Archive for April, 2011

  • 19 Apr

    Posted by
    akriesberg


    Category

    Embracing the multi-dimensionality of digital resources

    2

    Similar to some of the other posts that have popped up recently, my current work focuses on the impacts of digital resources in the classroom. Specifically (in my ongoing project), I’m interested in how students learn new languages when curricula incorporate a variety of multimedia tools developed specifically for students. This is especially interesting for nontraditional or endangered languages that do not command market development of resources for educators. These educators create resources to teach their students, but which also function as cultural artifacts of underrepresented languages.

    I’m also interested in the larger implications of putting these resources online for use by a wider audience. I’d love to talk with other THATCampers who create and use Open Educational Resources or other born-digital materials in their classroom. Can digital resources help bridge the gap between teaching, research, and collaboration online? How can we assess the long-term value of these materials and ensure their preservation into the future?

    More generally, I just wanted to say how excited I am for what I know will be an amazing experience. I can’t wait to meet everyone and discuss all of the exciting topics I’ve been reading about!

  • 19 Apr

    Posted by
    trentkays


    Category

    Social Media Use in the Writing Classroom

    2

    Hey all!

    I’ve enjoyed perusing the varied and interesting posts from my THATCamp colleagues. I can tell we’re going to have a rousing time. Anyway, here is my contribution!

    I am interested in discussing the intersections of technology and writing. Specifically, I am interested in discussing the ethical dilemmas that arise from technology use (e.g. social media) in courses. I am concerned with and interested in talking about the introduction and use of social media to supplement or enhance writing pedagogy, what this may mean for the future of discourse in online environments and meatspace, and how we encourage students to write critically about the intersection of online discourse and meatspace discourse.

    I think students often engage in social media activities without realizing that they are engaging in a form of discourse. How do we get students to understand that writing exists beyond the standard essay or paper? Writing is present in almost all aspects of life, and, when students use social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook), they are engaging in a vibrant form of discourse. I think students should look at their social media use critically and understand their production of discourse from said use.

    I’m looking forward to delving into our spirited discussions!

  • 19 Apr

    Posted by
    Jennifer Sano-Franchini


    Category

    Facilitating a Rhetoric of Collaboration: A Resource for Learning/Teaching Research

    1

    I’ve been browsing through people’s posts so far and I’m particularly interested in those that deal with online archives for teaching and research (for example, this and this), as I think they relate closely to the project described below.

    I’m currently working on a web-based project of thematically-organized collections of link sources pertaining to contemporary cultural issues. The purpose of this site is to serve as a learning and teaching resource for college-level writing students and instructors. Moreover, it aims to facilitate a more collaborative understanding of how writing, research, and knowledge-making happens through an interface that enables user-contributed links as well as user participation across institutional and geographical boundaries; through this project, users will be encouraged to freely draw from others’ work, work together to build bodies of knowledge, and add to larger ongoing conversations pertinent to those bodies of knowledge.

    This project draws on the layout of Wikipedia in that its content will be driven primarily by user-contribution of links to news articles, scholarly articles, blogs, and other online media, which will be arranged by individual pages pertaining to specific topics, to which users can follow, or subscribe. Unlike Wikipedia, however, the site will not include a narrative accompanying the citations; the primary resource that this website will provide will be the links to sources aggregated around specific issues, encouraging students and other users to formulate their own narratives from the media sources provided. In this way, individual pages will put links to articles, blogs, and other kinds of pieces of a larger conversation into dialogue with one another. I’m currently thinking to begin with the content domain of intellectual property, which might include pages on: history of intellectual property, copyright/copyleft, remix, read-write culture, plagiarism, fair use, torrent communities, piracy, authorship/ownership, design imitation in fashion, and intellectual property across cultures. I’m interested in talking through the kinks of this project, especially with others who are working on structurally similar things.

    I’ve also been seeing a bunch of articles lately discussing the difficulties/ethical implications of user-generated content, which I think could be interesting to address.

  • 17 Apr

    Posted by
    Craniumation


    Category

    Using Art to Teach Science

    6

    Hi All,

    I’m interested in discussing how digital arts and media can be used to improve science education.  I find the more I increase art and media in my classes, the more I see engagement from students and interest from faculty peers.  Currently I teach with items and activities like comics, paper animations, student generated paper models and most recently working on augmented reality.  I would love to brainstorm other options or discuss  general theory about the benefits or detriments of cross-communication between arts/digital media and the sciences.  Other topics might include overcoming subject anxiety, learning through a maker community, art and online pedagogy, etc…

    Really looking forward to meeting and chatting!

  • 14 Apr

    Posted by
    gravesle


    Category

    I see, you see, MOOC

    5

    What is a MOOC? (pronounced Moo-See) It’s a Massively Open Online Course.  We’re elbow deep into the process of creating our first open online course and we (not the royal we – we as in Leigh and Andrea) are looking to bounce ideas off of the THAT campers. (Andrea will be there in spirt as she’s presenting elsewhere that day!)  I’ll share other successful examples (and failures) and would like to open a dialogue to solicit feedback, advice, support from fellow participants on how to proceed with our ideas.

    Specifically, I would like to focus the discussion on feedback in MOOCs.  In our research so far, a lot of focus has been on the experience and content – but the feedback arena is fairly silent.

    Additionally, we’re using Wordpress + Buddy Press, so anyone with experience in that area will be highly coveted :)

    Looking forward to talking!

  • 13 Apr

    Posted by
    katymeyers


    Category

    Hacking Grad School

    4

    As technology becomes more integrated into academia and our scholarly identities are more dependent on our online presence, it is important for graduate students to be aware of these changes. As the future professors of the world, we need to find ways to educate graduate students on using technology so that they can become tech savvy and embrace the changes. Technology doesn’t need to be a gimmick or a fad, but rather we need to find ways of integrating it into everyday practice of graduate students.

    In order to work towards this goal, a program called GradHacker was started by a number of graduate students from MSU in order to open up discussions about integrating technology into graduate life. We ran a one day bootcamp that consisted of primarily roundtable discussion on a variety of digital social media that would benefit graduate students in taking control of their online identities. The bootcamp was a thrilling success, and now we are looking to continue the program and open it to other university graduate students.

    For this session, I propose a discussion on how we, graduate students, can help other graduate students ‘hack’ grad school. For example: what kinds of online social media are most important? How can we use digital learning management systems to innovate classes we teach? What new programs and platforms can help us with our dissertations, or comprehensive exams, or our stressful lives in general? This would be an open discussion about potential future bootcamps, as well as how to spread the GradHacker word.

  • 11 Apr

    Posted by
    Andrew Devenney


    Category

    To Tech or Not To Tech: Exposing Digital Humanities to Academic Luddites

    6

    Ah, not last!

    Being a historian with only a cursory background in the digital humanities (which is to say I can use the Internet and DIY the guts of my computer from time to time), I am interested in having a general meta discussion on brainstorming the best ways to introduce the concepts, skills, and technology of the digital humanities to non-DH scholars (aka Academic Luddites). This is a topic that has been of growing importance for me lately as I have stumbled and groped my way through this broad field/culture, following people on Twitter, poking through key websites (e.g. CHNM), and now even going to THAT Camps (hi all). However, one key takeaway I have from all this is the gap that exists between DH practitioners and, well, everybody else. Anecdotally, I know that among my current and past colleagues in higher education (historians primarily) interest in digital humanities, technology, or whatever is heavily tempered by tech resistance, perceptions of cliquish attitudes, code fear, or perceptions that learning how to harness new DH methods in research and teaching would be too alien, take too much time, or isn’t scholarly enough. What then are the best practices to help overcome this for an individual who finds themselves in an academic department or school relatively untouched by the digital humanities?

    Discussion topics for the session could include: 1) the good technological first steps, easy and basic, for an Academic Luddite to start with to join the DH playing field; 2) the resources that exist to help one overcome code fear; 3) useful lines of discussion when talking about DH approaches with skeptical colleagues; 4) other Campers’ experiences bridging the DH-Luddite divide; and 5) the existence (or creation?) of a clearinghouse for best practices (a Digital Humanities for Dummies type thing, perhaps?).

    Ideally, I would be interested, if the idea seems valuable or useful, to work towards compiling such a clearinghouse (if one doesn’t already exist, in which case, point me to it). However, I do not want to lay any grand expectations on the session beyond having an interesting discussion.

  • 06 Apr

    Posted by
    ajgulyas


    Category

    Entry level historical mapping in the classroom

    5

    It’s no secret that the geographic knowledge of today’s students (as well as the general American) is not where it should be.  This is particularly noticeable in my history classes, where I have learned to include plenty of maps in my class discussions or lectures and–in my online classes–providing brief Camtasia-created voice-overs of historical maps.

    But just as I want my students to write as well as read, and talk as well as listen, I would like to develop a way for them to map historical events themselves rather than always relying on the maps which the textbook (or I) provide.  The issue I’m having, and what I would very much appreciate talking to fellow THATcampers about is how to best teach my students how to use resources like Google Earth to create maps which contain historical information.  While I’ve used Google Earth and Fusion Tables to play with creating maps of my own, I’ve gotten a bit stuck on how to make the transition to teaching these skills and developing assessment activites in the context of a 3 hour per week course that also needs to cover (for example) the history of the world from 1500 to the present.

    What tools, resources, and techniques have others used to teach basic historical mapping?  How do these activities fit into the assessment of course outcomes (Assessment!  Whee!)?  I have ideas (well, notions) and look forward to talking about them and learning more about this from colleagues from a variety of disciplines.

  • 05 Apr

    Posted by
    mgeimer


    Category

    KORA: The Ponies Strike Back

    1

    Yep, I’m back.  With KORA.   I will be talking about KORA.  Getting excited about KORA.  Getting you excited about KORA!  This year I will focus on KORA itself and how to use it and the features it has.  I will be showing off a *bunch* of new things, including some items regarding publicly submitted data, video tool(s), some work on integrations with other platforms, and maybe a couple other tricks up my sleeve (like some new searching fun!).

    If you don’t know what KORA is you can check out the sourceforge page to learn more.  Basically it is a platform that allows users to easily create records of digital objects and their associated metadata.  KORA also provides a programming interface that allows robust data retrieval.  It is great for people who want an easy to use system that is web accessible for adding data from anywhere in the world.  It has a small footprint. It will cook you dinner. It serves as the data management platform at MATRIX for many projects including the Quilt Index, Overcoming Apartheid, and American Black Journal.  Overall, KORA is pretty sweet.

    SUPER DUPER IMPORTANT:  We (MATRIX) are GIVING AWAY FOR FREE (sorry for yelling) 10 accounts to use KORA hosted at MATRIX for a year (each worth $100)!  I will give more details before 2011 GLTC, but there will be a short (1 page or less) proposal required.  There will be a 1 hour training/consultation session provided for each of the winners as well to make sure they (and their projects) get the most out of KORA.

  • 04 Apr

    Posted by
    Gavin Craig


    Category

    Games, the narrator, and the single player

    4

    Hi all.

    My initial idea for a session revolves around how games tell a story, using a prominent recent example:

    “While Sony/Quantic Dream’s 2010 game Heavy Rain has been rightly praised as offering a unique and engrossing narrative experience, any attempt to consider the game as an exemplar of rich interactive narrative must face certain problems of genre and the location of the narrative “eye.” While the game seems to unfold from a third-person objective viewpoint, the events of the game throw the objectivity of that viewpoint into question in ways that can shed light on both the problems and opportunities of mass-audience single-player interactive narrative.”

    I love the idea of a session with some live gameplay, but I’m worried about the single-player-ish-ness of the planned topic. One some level, I think this grows out of a literary narrative background–and if anyone is interested, might be a second major quality of the topic to push back on. My initial proposal focuses on what the player “sees” when s/he plays a game, and what happens when what you see is NOT what you get. But it might be just as interesting (and even more productive), to build something around whether games built around a single-player experience still have rich experiences to offer, or whether Heavy Rain’s self-conscious “auteur” mode of construction, where the player is guided through someone else’s vision of a story, is the last gasp of old narrative/old media values and philosophy.

    I’m deeply eager for feedback and ideas. Thanks. :-)

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