Annotation Analysis
Our team made the hypertext additions that we have to our page on the course blog with the purpose in mind of carefully organizing our refined information with the best method to provide the greatest understanding possible of our readers. Given that our landing page consists of a mostly introductory style, the intent was to separate all other project elements so not to confuse them with the introductory information such as historical contexts pertaining to the war, and other information regarding nature symbolism in poetry to provide our readers with a solid foundation in order to best digest our project.
All other hyperlinked sections such as “Annotations”, “Annotation Analysis”, “Visualizations”, “Project Reflection/ Conclusion”, and “Sources” were included as separate pages in order to avoid mixing of ideas and emphasize those ideas overall. We included an analysis of the annotations to best explain our perspectives when we examined the poem, “In Flanders Fields” and desired for our readers to be able to compare their thoughts with ours as well as to encourage other viewpoints and ideas when analyzing the same text. Our visualisations were meant to assist in conveying our results to our readers, and while we will not yet go into the results of the project, I will add that the visualizations also helped our team in seeing our results all formed together and in one space. There was also the added benefit that the visualisations are also much easier to interpret and analyze in contrast to not using them, and just trying to explain data results solely with words. Lastly, the “Project Reflection/ Conclusion” page was included in order to give the reader a summarized version of the entirety of our project, from the very beginning to the end. It encompasses the general ideas and what our team views as the “main takeaways” from each section, and consolidates all of our information and findings down into one page, which makes it more accessible for our team and the reader.
There are a couple photos included on the website with the purpose of providing a visual image for readers to associate with the background information and historical contexts our team provided. This was done in order to grant the readers the ability to truly transport themselves into the poem and try to ponder our research question themselves. A video audio link relevant to war background was also inserted in order to help the reader visualize our project results and encapsulate just a general basis of the drastic difference of the world during the war and after the fact.
From our team’s annotations made within the poem, “In Flanders Fields” by Canadian soldier, John McCrae, our readers were intended to gain a clarity of the happenings within the time (both historically and from the many speakers’ perspectives), with the ultimate goals in mind of providing equivalent accessibility, interactivity, textual analysis, and an understanding of the historical contexts.
Equivalent accessibility was extremely important to our team in the creation of this project so it was ensured that most annotations, even with external links, were explained fully, so that the external links only added to the readers’ experience, but did not subtract from it. The team also wanted the readers to be able to engage with the poem on a deeper level, which is the reason so many hyperlinks to external information, photos, and maps were applied. All audio recordings and photo sources were included with the same intention, as well with the hopes that it increases reader attention and engagement with a more niche topic.
Reader interaction was the next important thing to us, so as mentioned previously, we ensured there were ample resources for the readers to interact with the poem, aside from the text annotations we provided.
In-depth textual analysis of the was completed in our annotations to help make comprehension of the poem simpler in order for the readers to best understand and follow our research goals. How can someone learn to run if they can’t walk first? It would be near impossible, just like trying to make complex interpretations about a poem might be if one doesn’t understand it in its simplest form first.
Our targeted audience for our page was for the most part, younger student readers or history buffs that might take interest in our research, such as high school or even middle school students.
With the abundance of color pictures, audio, and historical background, our team’s annotations would be catered towards an audience that does not need to be completely previously educated on the full history of World War I or Nature Poetry, as long as their brains are developed enough to utilize the resources in front of them to fully understand our research. Nothing too difficult or complex, but our approach in our annotations and for the rest of the page, does involve following the explanations of more advanced charts and historical concepts that might be harder for readers of any educational level below that threshold to understand fully.
Goals of our team’s project align with those of our annotations, and the only additional goals being to appropriately convey our results of our project (Were there differences in European Nature poetry written before, during, and after World War I? Did World War I contribute to those differences? In what ways? ) Appropriately answering any of the following questions would likely prove or disprove our research question.