THATCamp Community College 2015 Notes

Here are my notes from the day. We had a small group for THATCampCC, so instead of sessions we had a longer conversation where we bounced around discussing the proposals campers had made in the morning. We did something like that last year as well and I believe this might be something we continue in the future.

  • We began by discussing doing peer review outside the classroom.
    • Can we do meaningful peer review outside the classroom?
    • Building student bonds outside of class.
    • Students need to learn good criticism skills to be better peer reviewers.
    • Chris Gazzara suggested having students review a paper like they would a film or book.
    • Collaborate is a Blackboard tool for peer review.
    • VoiceThread is an app for leaving comments.
    • SHOULD statements important during peer review.
  • We then discussed prior formative non-stressful learning assessments.
    • Differences between scaffolding and expectations.
    • Can visuals help with assessing prior knowledge?
    • How women use Instagram to bypass the male gaze and invent safe spaces to present themselves.
    • How information literacy is taught at different schools in the room.
    • I discussed cutting down on secondary source requirements.
  • We then discussed annotating silent films, which led to a wide ranging discussion.

ThatCamp Philadelphia: Digital Humanities In The Classroom

The first session I attended at ThatCamp Philadelphia was on the digital humanities in the classroom. This was a great session that gave me a few ideas for my own classes.

  • Is WordPress good for archival or manuscript work? Maybe Omeka is better for that? There seem to be pretty significant differences between the hosted and non-hosted versions.
  • Someone mentioned making three minute “Ken Burns-y” videos with students.
  • Student created digital editions are a good thing to have on a CV. Could help with getting teaching or alt-ac job.
  • Loved the idea about students making timelines. We are trying that in my Shakespeare course with Dipity.
  • What do students need to learn besides WordPress to be effective and/or employable?
  • Suggestion to learn HTML and CSS.
  • Students should have project to create a website for future web presence.
  • I want to have students create websites to put online portfolios up, which could kickstart them to consider their web presence.
  • Putting work online forces students to consider audience.
  • Discussion of rewards during project as it goes instead of at end. I love this idea.
  • Student Writing Assessment: Did this project achieve what you set out to do?
  • Some discussion of Wikipedia projects, which I have done with mixed results in the past.
  • I brought up the shared Google Docs I use with my Literature classes.
  • How to deal with student concerns about online privacy.
  • Deal with privacy issues at beginning of project...make sure it is clear project will be public...should put this in syllabus
  • Students should consider general online presence and that future jobs will have some sort of online component.
  • Students should, with that said, be permitted to post anonymously. However, should also consider anonymous posting in regards to future CV/job stuff.
  • Good idea to have students search themselves online to see what their web presence is currently.

ThatCamp Jersey Shore: Amanda French’s Omeka Presentation

I attended a great presentation about Omeka by Amanda French sometime in the morning on the first day of ThatCamp Jersey Shore. I have become interested in Omeka recently, as I had been considering moving the flyer archive over to it. After hearing Amanda speak, I have decided not to move it, but i think there are plenty of great uses for Omeka.

  • Omeka was built for use by museums and archives
  • Omeka.org is server side software. Must have a server to publish on your own.
  • Dreamhost does one click installs of Omeka.
  • Omeka.net is a hosted version similar to wordpress.com
  • There is a lot of potential for metadata (Dublin Core) in Omeka. Standards are set by archivists and librarians.
  • The interface for Omeka is similar to WordPress. Adding an item is really easy.
  • A big downside I found was items only being in one collection at a time. Tagging may work better for that ala WordPress.
  • Plugins for adding an item to multiple collections may be coming soon.
  • Archives about Hurricane Katrina run on Omeka.
  • TEI looks very interesting. For example, in one of Washington’s letters would add “Martha Washington” to words “my wife.”

 

ThatCamp Jersey Shore: Open Source Tools

I believe this panel on open source tools was the last one on the first day. We ended up going around the room and discussing open source tools we have found useful in the classroom.

  • Joomla is a promising CMS that has many useful plugins. Someone showed one which integrates photo galleries and Google Maps.
  • There was some discussion, since we were there, of Atlantic City. The Atlantic City Experience uses Joomla.
  • AC is an easy city to forget because a lot of the living documents are gone.
  • Deborah Gussman talked about a digital edition (I can’t remember the author unfortunately…Deb?) she is working on. She wants to supplement it with political and legal documents. And wedding dresses. There was some talk that Omeka may be more useful for this.
  • A big issue we discussed was how there is no easy way to do backup on most blogging platforms. I also brought up Zotero as an example of that too. There needs to be a simpler way for non-techy users to do backup/move content.
  • Nines.org has paid and open source content. A “guest pass” can be acquired. They also fund digital humanities archives like Herman Melville’s Typpe.