Week 4: Finding, Evaluating, and Presenting Evidence

Starting Module 2: Evidence

Google Ngram Viewer graph showing relative frequency, over time, of the words "bicycle" and "bike."
Google Ngram Viewer graph showing relative frequency, over time, of the words “bicycle” and “bike.”

As we move into Module 2, we’ll look at ways of locating, gathering, organizing, and sharing evidence.

Evidence can take many forms, as we discussed in class: statistical data; personal experience; photographs or video; articles or testimony by experts or authorities; archival documents; objects– all these can be seen as evidence.

Our first step is to talk more about the evidence we’ve seen so far, from Bill Strickland’s memories to the pie charts of the San Francisco Voter Survey Summary Memo on Transportation. How was this evidence gathered? How is it presented to audiences?

In the coming weeks, you’ll gather your own evidence and think about how to share it.

You can continue investigating the same topic you’ve worked on before, or you can go in a new direction.

To do for class Tuesday Sept 13:

Here is a link to a short reading for Tuesday:http://usfblogs.usfca.edu/speakingofbicycles/reading/the-great-bicycle-delirium/ (This PDF is password protected — use the password shared in class).

Before Tuesday, please also spend ten minutes watching one of the videos below. You don’t need to watch the whole thing! And feel free to skim around. I’ll ask you to say a few words about one of the videos in class.

These are recordings of lectures given by a professor and a journalist, and I want us to discuss them as examples of using EVIDENCE to talk about CULTURE.  We voted to look at bicycle culture, and we’re beginning a module focusing on evidence.

“From Spokes to Sprockettes: A History of Women and the Bicycle”

https://youtu.be/tmR69ca0cDE?list=PLVCu5fBJVyO-cDwALi4aegFbOZGKteDUl

OR

“A Secret History of Bicycle Cultures 1869-2013”

https://youtu.be/al73ZJJEwyA

Again, spend ten minutes with one of these videos — you can skim through the introductions. If you’re interested, feel free to watch more.