Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Website Review #3
Website Review, #3 of 5
Bill Zawacki
Ed 436 Technology Across the Curriculum
November 30, 2004
Site Name: The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit
Site URL: www.detroityes.com
Author Information: As stated on the website: Lowell Boileau is a self-learned fine art painter and computerist. His current major work is "The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit", a 1000+ page site inspired by the transformation of Detroit from industrial to information age city. The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit is hosted at: http://detroityes.com/. Selected as a Yahoo Pick of the Year for 1998 and profiled in the New York Times and Wired Magazine, The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit website attracts over one million visitor sessions and ten million page hits a year.
Requirements: Just Internet access with a browser, I used Internet Explorer running under Windows XP.
Weaknesses: This site may have a narrow appeal. As a native of Detroit, I found it historically interesting, and emotionally powerful. The emotional power may not be present for people without a connection to Detroit, and would then probably be less historically interesting.
Strengths: The strength of this website is that it gives real life examples of the effects of many current social and economic phenomena that may be only vague concepts, with unimagined or poorly understood consequences for many students. These phenomena include:
Urban decay
Middle class (or White) flight
The demise of American manufacturing
The demise of organized labor
Racism in Northern urban America
Uses: I could see this site used as a source of research information for a high school social studies class. In addition to the examples listed above, I think that young people who have not witnessed any of the America’s Rust Belt decay would be intrigued by the magnitude, and surreal beauty of it.
Bill Zawacki
Ed 436 Technology Across the Curriculum
November 30, 2004
Site Name: The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit
Site URL: www.detroityes.com
Author Information: As stated on the website: Lowell Boileau is a self-learned fine art painter and computerist. His current major work is "The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit", a 1000+ page site inspired by the transformation of Detroit from industrial to information age city. The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit is hosted at: http://detroityes.com/. Selected as a Yahoo Pick of the Year for 1998 and profiled in the New York Times and Wired Magazine, The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit website attracts over one million visitor sessions and ten million page hits a year.
Requirements: Just Internet access with a browser, I used Internet Explorer running under Windows XP.
Weaknesses: This site may have a narrow appeal. As a native of Detroit, I found it historically interesting, and emotionally powerful. The emotional power may not be present for people without a connection to Detroit, and would then probably be less historically interesting.
Strengths: The strength of this website is that it gives real life examples of the effects of many current social and economic phenomena that may be only vague concepts, with unimagined or poorly understood consequences for many students. These phenomena include:
Urban decay
Middle class (or White) flight
The demise of American manufacturing
The demise of organized labor
Racism in Northern urban America
Uses: I could see this site used as a source of research information for a high school social studies class. In addition to the examples listed above, I think that young people who have not witnessed any of the America’s Rust Belt decay would be intrigued by the magnitude, and surreal beauty of it.
# posted by BillZ @ 9:02 AM 
