Looking back on learning: what are the most important things you’ve learned this semester? What advice would you give your past self about becoming a Vivero Fellow and learning how to do this work?

One of the most important things I’ve learned this semester is to take advantage of the flexibility of pen and paper and WordPress Elementor to design ideal models. I also learned how to better document work, particularly for work that iterates so quickly as working with WordPress will sometimes bring. I’ve committed to writing down the issues I have into one place, rather than storing it in my head, for example. To my past self, I would tell her that to avoid a rut, come back to the basics at the design level. Some digital humanities tools have a structure that is not entirely incompatible with what you want. Rather than working within that structure, see what other less structured tools can provide. What is the ideal? How will it look on the page? 

Reflection on the training model: what worked and what didn’t work for you? What stuck with you? Are there things you found confusing or not helpful?

For the training models, I wished that I had gone more in depth with practicing these trainings. Going more in-depth can be difficult because a part of the training pursues a more surface-level learning of simply how to use a tool. Also, these training models ask you to put the tool into practice with a simple project. This simplicity is good for making the tools something I was aware of, but not something I felt confident about using. For the technical training, I never really felt more confident in my use of the tool or my ability to help my peers navigate them. 

What are your next steps for project work next semester? What documentation have you created, and what documentation do you still need to create?

Next semester, I need to clean up the look of the Kreyòl thesaurus. A lot of the past two semesters have been researching and trying new things. While the research and the experiments never really end, a somewhat finalized product needs to be presented. For the rest of this semester, I need to finish up my Elementor-built glossary. Then, I will document the steps of this Elementor-built glossary and the thinking that led me to this in contrast to most of the work I was doing with the WordPress glossary plugins. 

What digital scholarship topics, methods, or tools might you be interested in exploring next semester, or in the future?

I want to get more creative! I have aimed for the most utilitarian designs and models many times. Simplicity is harder to obtain than it seems. However, for me, I think there is a real potential to do more with the ambition of my design. Next semester, I hope to explore the creativities of WordPress more. There are many templates I’ve relied on, and in this way, WordPress is fairly easy to navigate. I do wonder about the possibilities that could be unlocked if I sat for a longer time with all the design possibilities in WordPress, despite the tedium. My portfolio site, for example, is a place where I could practice this, maybe over the summer and/or during the next academic year.