Saturday, 25 January 2014

Post 2


How do you find using Access and Excel for working with this kind of data? What is the difference for you between wading through a cemetery in a database, versus wandering through it in real life?

When using Excel and Access, the information is all there, but the experience is not.  I am a visual person, and without having the hands-on connection to the cemetery site, the information did not have that much meaning.  If we had the opportunity to walk through the cemetery and connect each grave with what data we have, then it would have been much more significant.  These graves are more than just information to be processed; they are special places containing people who are important to someone.  By transferring that person into a data spreadsheet, their importance is lost to us.  It are simply data, information from a time before us, information for us to analyze and critique.  Cemeteries and sacred places, there is a certain atmosphere that demands reverence.  Personally seeing and experiencing this atmosphere would help to ground our thoughts and ideas.  Seeing the landscape, the whole picture,  and where the graves are laid out, can also greatly aid one’s understanding of the information present as well.  The data on Excel and Access gave me information about a cemetery, but I had nothing to reference that data to.  I was not aware of how big St. Stephens is, how many burials are there, how many graves are in the data and what was left out if any.  By connecting the reality with the data, the awareness of all the issues and possible problems surrounding the topic is raised.

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