Building Materials App! If you categorize the last building on the last map, we will mail you a Keweenaw Time Traveler mug. Let us know on Facebook or send us an email when the counters on all remaining maps read "100% complete." Maps still needing work include Calumet 1917, Lake Linden 1935, and South Houghton County 1949.
We've Made it Easier to See which Maps Still Need Work
Check out the improved Statistics page to keep track of your Citizen Historian progress.
You can see here that 1917 is the last map in Calumet that needs work! 1942 is blank because we do not have access to that map-year in color (so you can't identify the building materials!). Learn more about Time Traveler data and maps here.
Now, the drop down menu only displays the town and years that still need work. When you finish all the towns and years, all the map counters will read "100% complete." If you make that happen, we will send you a mug!
Let's finish up the Building Materials App so we can get to work on the Building Use App! Take a few minutes now and Start the Time Traveler!
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One year ago, on 17 November 2017, the Keweenaw Time Traveler's Explore App went public. Since then, online users have added over 500 stories about places in the Keweenaw. If you haven't explored all those purple dots, take a look! Have a story to share? Here's the How-To Guide and some video tutorials.
Starting Conversations through Storytelling
One of the Keweenaw Time Traveler's goals is to start conversations about Copper Country places. One story contributed in the Explore App started up a conversation about memories from the Houghton County Memorial Airport. A newspaper clipping from the Michigan Tech Archives was posted at the airport site that recounted the 1970s practice of mailing snow to the University of Texas so students there could have a snow ball fight. User Bob Cunningham added his own memories of battling the cold and dodging aircraft to measure the effects of weather on landing instruments.
Other people use the Explore App to mark where historic photographs were taken. Lynette Webber, a ranger at the Keweenaw National Historical Park, added a story on 6th Street in Calumet for this colorized postcard of the Red Jacket Fire Hall.
Lynette has also added story points for several of her award-winning #MissingintheCopperCountry series, which transposes historic photos over today's landscapes. Use the "Stories" tab in the Explore App to search for Lynette's posts or any other content. Look around, read people's stories, and then share your own memories about what the Keweenaw's changing landscape means to you.
There's Always Something New
In the year since the Explore App launched, a lot of activity has gone on behind the scenes. Below are a few improvements you may have noticed, and changes coming down the pike.
Improvements since last November:
- Now you can tell your stories using audio and video as well as photos. Learn more in this blog post.
- New "Share Story" button moved to the upper menu bar.
- Faster server! Less waiting for maps to load while searching by name/place and browsing from year to year.
Our Team of students and faculty are working to add more data for you to explore including:
- Historical Calumet school records Learn More
- Mining company employee records Learn More
- Census records Learn More
Since launch, the Explore App has had more than 200,000 hits with the average user spending 6.4 minutes. Please keep using it! And tell us what changes you would like to see in the future. Continue to follow us on Facebook and Twitter where we will keep you up to date as the Keweenaw Time Traveler continues to grow and improve. Here's to Year Two!