The class began with a consideration of the upcoming first-ever Louis Riel Day, on Monday Feb. 18. Working on the assumption that if we are going to have a holiday, that we should know what the holiday is celebrating, we took time out to briefly examine Louis Riel with a technology twist. We began with a speech by Riel from a 1979 CBC film titled Riel. The excerpt we heard came from a 1979 LP.
From there we used Wikipedia to find a basic overview of Riel, and then switched to Google Images to find a photograph of the Metis flag: a white infinity symbol on a blue field.
We continued our search for Riel info by moving to DAI, or PROQUEST, a source of digitized dissertations from Ann Arbor Michigan. Twenty-three Louis Riel studies were identified. It was noted that one could obtain the abstract and the first 25 pages free. An entire dissertation could be downloaded as a pdf for approximately $40.
While on the University databases, we stopped over briefly at the massive Oxford English Dictionary Online. We searched for Metis and found, among other things, a useful timeline of the word, indicating its first use back in 1815.
The second part of the class went back to the Wikipedia phenomenon. The TEDtalks presentation by Jimmy Wales explained the theory behind an open encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone.
We concluded the session by turning to a first step in reviewing the course content.
Several questions were asked and that review is on-going.
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