ThatCamp Philly: Lowering Barriers To Sharing Digital Humanities Content

One of the most interesting discussions at ThatCamp Philly was the one on lowering barriers to sharing digital humanities content. This was a very wide ranging discussion as seen by my notes below.
  • Lot of discussion of internal conflicts over being "open"
  • Some discussion of accessibility issues with flash.
  • Different populations use different devices. If you have high school students with smart phones, you need your stuff to work for them.
  • I chose PBWorks for my class wikis because of how nice the look on phones/tablets.
  • Tenure committees are more impressed by new stuff than continuing work on old stuff.
  • Have to get over fear of sharing. 

Tri-State Best Practies: Teaching With Technology

While at the Tri-State Best Practices conference last month, the most interesting panel I attended was the one on teaching with technology. I had spoken earlier in the day about wikis, so I was interested in seeing what others would do.

Rich Lauria spoke on wikifying your classroom

  • More than a blog, less than a CMS
  • Can do things Blackboard cannot
  • Wikis organize your work
  • A lot of attendees interested in paperless syllabus because students lose them
  • I am interested in getting them info immediately
  • In other words, if it is Saturday and we don’t meet until Wednesday they need and deserve access even if they lost it.
  • Rich uses PBWORKS too
  • Some debate about whether wikis should be viewable by all or only logged in students
  • Every semester I have a number of students who show my eng101 wiki to their friends to help them with their work

Maria Schrita from Hudson CCC up next on using Youtube in classroom

  • Students can view Youtube at home or their convenience
  • Using short youtube videos to intro debateable issues

Jessica Fargnoli from Bergen speaking on using audio/video captures in the classroom.

  • This is something I would like to do more of in the future.
  • 84% of internet users download or watch video
  • Echo 360 is a popular software
  • A lot of people in the room curious about why you would publish student work publicly versus privately

ThatCamp Philadelphia: Digital Humanities Integration Into Regular Literature Classrooms

The final session I attended at ThatCamp Philadelphia was run bu Janine Utell on integrating the digital humanities into regular literature classrooms.

  • Amanda French defines the digital humanities as “open access”
  • How can student work be put online? WordPress, PBWorks, etc
  • Digital Humanities Quarterly given as example of open access
  • Should give students option to take down work at the end of the semester
  • I am going to try out commonplace blogs with my eng102 classes next semester
  • Utell: Digital humanities is essential to keeping the humanities alive
  • Some discussion about establishing comment policies
  • Crowd sourcing comment policy to students
  • Peer review is important before work goes online
  • Instructor comments on blogs tapers off as semester goes on
  • French and Siobhan Phillips bring out Google’s ngrams, wordles
  • I’ve had students A/B an Obama speech to a Jefferson speech
  • More incorportation of audio, video, etc into literary classes
  • Modernist Journals Project
  • Amanda French stresses the need to teach bibliographic software like Noodle, Evernote, and Zotero

ThatCamp Jersey Shore: Online Collaboration

In this panel, we went around the room discussing different collaborative tools we use in our classrooms.

  • Spicebird runs email, calendar, and chat all in one program. Spicebird reminds me of Google Wave.
  • Prezi creates very pretty presentations. I am going to experiment with this in the fall.
  • …along with Dipity, which creates timelines. I like timelines.
  • Transcribe Bentham crowd sources transcriptions of digitized Bentham documents.
  • At some point, I brought up my experiences using PBWorks in the classroom to create wikis for my classes.
  • GroupTable organizes group projects and allows document management.
  • Some discussion of the lack of ease of exporting files from Google Docs. I discuss the symposiums I put together using Google Docs in graduate school.
  • Zotero.
  • Academia.edu could become a Linked In for academics, but not a lot of work seems to be happening with it. I barely used my page until recently.
  • DHAnswers can be helpful for finding out tools.
  • Comment Press incorporates review into writing. Could be a replacement for gate kept peer review.