Posts Tagged ‘online interactions’

  • 30 Apr

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    Archives, Media and Scholarship

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    I’m interested in looking at media-based geo-location software such as WhatWasThere and Broadcastr in order to explore how scholarly research can be enhanced with online visual and audio collections. In addition, new developments in archiving and digital exhibits are moving traditional finding aids and “back room” scholarship onto the open and visible Web. At Eastern Michigan University we are using these two tools and looking at others to explore those ideas.

    I would also like to look at how particular collections might be useful and enhanced for online scholarly research, and for this purpose I would like to offer EMU’s Gordy Motown Collection as a test case. How do we design the collection’s online presence to encourage open scholarship?

  • 26 Apr

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    Putting Content in Context: Geo-Locating Images and Audio with WhatWasThere and Broadcastr

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    In this era of rapid digitization, I fear that we may be losing our sense of place. Comments such as “It’s the content, not the carrier,” imply that no significance should be attached to previous technologies, but does the same hold true for location? Photos stripped of their origin often lose their significance, especially those of places and events. Being able to leverage technologies such as WhatWasThere.com to see the changes between the past and the present can provide significant platforms for discussion (e.g. the loss of buildings and commerce in Detroit) in addition to chronicling local history.

    Aural history faces similar problems, which I will illustrate through my local bands project that features ska, alternative, and punk music from Livingston County in the 1990s. Originally designed for storytelling, Broadcastr.com can handle 4 MB audio clips, which you can use to preserve and disseminate a variety of aural content including (but not limited to) oral histories, campus walks, music, poetry readings, birdcalls, or any material could be enhanced by cartographic context.

    Both WhatWasThere and Broadcastr have iPhone apps and Broadcastr just released their Android app. For example, with the WhatWasThere app, you can take a virtual walk through the history of Ann Arbor and other cities as an immersive experience.

  • 23 Apr

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    “Virtual” Communities: Let’s Drop the Qualifier

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    It seems that as we become more invested in our online identities, the boundaries that divide our online selves and our fleshy selves are getting harder to distinguish. These same boundaries are blurring as we move through online and real life communities. One community that is easy to look to as an example of such blurring is a classroom community — particularly as more instructors are including online components for classes that aren’t online classes. Suddenly, what used to be just a face to face community becomes a community that exists somewhere in both worlds: online and in real life. This can complicate the face to face community because now the identity we portray in different places online collides with the persona we show in face to face interactions.

    Along with the difference between individual personas online and off, communities that exist online and off (like in a class) can take on different tones and personalities during face to face meetings and the interactions that occur online in Blackboard, Angel, on student blogs, or Twitter. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, in fact, I think it can be good. Some students feel more comfortable expressing things to a classroom face to face, and others will do better with online interactions. (This can be true for instructors as well.)

    So often (and even in this post I did it) we qualify the difference between a “community” and an “online community”. Why? When the boundaries are becoming so blurred, is there really a distinct difference between the two? Do online communities operate differently than “real” communities? If there are differences, what are they? Do they matter? In a classroom situation, are there ways that instructors can ensure than the community functions online the way that it does in real life? Do they have to be the same? Does an online community produce different relationships between members? I’m curious to see if we can come up with some answers to these questions, but we will probably just end up with more questions….