For the past several weeks, I have been working on editing and critiquing articles about Harrisburg’s 19th century African American community for the Digital Harrisburg blog. My role in this project is to ensure that the text students generate is clear and understandable to the public.
The process is simple. First, my professor forwards the links and documents to various articles and story maps to me via Google Docs. After these docs and links are sent to me, my job is to read over them for quality and content. I also search for any grammatical or spelling errors. While I read, I give my feedback in Google Docs’ comment feature in the form of either advice or something interesting I noticed. Other times, I will make note of a connection I made to my own personal experience. The finished deliverable is a thoroughly critiqued and reviewed article or story map.
Through this project, I have learned so much and grown as a citizen of Central Pennsylvania. I have lived in this area my entire life, and have been to Harrisburg countless time for various medical appointments, the Pennsylvania Farm Show, and other events. I spent half my childhood romping carefree around Strawberry Square. I spent my adolescent years scaling the steps of the Capitol building in support of the cyber school program I was in. I even spent my middle school years poring over history books about Frederick Douglass. However, I never knew until I edited a particular article a couple weeks ago that he once set foot in the very streets that defined my early years. I must admit that I was rather drawn to Douglass as a preteen, seeing him as a figure of perserverance worthy of admiration, and I had the same respect for other figures of the Civil Rights movement. As a college student years later, knowing that I have walked the same city he once did made me proud to be a Pennsylvanian.
Digital Harrisburg 