ThatCamp Philadelphia 2014: Turning Analog Class Assignments Into Digital

This session was proposed and moderated by Michelle Moravec. Some of these notes were taken from the shared Google Doc for the session

  • Curricular transformation question as opposed to a pedagogical question

  • How are you differentiating between a project and an assignment?

  • How do you align course outcomes with digital assignments?

  • Misconceptions: DH projects are “fun” as opposed to work

  • Class assignment ideas:

    • Lauren Fonseca's students use Wikispaces to create end of term work

    • Group work rubrics are established and they are graded based on their goals.

    • Wikipedia: What would you add to this page to make it more credible?

      • Immediate rebuttal if you post something inappropriate

      • Wikipedia is very useful for background information and the genesis of secondary research

      • Student familiarity is also important

    • If you are going to try to have your students use a program, make sure you as the instructor know how to use it or support it.

  • Faculty should always begin small. Big myth that digital is easy.

  • Some potential platforms...

  • Scaffolding projects

  • Create accessible moments within each project.

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.