IRB Forms, Omeka and Water and Society Project

The Water and Society Project, I am working on is mainly targeted at educators and classrooms that are interested in learning more about water and its impact on Malta and its culture. Envisioned for this project is to be able to set up curriculums and lesson plans based around gathering information from sources and references that ICEX has collect throughout its research on Malta.

This past week and a half, I have been working with Jane to fill out and submit IRB forms for my part of the project. For my project, specifically, we needed to gather information about the cisterns and interview people who came into contact with them. However, to be able to interview individuals and use the information we receive from them we needed to submit three forms to the Human Research Committee, who would determine whether the research we are doing will not harm any of the individuals we come into contact with and that the research is acceptable. We spent quite a bit of time, writing, revising and changing the forms to describe all aspects of the project. I submitted the forms this morning, so we are hoping the Committee will review our documents and approve our project soon, before we leave we hope!

Jane, Erik, Brent, and I also decided that Omeka was going to be our UI & database. It will hold all of the sources and information we collect. Zoe introduced Jane, Erik and I to Alan in the Computer Science Department and we discussed with him the possibility of us using Cal Poly server space to hold the Omeka information. We decided that was probably the best for this project, however, Alan said that usually projects that use the Cal Poly server space are not permanent and thus get little bits of space. We don't think that the project will use a lot of space, so we think this will be alright for the time being at least. Once we get to the point where we need more space or want to change the duration of the project, etc. we will decide the next step then.

Lastly! The four of us also had a skype session with John Lester about unity 3D and Jibe products and their abilities and limitations. I think we will use this for Erik's project, specifically for the archeologist side, however, Jane and I have bounced around the idea of using it in collaboration with Omeka for the Water and Society Project as well. We haven't figured out all the details yet, but from my knowledge it would be really cool to use.

The program is a virtual world program, which enables a person to create a character and walk around and interact with a world that we (the ICEX members) can build. Characters can come into contact with each other, have meetings, presentations, look at specific locations, and do a bunch of other things that can make it more user friendly to get information about Malta and its cisterns.

The part that Jane and I were most interested in for the Water and Society Project, was the ability to hold tours or classroom 'field trips' to the various locations in Malta with the information that we will collect once over there. I think this would be a great tool for educators to be able to use and I would love to try and work with it for the project, but due to the cost and some other factors, we haven't decided yet whether we will officially try to use it yet or not.

That's the most of it so far! I will be working more with Omeka and looking at unity 3D and Jibe in more detail in the near future and we will be waiting anxiously from the Human Research Committee to see if our study has been approved and we can move forward!