About the Mother Goose Project

There are many resources on the World Wide Web that explain the technical construction of a website, but we believe there is no example of how a scholarly website is designed and constructed through the use of a parallel website to analyze the methodology. The Mother Goose Project combines the analysis of technical design features with the intellectual and aesthetic features to offer a model to educators. The creation of the parallel website linking methodological design to the specific education site is an innovative approach that greatly increases the replicability of the methodology. Our intent in the Mother Goose Project is to articulate a critical website methodological design plan with multiple paths and levels of complexity that will increase users' potential depth of understanding.

Mother Goose: A Scholarly Exploration, the first site in the ECLIPSE Project focuses on the teaching and learning possibilities related to the study of Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes. Mother Goose is an especially important topic in the study of the history of Children's Literature because such rhymes are a universal experience of childhood that cross national, cultural, and gender boundaries. Thus, the topic itself has world-wide appeal.

Scholarly study of the Mother Goose rhymes began with standard reference materials and traced nuances of change in rhymes and interpretations over time and in different cultures. Research also emphasized the relationships between these rhymes and social concerns and events. Thus, we investigated and presented material related to Mother Goose as a tool for political commentary as well as for emerging literacy.

The design of the scholarly website also includes aspects of digitalization of very rare Mother Goose woodcuts as well as other exemplary illustrations and texts. An important aspect of the technical design is the inclusion of visual interpretive analyses of Mother Goose illustrations that facilitate the recognition of specific details within a given image. Among the reasons this project uses Mother Goose as the focal point are the nature of the verses, the availability of unique artifacts, and the opportunity to provide an organizational infrastructure that matches the learning goals. Additionally, Mother Goose accommodates the aesthetic aspects of the project since the visualization impact is critical to our design.

The representation of artistic interpretations of nursery rhymes and discussion of the cultural importance of these literary and physical artifacts can be demonstrated and shared among content developers and educators, indicating the various decision factors and points used in determining the nature and extent of inclusion.