Sinn Féin and elections in the Republic of Ireland

A number of interesting trends have emerged from the three political polls from the Sun, the Irish Times and the Sunday Business Post in the last two weeks. The polls have revealed a stable figure of support for all the major parties and one of the most striking is the average of 15% which Sinn Féin has received. The trends for the parties in the three polls can be seen in the chart below.

Should these figures come to pass in the General Election next year it would surpass any support Sinn Féin has received in an election in the Republic of Ireland since republicans first contested in elections in the South in 1981 as anti H-Block candidates. In the wake of these results I thought it would be interesting to look at Sinn Féin’s electoral history south of the border.

Gerry Adams and his supporters gained control of the Republican movement in the early 1980s. This happened after his release from Long Kesh, where he had been sentenced to three years between 1973 and 1976. Ed Moloney in his IRA history asserts that it was here that Adams divulged the idea of the IRA participating in political agitation. This policy accepted the need for republicans to capture public support which logically pushed it towards contesting elections. The H-Block Hunger Strikes presented the republican movement wih its first participation in electoral politics, resulting in the election of Bobby Sands to Westminster in April 1981.

           

The first electoral participation south of the border came in the following June. Nine prisoners, four of them hunger strikers, ran as anti H-Block candidates agreed between the National H-Block Committee and Sinn Féin. Unexpectedly two prisoners were elected, Kieran Doherty in Cavan-Monaghan, who later died on hunger strike and Paddy Agnew in Louth. This was the beginning of the so-called Armalite and Ballot Box strategy.

           

However this would be the limit of republican success in elections until the Peace Process. In the February election of 1982 Sinn Féin ran seven candidates and received only 1% of the vote. As Moloney says ‘the message was clear: Southern voters might come out at an emotional moment and support dying hunger strikers, but otherwise they would spurn the IRA and its political wing.’

           

The next major landmark in Sinn Féin’s electoral history in the Republic came at the 1986 party Ard Fheis. It was here that the party decided to drop abstentionism to Dáil Éireann. Against the expected opposition Gerry Adams stressed that it would be accompanied by an escalation of the IRA campaign indicated by recent aquirment of Libyan arms shipments. Accompanied by supportive speeches from other prominent IRA members including Joe Cahill and Martin McGuinness,  delegates were reassured that the military campaign would not be run down. The motion was passed and a minor splinter occurred in the movement. Ruairí Ó’Brádaigh left Sinn Féin and founded Republican Sinn Féin with its linked paramilitary group the Continuity IRA, one of the dissident groups operating today.

           

The first test of the new non-abstentionist Sinn Féin came in the 1987 General Election. However the results remained the same with the party attaining a mere 1.8% of the vote. This was followed up in the elections of 1989 and 1992 with tallies of 1.2% and 1.6% respectively. the results displayed the Irish electorate’s aversion to the party while the IRA continued to carry out atrocities during the period in question, such as the Enniskillen Remembrance Day bombing. it also highlighted the utter contradictions in the Armalite-Ballot Box strategy.

           

As the Peace Process developed Sinn Féin reaped more benefits in elections in the Republic. In 1997 the party had its first TD elected: Caoimhghin Ó’Caoláin in Cavan-Monaghan. In 2002 the party made its first major breakthrough with five TDs elected to the Dáil with 6.5% of the vote. Moloney comments that ‘a rhetorical commitment to peace wasn’t doing the part any harm at all.’ However, hopes to build on this success failed to materialise as Sinn Féin lost a seat in the 2007 election, followed by poor results in the 2009 local and European elections. There seemed to be indications that the party had reached a plateau of support in the Republic.

This brings us to the present day and if the trend from the three recent polls were to materialise, the results would surpass anything Sinn Féin has attained in a vote to Dáil Éireann in the last thirty years.

They are many reasons behind this latest Sinn Féin resurgence in the polls. The three recent polls reveal a trend of Fianna Fáil reaching record lows and a slight decline in Labour support from recent polls. These two trends indicate republican and left wing votes moving to Sinn Féin.

                       

Pearse Doherty’s victory in the Donegal by-election and his subsequent impressive media appearances have also added vitality to Sinn Féin south of the border. Doherty had a head start in the campaign with his High Court victory to get the by-election staged but he was undoubtedly the most impressive of the by-election candidates. Sinn Féin now seems to have a natural successor to lead the party in the Republic rather than its previous failed attempts to promote Mary Lou McDonald.

           

In his column in the Irish Examiner Ryle Dwyer commented on Sinn Féin recnt popularity increase. ‘Sinn Féin seems to be doing particularly well among people in the 18-24 age bracket. They are too young to remember the horrors committed by Sinn Féin and the PIRA during the latter part of the last century.’

           

Stephen Collins in the Irish Times outlined the distinct possibility now of a Labour lead left-bloc also encompassing Sinn Féin and Independents.  This potential outcome is aided by the formation of the United Left Alliance including the People Before Profit movement and the Socialist Party. Labour’s Ruairí Quinn was questioned last week on George Hook's Newstalk radio programme on this. He snubbed the idea saying he did not regard Sinn Féin as a left wing party but as an extreme nationalist party. This may well be Labour's view  now but opinions can change in post election bargaining. It is unlikely that Sinn Féin will  form part of the next governement but there is no doubt that the 2011 General Election will be the most successful in the party's history in the Republic. It could very well be the foundation of futurer progress for the party in this part of Ireland.

My History Module: The Evolution of the Troubles, 1970s Northern Ireland

Course Outline: My dissertation topic is based on Northern Ireland in the late 1970s so for a proposed module I will broaden the time span and base it on developments in the province throughout the 1970s. I want the module chart the reasons behind the establishment of violence as an entrenched feature of society in the north of the country after the initial events of August 1969 following the Civil Rights marches. I want chart the key events throughout the decade and give students an understanding of these event’s contribution to the establishment violence as the defining feature in the country for the following thirty years.




Ian Paisley addresses supporters outside Stormont, during the UWC strike
in 1974 which brought about the downfall of the Sunningdale Agreement



Course Content: When looking at the events of the Troubles there is a number of different interpretations, and in the course I will attempt to present the facts to the students as well as different historiographies and allow students to draw their own conclusions from these. I intend to cover the period by taking important events from the decade and focusing on the consequences of each particular event on the Northern situation.

For example the consequences of Bloody Sunday being to drive more recruits into the Provisional IRA to bolster their ranks or the secret IRA ceasefire with the British government in 1974-5. This sparked the worst period of mindless sectarian violence during the Troubles, as Loyalist paramilitaries feared secret deals on withdrawal from the North were being done and subsequent IRA sectarian responses, under cover group names. Looking at different aspects such as above, I will analyse the policies and actions coming from the key players political players such as the British and Irish Governments and Northern political parties. I propose to cover events in a chronological order rather than in a thematic fashion as other historians have done in explaining the reasons behind the Troubles. The key events I propose to cover are the following: 

Father Edward Daly helps sheppard a victim
 on Bloody Sunday, January 1972

• The Falls Road Curfew
• The introduction and effects of Internment
• Bloody Sunday
• Direct Rule
• The Sunningdale Agreement
• Ulster Workers Council Strike
• IRA Ceasefire 1974-5
• Roy Mason and his security policy (Criminalisation, Ulsterisation, the SAS, Economic focus)
• Defeat of second Unionist strike 1977
• Interrogation Centres and Prison Protests 
• IRA Long War  plan and atrocities

Teaching Methods and Evaluation: Each of the above mentioned topics would encompass a lecture. I would use PowerPoint presentation during the lectures and also try to incorporate audio-visual material such as clips from documentaries on the Troubles.

Continuous assessments weekly assignments for the students would be a vital element in the course assessment. A weekly exercise ensures that students will deal with the issues raised in the weeks lecture and thus learn something new every week. I have taken modules as an undergraduate for which assessment was a single 90 minute exam in the summer. This situation is terrible as students can just attend lectures and gather notes but could easily not engage with the module at any level until April when preparing for the exam. Additionally marks going on these weekly continuous assessment assignments are more beneficial than a single 4,000 word essay which only deals with a specific topic while the rest of the course could pass the students by. This method off assessment ensures students deal with all aspects of the course in a detailed manner and as a result emerge from the course with a wider and better rounded knowledge of the topic. The continuous assessment exercises I propose are as follows:

• Use of an online class forum where people discuss the topic covered in that week. Students can express their own opinions and respond to other people.
• Assign a number of different students every week to take that week’s  lecture topic and look at how that event was reported in a range newspapers of different political persuasions and report on the differences. They would look at different newspapers such as the Belfast Telegraph for a Unionist perspective and the Irish News to see the Nationalist community’s views. Newspapers from the Republic of Ireland and Britain can also be used. Such an exercise enables students to get a balanced view of Troubles and what the papers focus on or choose to exclude. Relating to Bloody Sunday I found an archive on the Guardian with articles from 1972. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/bloodysunday?page=20)
• Assign students to analyse certain documents on the CAIN website related to different aspects of the Troubles.

These continuous assessment exercises expose students to the facts of the conflict. Students can build up their knowledge of the decade, dealing with the issues outlined and their repercussions. The end of year exam would encompass an essay style question. At this stage students will have a widespread knowledge of the development of the Troubles and therefore can express a well informed opinion in their essay.

Marks division: Continuous Assessment 50%, End of Year Exam 50%.

Learning Outcomes: On successful completion of this module students should be able to:

• Show a familiarity with the key personalities, political parties and paramilitary groups active in 1970s Northern Ireland.
• Have an awareness of the consequences and contribution to the continued problems in Northern Ireland of the events covered in the module.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the policies of the Northern parties, British and Irish Governments on events throughout the decade and their consequences for the development of the Troubles.
• Demonstrate an ability to handle primary sources such as newspapers and key documents related to the module.
• Demonstrate an ability to engage in discussion on course topics through the use of digital technologies.

Personal Knowledge Management

Personal knowledge management was the topic in this week’s Digital History lecture. We looked at leaning environments beyond the formal structure of lectures and note taking which dominate at secondary and third level education in Ireland. Harold Jarche calls this Formal Structured Learning, where the method in which people learn and work within this set out structure.

I can remember this formal learning structure from secondary schoo. A class that particularly stays in my memory was Irish. For the Leaving Cert  Irish exam  students must writre a short essay or aiste. Rather than letting us write out the essay ourselves, everyone in class was given the same essay to learn of by heart and regurgitate it come the Leaving Cert. I think this example epitomises a lot of the problems of the Leaving Cert. Considering that I and most people cannot speak Irish fluently after thriteen years of learning the language, this says a lot about the way Irish is taught.

           

Moving on from Irish, at Postgrad level in college, the learning emphasis is entirely different. Learning structured differently as formal lectures make up only a fraction of the time you have in a week. Learning is up to and directed by yourself. Jarche would call this Personal Directed Learning which forms part of his informal learning structure.

           

There is a wide range of resources to help people in knowledge retrieval process such as blogs news and commentary websites. People can use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter beyond just as a leisure activity and connect with online communities with a common area of interest with discussions or links to interesting. Jarche outlines how people can create a new level in the learning process of sharing knowledge through their own social networking or commenting on other people’s blog posts.

Reference links on JStor

Looking at my own Personal Knowledge Management(PKM) process, up to now I must admit I was certainly rather limited. Throughout my time as an undergrad, it involved using the UCC library catalogue and gathering

 relevant books to the topic. From there I would take notes as I read relevant chapters from those books. In terms of digital media I use the databases that are available on the UCC library website. An aspect ofthe JStor site which I had not noticed before was the reference links that

appear on the right had side of the article you are reading from the site. This is a very useful link that gives you the location of where your article has been referenced elsewhere in JStor and on Google Scholar.

I find digital media useful for getting access to interviews with people on topics of interest. Last year when doing my dissertation on the Workers’ Party I found an interview on Youtube with prominent member Séan Garland on a Dublin radio station and I a found video of a panel discussing the party’s newspaper the Irish People in the Irish Left Review website. Similarly RTÉ radio has a good archive of interviews with personalities even on shows that no longer broadcast. For a second year essay I did on the IRA split in 1969 I found a Tom McGurk interview with Ruairí Ó Bradaigh.

Since I started as Postgrad this year this class has informed me of the vast array of resources and tools on the internet which I was not even aware of before. Zotero is a tool I use much more to manage books and articles, rather than having to go through masses of notes taken in my copy. Blogs, a tool I didn’t even consider in my previous three years in college, are something I use much more now. As well as my own blog I can follow the blogs of commentators or historians relevant to the area of my research. I came across the blog of historian Tim Pat Coogan, who incidentally was not impressed by the RTÉ shortlist for Ireland’s Greatest and I also am following the Politico website. This website follows social and political issues and is linked to the work of journalist Vincent Browne. The website also has articles from an array of contributers and links to their blogs.

As well as blogs, I have started to use the CAIN web service. This is a brilliant website, which is an invaluable resource for anyone researching around the history of the Northern Ireland conflict. CAIN has a detailed chronology of events as well as links to digitised document from the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland. The website also features many important articles and links to numerous other useful websites.

           
From a rather limited base at the start of this academic year I have tried to expand my PKM process as I learn more about the possibilities available in what Harold Jarche calls the 'informal learning' environment. This Digital History class has opened my eyes to the range of resources there is, beyond the traditional lecture and notes system.

Text Analysis Tools

We looked at text anlysis tools this week in class. I used Wordle and The Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPOR) to analyse some speeches and statements I have come across this year. Wordle is a tool which allows you to enter text into the website and it creates a word cloud which highlights the most commonly used words in the text. As the website says, they create 'beautiful word clouds' and do give you a great indication of the most commonly appearing words.

           

TAPOR is a text analysis tool set up by the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the MacMaster University in Ontario. This website can analyse  the text of a HTML document from the internet or a TXT document saved on your computer. It lists unique words that appears in the document, the number of times they appear and you can see in what instances these words appeared.

When I started to use these tools I came across a problem in that most of the articles I hoped to use for text analysis came from the Irish Times Digital Archive, which displays articles in PDF format. As these articles are scanned it is impossible to copy and paste the text into the text analysis websites. After much frustration and failure, trying to use Evernote screen shots I eventually came across the image recognition site Online OCR. This website allows you to upload any scanned document whether it be a JPG image or a PDF scanned document and Online OCR will recognise any text on the documents enabling you to copy and paste it into TAPOR and Wordle.

I used these websites to analyse a minor dispute that arose between the Irish and British governments in early January 1978 over an interview Jack Lynch gave to RTÉ radio in which he stated his support for a power-sharing settlement in Northern Ireland and most controversially on a possible amnesty for Republican prisoners if a ceasefire were to be declared. Lynch issued a follow up statement days later after a barage of criticism from Unionist politicians and the Northern Ireland Secretary Roy Mason. The statement was published in the Irish Times  on January 10, 1978. Lynch angrily stated that at his previous meeting with Britsh Prime Minister James Callaghan  in September 1977 he had received a commitment from Callaghan of his determniation to reach a power-sharing settlement. I decided to compare the statement of Lynch in the Irish Times with the joint communiqué Callaghan and Lynch issued the previous September.

Below are the two Wordle word clouds.



Word Cloud for the joint communique of Jack Lynch and James Callaghan after their meeting, September 1977




Word Cloud for Jack Lynch's statement after comments on RTÉ radio, January 1978



Looking at this and the TAPOR results one can see  the words devolved and power-sharing feature prominently in Lynch’s speech. His attempt to play down the controversy over the Republican prisoner issue is seen is his mentioning of  the word amnesty only three times in the statement. It is also interesting to notice words that are not mentioned such as unity, a word Lynch used freely at the outbreak of the Troubles when passions were high and in opposition. It gives an indication of Lynch's tenative nature to calling for unity in his second term as Taoiseach, and his desire to avoid disrupingt the delicate situation in the North in the late 1970s.

In the earlier joint statement it isvisible Lynch had to yield considerably to Callaghan as the word power-sharing is not mentioned once! Words that reflect the pleasantries exchanged without any real progress dominated such as cooperation, community, talks and economic which  reflectied both government’s commitment to increased cross border economic cooperation. It is great that you can look beyond simple word counts in TAPOR, and look at the context in which they were used. In the case of the word cooperation I saw that in the joint speech this was used in terms of economic and security cooperation.

           

These text analysis tools are vital in examinig the content of political speeches and statements. They really reflect the  tensions and prominent issues which dominated in the example above. from what I have seen, Text Analysis tools can proove to be  invaluable in the analysis of political personalities and events.



Newspapers and Historical Reserach

Roberto Franzosi article examines issues related to using newspapers as research material. Some of the comments in the article related to the measurement error and coding schemes are a bit complex to get your head around but there are many great points regarding the way different newspapers report their news.

Franzosi notes how ‘some scholars see newspapers as integral parts of the ideological apparatus of capitalist society and agencies for reproduction of these societies’. ‘ According to this school of thought selection of news is not random - it reflects the intentions, will and interests of dominant economic groups. News coverage particularly misrepresents labor and class issues.’

With this point, the situation of William Martin Murphy during the 1913 Lockout springs to mind. Murphy was head of the Dublin United Tramway Company and also controlled the Irish Independant. James Larkin took the tram workers out on strike when Murphy wanted them to resign membership from the ITGWU. The strike of the tram workers began on August 26, 1913. The Evenning Herald was one of Murphy’s campaign papers and its attempt to support Murphy’s position is seen in the picture of the paper’s front page on the day the strike began. Despite the strike and its disruption the paper attempts to present a picture of minimal disturbance with the headline ‘HEIR EXAMPLE NOT FOLLOWED BY THE VAST BODY OF MEN’ and a photograph of a tram pronouncing ‘TRAMS WORKING AS USUAL’. Throw in a headline with allegations financial irregularities around Larkin’s wages and you have a good example of a newspaper trying to uphold what Franzosi calls the ‘interests of the dominant economic groups.’

    

The article makes an interesting point about bias in newspapers. When I look for bias in a report I may expect to find inaccurate statements but Franzosi refers to bias being detectable in a more subtle fashion. ‘Bias is likely to be silence or emphasise rather than false information...Language is a tool of media manipulation.’

The article is concluded by analysing the validity of newspaper data and newspaper data’s reliability. He says newspapers are reliable, because 'most conflict studies go through painstaking efforts to ensure that whatever is reported by newspapers is recorded without error.' On the other hand Frannzosi concludes data is often not valid, for the reason that ‘the higher the intensity of an event, the higher the probability of it being reported. Thus validity can be achieved simply by raising the threshold of events. However, this implies the loss of generality and of number of cases.’

This is something I noticed myself in looking through the papers in researching my thesis topic related to Northern Ireland between 1977 and 1979. By the late 1970s violence was an entrenched feature of northern society and this is reflected in the reporting of killings in the papers. I noticed how the deaths of a single civilian, solider, RUC officer or even lone bombing incident are mentioned in short articles in the papers. However, with an event such as the murder of Lord Louis Mountbatten the coverage surrounding the event was one of manifest outrage and it was the leading story in its aftermath. Obviously Mountbatten was a public figure but it is an example that serves to illustrate how newspapers can increase the validity of an incident.

Overall Franzosi article had a number of very interesting insights into issues of using newspapers as sources and had many points I will consider in my own research in the future.    

Airbrushed for Change

This week we were editing the images we took of historical sites around Cork. Image editing is a fantastic resource which enables peole to make radical changes to their original pictures. David Cameron learned this to his cost in the recent British General Election suffering ridicule from the media and Labour during campaigning for his clearly airbrushed image on Conservative party posters. A spin was subsequently put on the Conservative slogan 'Year For Change'  as an internet campaign called 'Airbrushed for Change' was launched on mydavidcameron.net.

I used Picnik to edit my photos. This was really easy to use and didn't require any download. You just uploaded your photo onto the site and edit as you wish. I made some changes to a photograph I took of Charles Fort in Kinsale. On the day the photo was taken the sun was really glaring and at a low angle which made taking good pictures very difficult. I made some changes to the picture below by cropping out the sun on top of the picture and editing the temperature and saturation to get rid of some of the glare from the sun.

The results are really great. Companys now promoting Ireand as a tourist destination use image editing in brochures to lighten up our usual dull weather.Thanks to Picnic and other image editing tools we never again have to see pictures of dull, rainy landscapes or politicians with a single imperfection on their faces.

1911 Census Data

Spreadsheets are a really easy form with which to digitise Census data using the columns. It took me a while to get the hang of coping and pasting calculations I had done to other areas of the Spreadsheet but once I did you get an indication of how useful Spreadsheets are in carrying out multiple types of statistical analysis on vast arrays of Census data. Additionally the ability to use graphs on the Spreadsheet data is great way of making the numbers easier to interpret.

            We were carrying out analysis of data from the 1911 Census on the Ballymodan area in Bandon. I was looking at Cloughmacsimon, where the workhouse in the town was amongst the houses. I took records of people living in the area and the proprietors of the Workhouse but the hundreds of anonymous names that were resident in the Workhouse at the time were excluded from my spreadsheet. The long list of anonymous names gives you an indication of the level of poverty in the area at the time and the amount of people dependant on the workhouses

The data for Cloughmacsimon reveals an area that seen many changes since the previous Census. One thing I noticed was how many people have moved to a different house number on the street. There are many new names but some remain and changes in family circumstances have come about. Regarding the Hurley family we see that two of their sons Daniel and Jeremiah who would be 42 and 37 years old by 1911 respectively, are absent in 1911 and seem to have emigrated or got married.

There are many widows on this street. There are six widows in all the twelve houses and all they range in age from 58 to 75 with most in their sixties. This gives an indication of the far shorter life expectancy of people in the early twentieth century and it seems particularly with regard to men. There is one widower, John Coleman who is 45 years old. He has a ten year old daughter so his wife may possibly have passed away during child birth.  Another notable example is Frances Collins. She was married but was head of her house in 1901 and looking after her family. By 1911 she is widowed, so her husband, who must have emigrated previously, has since died.

Another major change is that the owner of the workhouse John Holland has got married in the intervening period between the two Censuses and has three children by 1911 too.
            It is notable from the 1911 data is that of the majority of those recorded as Irish speakers are all over the age of 60, reflecting the decline of Irish being taught in the post Famine period and the negative connotations of poverty and backwardness people associated with the language.

We can also see that three local priests Joseph Shinkwin, Robert Burts and Thomas Alphonsus all live next door to each other in houses 4, 5 and 6 respectively. This may possibly be to the fact that the workhouse in nearby and they may be acting in a role to help people in poverty stricken circumstances.

The picture revealed in these Census figures is one of a poor area which has seen much emigration in ten year period and with many single parent families left with widowed heads of the household. The availability of the 1901 and 1911 Censuses is a fantastic resource to have online, especially for people looking up genealogy but also for historians looking at the circumstances people where living in at the turn of the century. I also think the digitisation of the original returned Census forms adds a real sense of authenticity to looking at the results.

Cork's Historical Sites

This week we were asked to take photgraphs of some historical sites around Cork city. Here are some of the pictues I took.

The National Monument

The first site I visited was the National Monument on Grand Parade. The monumet commemorates te Irish rebellions 1798, 1803, 1848 and 1867. It features four historical figures from those events: Wolf Tone, Thomas Davis, Michael O'Dwyer and Michael O'Neil Crowley

surrounding 'Mother Erin' as the centrepiece of the monument.

The monument was unveiled on St .Patrick' Day 1906 and one of the speakers o the day was the Feian John O'Donovan Rossa. The monoments was funded by the Cork Young Ireland Society and the idea came about at the time of th centeenary of the 1798 Rebellion. The Cork Past and Present websites notes 'As the art historian Judith Hill has written: ‘The public monument was regarded as the obvious way of expressing and cementing a sense of nationality, and the figurative language of sculpture continued to serve political leaders and to be comprehensible to the general public.’

(http://www.corkpastandpresent.ie/places/grandparade/nationalmonument/)

This monument is a fantastic memorial to the memory the expreson of nationalism in Cork in the pre- independence era.

St. Finbarre's Cathedral

 The archiseek website describes this historical site as a 'miniature cathedral but a decorative giant.' (http://ireland.archiseek.com/buildings_ireland/cork/cork/st_finn_barres.html). The architecture on this building is truely unique and it creator William Burges was an enthusiast of 13th century Gothic architecture.

Construction of the cathedral started in 1865 and was completed by 1879. The site has been a site of worship since the seventh century, when St. Finbarre is said to have established his school of learning. A Medieval cathedral was previously located on the site. Today's cathedral features many fascinating sculptures on the outside of the building depicting Old and New Testament scenes. The sculpture below features the Apostles Philip, Bartholomew, Simon and John the Baptist.

The cathedral coninues to hold Church of Ireland services to this day, but outside of service time there is an admission fee for the public to enter. Yet you can have a fascinating walk around outside looking at the graves around the grounds and the magnificent cathedral archtecture.

Kinsale

While doing the project I decided to venture further than Cork city at the weekend and I called to Kinsale.

Charles Fort

Charles Fort is probably the most popular historical

site in Kinsale. It is located in the small village of

Summercove just outside the town. It was built during the reign of Charles II to protect Kinsale harbour and specifically to offset any French or Spanish landing in the area. The fort was built in the 1670s and 1680s with the possibility of  an attack from Louis XIV specifically in mind.  It is a star shaped fort designed to resist attack form cannon. Charles Fort was besieged in 1690 by Williamite forces in their war against the Catholic King James II.

 Charles Fort served as a British army barracks subsequently.

 During the Irish Civil War in 1922/23 Charles Fort was taken over by Free State forces. The fort was badly damaged when it was set on fire by retreating anti-treaty soldiers.

                Today Charles Fort is accessible to the public to walk aound its vast perimeter and there is a fee to enter the interior of the fort.

Desmond Castle

Finally I took some photos of Desmond Castle in Kinsale town. It built around 1500 by Maurice Fitzgerald, the 8th Earl

of Desmond and originally functioned as a customs house

and collected taxes on goods arriving at Kinsale port.

                After the failure of the Desmond Rebellions in the second half of the 16^th century the British took control of Desmond Castle. From 1641 onwards it was used as a naval prison for French and Spanish prisoners caught in sea battles with the British Navy and later held American prisoners caught at sea during the American War of Independence. The tower house was notorious for its appalling conditions.

                During the Irish Famine from 1845-49 Desmond Castle functioned as a workhouse for the suffering people. It was taken into control of the state in 1939 and has since been restored. Today it is accessible to the public from Easter until the end of October and Desmond Castle also functions as an International Wine Museum, relating to the use of Kinsale as a wine port dating back to the 15^th century.

               

Charles Fort and Desmond Castle arejust two of many historical

 Kinsale. The town uses its history as well as its reputation for food to sell itself to tourists. Two weeks ago in class we were speaking of  public historyand in Kinsale public access to its history is exemplified in a great way through the guided heritage walks that take place in the town on most mornings during the tourist season. These walks are an ideal example of how Kinsale makes its history readily accessible to the public whether they are local people or tourists.



Zotero

Zotero is an internet tool which allows you to construct your own library catalogue online as you come across books on different websites, be it library catalogue websites, Google Books or Amazon. Not only does Zotero compile a list of books, it can also recognise articles in online journals which can also be added to your library with the simple click of a mouse. As well as this Zotero has tagging functions which enables you to categorise items in your library, much like genres of music in Windows media player or Itunes and it also has a function to add notes about a book or article in the library.

            I encountered no problems downloading Zotero and found it a really easy tool to use. It operates on Firefox rather than Internet Explorer which is also available on a free download. The blue book icon appears on screen when you find a book it recognises and by clicking the icon, the book is added to your library. I was able to quickly construct a list of books and articles I have consulted so far this year for my thesis topic.

            Technological developments in the last fifteen years have completely revolutionised the way in which research is carried out and can make it far easier than it was in the past. The ability to apply Zotero to Microsoft Word or Open Office is a case in point. Rather than painstakingly typing out an entire bibliography or entering footnotes for a thesis, Zotero can enter references and transfer the materials you have consulted in your article to a bibliography with a few clicks of a mouse. These references are perfectly formatted in a reference style of your choice.

            With this ability to quickly enter a bibliography Zotero eliminates ordeals of having to go through all materials you have consulted yourself in an alphabetical order. I have had the experience many times of trawling through all my footnotes to discover a typing error which I may have copied and pasted ten times, or discovered footnotes arranged in the wrong order or wrong format.

For students who have a tendency to finish their essays at 3am or later on the night before a deadline, Zotero eliminates the need to go through the mind numbing process of compiling a bibliography in the correct format. I have also experienced having to use the UCC library website to check my ‘reading history’ for information on books for a bibliography. With Zotero your books and articles consulted are readily accessible and can be applied to a Word document in a second. As a time saving exercise and an exercise in avoiding the immense frustration of referencing correctly, Zotero is an invaluable aid in study.

Web Blogs and Online Discussions as Tools to Promote Reflective Practice (Pedro Hernandez-Ramos)

As someone with no prior knowledge of the use of blogs, Pedro Hernández-Ramos’ article on reflective learning opened my eyes to the many potential educational benefits there seems to be through the use of blogs. Certainly the opening point about students thinking more about what they write, due to the more ‘authentic audience’ is something I find is interesting. Writing in this blog is the first real piece of writing I am doing which goes beyond the article reaching more people than a teacher or corrector. In school the limitations of my feedback came from the almost indistinguishable handwritten comments of my English and Hstory teacher, but on a blog, people’ s ability to comment on posts adds an entirely new dimension to  the feedback you can receive. Hernandez-Ramos comments that for some ‘feelings of ambivalence and even anxiety crop up’ in writing on blogs, which is understandable especially for people who are new to blogs and exposing their writing on a more public forum.

                Hernandez-Ramos points to the simplicity of setting up the blog by clicking on various options. Certainly from my own point of view I came to the class with a sense of apprehension that I wouldn’t be able to cope with the ‘technical matters’  which Hernandez-Ramos mentions, but as  I am now writing on my blog, I seem to have overcame that monumental hurdle unscathed.

                Another point that struck me in the article was how a blog is an entirely new way of engaging with topics on a course. Blogs seem to have the ability to engage people and express their opinions more rather than students acting as ‘consumers of knowledge’ as Hernandez-Ramos says. Blogs may be useful as a way of expression for people who are shyer about speaking out in a classroom environment.

                While Hernandez-Ramos outlines the possibilities of interaction between class mates commenting on each others posts he also points out that ‘the online discussion forum experience did not develop as the intellectual agora that the instructor and many others ... envisioned for this medium.’ He puts this down to the possibility of time commitments but I feel that students would also possibly feel very reluctant to comment or even criticise the work of their own peers.

                Hernandez-Ramos’ article summed up by stating that by getting students to write blogs and engage in online discussions they are successful in promoting reflective writing and I would agree that blogs can encourage students to engage with the course and express themselves more than being solely reliant on classroom discussions.