Blog No. 6

REFERNCE LIST:

Avi-Yonah, Michael 1974, Ancient Scrolls, The Lerner Archaeology Series, Lerner Publications Company, Minnesota, USA.

Carmichael, Mary, 2006, ‘’Y’ Is for Branch’, Newsweek, Vol. 147 Issue 19 pp12-12, EBSCOhost, viewed 13^th April 2011.

Damrosch, David, 2007, Scriptworlds: Writing Systems and the Formation of World Literature, Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. 68 Issue 2 pp195-219, EBSCOhost, viewed 14^th April, 2011

Fradkin, Robert, 2000, Evolution of Alphabets, University of Maryland, viewed 10^th of April 2011, < http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~rfradkin/alphapage.html>.

Gardner, William 1982, Alphabet at Work, A & C Black, London.

Haley, Allan 1995, Alphabet: The history, evolution and design of the letter we use today, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London.

Himelfarb, Elizabeth J., 2000, ‘First Alphabet Found in Egypt’, Archaeology, Vol. 53 Issue 1 pp21, EBSCOhost, viewed 13^th April 2011.

Robinson, Andrew 1995, The Story of Writing: Alphabets, hieroglyphs & pictograms, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London.

Rotman, Brian, 2002, ‘The Alphabetic Body’, Parallax, Vol. 8 Issue 1 pp92-104, EBSCOhost, viewed 14^th April, 2011.

Slings, S.R., 1998, ‘Tsade and he: Two problems in the early history of the Greek Alphabet’, Mnemosyne, vol. 51 Issue 6 pp641-658, EBSCOhost, viewed 13^th April 2011.

The Development of the Western Alphabet: Edited Guide Entry – Everything / Language & Linguistics / Alphabets and Writing Systems, 2004, BBC, Viewed 10^th of April 2011, < http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2451890>.

The Greek alphabet: Edited Guide Entry – Everything / Language & Linguistics / Alphabets and Writing Systems, 2002, BBC, viewed 10^th of April 2011, < http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A216073>

Wbais2009, The Origin of the Alphabet, 2009, 3 December, viewed 11^th April 2011, < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX0obs1n-nA&feature=related'>.

Discuss research ideas fully and constructively with relevant personnel, and identify any implications for the research brief.

As discussed in an earlier blog, there was some consideration that had to be taken as to what is considered an alphabet. Initial ‘writing’ per say was actually hieroglyphs which were small pictures, which began the trend to document things. I therefore had to decide if I was going to include this within my research. Being that the amount of characters for each blog was limited, and that I had more of an interest in the development of the actual alphabet, I decided to research just the development of the English alphabet.

Some other research ideas that I could have partaken in was to actually visit a museum to look at actual exhibits on the alphabet.

Reach agreement with the relevant personnel on the format, style and structure of materials best for the purpose.

Again as mentioned in a previous blog, there are different formats in which to receive information, such as video’s and radio clips in which to gain information. I decided not to use these formats for a couple of reasons. With regards to videos, such as those on YouTube, it is very hard to determine the credibility of the authors of these items, therefore they were excluded. This may be a very silly reason, but I find reading easier to find information from, therefore, I decided to leave the radio clip till last, and then I forgot all about it.

Identify potential difficulties in meeting the brief and draw to the attention of relevant personnel promptly.

I didn’t think of many difficulties in meeting the brief, but here is a couple which may cause some people some trouble:

·         Topic with not enough information available. This wasn’t a problem with my topic, what helped was to speak to the teacher to ensure that the topic was relevant and that this topic had been used before.

·         Problem with blog program, such a maintenance in which author could not maintain their blog or add more information (this difficulty I encountered).

·         Obviously no internet access would make it a little bit difficult, but then even if the author doesn’t have access at home, they could still access the internet either at university as well as at nearly all libraries.

·         Minimal experience with researching could make it difficult. I have completed two past university degrees, therefore I have had plenty of experience with researching, both within a library as well as on the internet.

·         Confidence with the internet could also have caused difficulty for some students. I am fairly proficient with the internet, using it every day for many different reasons.

Blog No. 5

In this blog, I will discuss these two parts of the required task:

Use appropriate research and data gathering techniques and procedures so that materials and sources of information are identified within time constraints

Check that the materials identified are in an appropriate format for the purpose and technical capabilities required.

For this task, I completed 3 different resource gathering search types. The first search type I used was simply searching the internet. The second was searching through journals through the Swinburne University Databases on their Library site. Lastly, I searched the Swinburne Library in Prahran for resources.

Using the internet to search for information can have its strengths and weaknesses. These are as follows:

STRENGTHS

·         Easily accessible if internet is available

·         Can be done nearly anywhere at anytime

·         Can find information from different people all around the world

WEAKNESSES

·         Information can be unreliable (anyone can publish a website, and put on whatever information they want)

·         Can be quiet arduous with thousands of results coming back, and some having minimal information regarding search terms

·         Can be quiet confusing when going through hyperlinks and remembering where information came from and how to retrieve again

While searching the internet, I came across some videos. These were interesting, but similar to other websites, I could not be certain that the information was reliable. This is why I decided to not include any videos within my blog.

Using Journal article can be very helpful as they are generally from reliable sources. Unlike the internet, published journal article are read and checked by many different people, minimizing the chance of this information being hear say. Being on the internet, again, you can gather information from all over the world, making your research diverse and worldly. The one complication is that again, it can be quiet arduous going through all the results and finding relevant journals. Also it can be quiet difficult to know and decide which databases to look through as there are so many.  Finally, using databases can be somewhat frustrating, as you may find a resource that sounds perfect for what you want, and then the database may not have the full text, just the abstract.

Using the library catalogue is probably one of the easiest, as there is not such a large amount of resources available. The library can only hold so many resources due to space, and due to the fact that the university educates on so many topics, it has to hold only the newest and most used items in the library. It is also possible to have resources brought over from other campuses, but due to time constraints, I didn’t have time to wait.

With all search types, it is essential that the researcher user be able to change the search terms if the results are not what they are looking for. I did begin my search using the terms original alphabet, but at times had to change the terms to history alphabet to get different search results more along the topic I was looking for.

While researching, there were some interesting tables (especially from google search) that when I tried to publish within the blog would not display properly. This is one of the main technical difficulties that I had.

Blog No. 4

The last form of research i completed was to look within a library for books that I could physically borrow. I went to Swinburne Tafe in Prahran. I did a search for 'original alphabet' but the results seemed to focus on actually teaching children the alphabet. So I changed my search terms to 'history alphabet' and received more relevant results. I only looked at books and resources in Prahran, and these are the resources I came up with, and some of the quotes I will be using in the final piece.



Picture taken from Amazon.com



The Story of Writing by Andrew Robinson

·         Writing is among the greatest inventions in human history, perhaps the greatest invention, since it made history possible, yet is it a skill most writers take for granted.

·         We learn it at school, and as adults we seldom stop to think about the mental-cum-physical process that turn our thoughts into symbols on a piece of paper or on a video screen, or bytes of information in a computer disc.

·         The earliest Egyptian writing dates from 3100BC, that of the Indus Valley from 2500BC, that of Crete from 1900BC, that of China from 1200BC, that of Central America deom 600BC (all dates are approximations,)

Writing: A Chronicle

Date	Historical  Moment	Date	Historical  Moment
Ice Age (after 25,00BC)	Proto-writing, i.e. pictographic communication, in use	2nd cent.	Runic inscription begin, northern Europe
8000BC onwards	Clay ‘tokens’in use as counters, Middle East	394	Last inscription written in Egyptian hieroglyphs
3300BC	Sumerian clay tablets with writing, Uruk, Iraq	615-683	Pacal, Classic Maya ruler of Palenque, Mexico
3100BC	Cuneiform inscriptions begin, Mesopotamia	712	Kojiki, earliest work of Japanese literature (in Chinese characters)
3100-3000BC	Hieroglyphic inscriptions begin, Egypt	Before 800	Printing invented, China
2500BC	Indus script begins, Pakistan/N.W. India	9th cent.	Cyrillic alphabet invented, Russia
18th cent. BC	Cretan Linear A inscriptions begin	1418-1450	Sejong, king of Korea, reighs; invents Hangul alphabet
1792-1750BC	Hammurabi, king of Babylon, reigns; inscribes law code on stela	15th cent.	Movable type invented, Europe
17th-16th cent. BC	First known alphabet, Palestine	1560s	Diego de Landa records Mayan ‘alphabet’, Yucatan
1450BC	Cretan Linear B inscription begins	1799	Rosetta stone discovered, Egypt
14th cent. BC	Alphabetic cuneiform inscriptions Ugarit, Syria	1821	Cherokee ‘alphabet’ invented by Sequoya, USA
1361-1352BC	Tutankhamun reigns, Egypt	1823	Egyptian hieroglyphs deciphered by Champollion
c. 1285 BC	Battle of Kadesh celebrated by both Ramesses II and Hittites	1840s onwards	Mesopotamian cuneiform deciphered by Rawlinson, Hincks and others
1200BC	Oracle bone inscriptions in Chinese characters begin	1867	Typewriter invented
1000BC	Phoenician alphabetic inscriptions begin, Mediterranean area	1899	Oracle bone inscriptions discovered
730BC	Greek alphabetic inscriptions begin	1900	Knossos discovered by Evans, who identifies Cretan Linear A and B
c. 8th cent. BC	Etruscan alphabet appears, northern Italy	1905	Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions discovered by Petrie, Serabit el-Khadim, Sinai
650BC	Demotic inscriptions, derived from hieroglyphs, begin, Egypt	1908	Phaistos Disc discovered, Crete
600BC	Glyphic inscriptions begin, Mesoamerica	1920s	Indus civilization discovered
521-486BC	Darius, king of the Persians, reigns; creates Behistun inscription (key to decipherment of cuneiform)	1940s	Electronic computers invented
400BC	Ionian alphabet becomes standard Greek alphabet	1948	Hebrew becomes a national language in Israel
c. 270-c. 232BC	Ashoka creates rock edicts in Brahmi and Kharosthi script, northern India	1953	Linear B deciphered by Ventis
221BC	Qin dynasty reforms Chinese character spelling	1950s onwards	Mayan glyphs deciphered
c. 2nd cent. BC	Paper invented, paper	1958	Pinyin spelling introduced in China
1st cent. AD	Dead Sea Scrolls written in Aramaic/Hebrew script	1980s	Wordprocessors invented; writing becomes electronic
75AD	Last inscription written in cuneiform	23 Dec. 2012	Current Maya Great Cycle of time due to end

Alphabet at Work by William Gardner

·         The ABC is such a rudimentary experience for most of us that once early school days are over, its use and form are taken for granted. Behind today’s letter shapes, however, is a heritage as diverse and fascinating as that of any other art form.

Ancient Scrolls: The Lerner Archaeology Series by Michael Avi-Yonah

·         After the cities appeared, people needed some way of keeping track of the great number of things and people that were crowded together in the city’s many houses, store-rooms, workshops, and palaces. The earl city dwellers invented marks or signs to represent the things and people they wanted to keep track of, and this is how the idea of writing began.

·         Once people could read and write, it was not necessary to depend on a person’s memory to preserve knowledge. Information could be written down, and it would be preserved exactly, as long as the material it was written on survived. In fact, some of the earliest writings of mankind have survived into our own time, and they are now kept carefully guarded in museums.

·         The Semitic languages – which include Hebrew and Arabic – still use this ancient way of writing from right to left.