THATCamp Philadelphia 2016: The Future Of THATCamp

A very interesting session I attended was on the future of THATCamp.

  • What is the purpose of a central place for THATCamp?
  • What is the future of the THATCamp branding?
  • THATCamp is a great place to meet people, but can be cliquey.
  • Lots of discussion about PhillyDH and what we get out of THATCamp.
  • What I love about THATCamp is how impressive everyone is...so many people I can learn from. Makes me a better professor.
  • Discussions of workshops/small group work.
  • A THATCamp 101 session is a good idea. We may do it at RCBC.
  • Should there be a list of community member skills?
  • So much of THATCamp work is out of work time, which makes it harder.
  • Many of us have jobs where we do DH, but it is not in job description.
  • Virtual meetings are good ideas.
  • Discussion of means to fund a THATCamp.
  • Should there be a fee for THATCamp?

THATCamp Philadelphia: Regional Digital Humanities (Session Proposer/Moderator=John Theibault)

John Theibault moderated this session on creating more regional digital humanities programs.

  • Connection between regionalism and nationalism.

  • How does unconference model help or hinder regionalism?

  • Are there other regional digital humanities programs like PhillyDH?

  • We discussed the Center For Learning & Instruction here at RCBC.

  • What else besides THATCamp can we do at local institutions to aide their projects?

  • What can be done virtually to facilitate meetups with likeminded people?

  • How do we get more non-academics involved in the digital humanities? (I offered some caution here to avoid corporate influence)

PhillyDH: Editing Wikipedia Workshop

After my students created Wikipedia pages in one of my classes this past spring, I was looking forward to the workshop on Wikipedia...
• Session runner is the Wikipedia editor in residence at Chemical Heritage
• How does Wikipedia define notability?
• Best practice: Let facts tell the story
• Wikipedia limits what users can do until they make X edits
• On user page there is sandbox to practice edits
• Important that students know what is appropriate about using Wikipedia

PhillyDH: Literary Analysis of 19th/20th Century Texts

My day at PhillyDH began in a session on the literary analysis of 19th and 20th century texts...
• Have students look at off the beaten path 19c texts to see what else is happening during the era (so say not Eliot, Brontes, etc).
• Looking at newspapers from a certain year and connect to a text/genre.
• Using keyword search to map out main characters---victim---tropes---linguistic patterns
• How can text analysis lead to better close reading?
• Google NGraw can help, but does have limitations...could help students see cultural influences
• I had a class figure out % of characters speaking in King Lear and then write response to how this affected their close reading.
• How does students lack of curiosity about technology hurt implementing digital humanities projects?
• How does automation further injure this?
• Collaboration between liberal arts and STEM classes.
• How do we get collaborative feedback during projects?

PhillyDH: An Overview

I had a great time at PhillyDH's unconference last week. This was my first time attending one of PhillyDH's events; I missed last year's event by just sort of randomly not hearing about it. I attended very interesting sessions on making literary texts interesting in the classroom, Wikipedia, and crowd sourcing a digital project. I also ran my own session on Wikipedia in the classroom.

I will post notes in the coming weeks.

What I Am Up To This Summer

I am hoping for, after a very turbulent spring semester, a pretty quiet summer. I am teaching three sections of distance education composition courses in the first part of the summer. Summer courses are normally pretty straight forward, although I did have a rather horrific plagiarism case last year.

I will be attending three unconferences this summer. June 18th is ThatCamp Digital Pedagogy at the Carnegie Library in Atlantic City. A few days later is the PhillyDH event at the University of Pennsylvania. Finally, I will return to Stockton for the NJEA's Techstock unconference.

At some point in the summer, the team behind ThatCamp Community College will meet to plan next year's unconference. I will have some posts about this year's unconference soon.

I am writing a bit this summer. I have a book review and journal article currently under consideration. More details on that as they emerge.