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. 

ThatCamp Philly: New Media, Digital Humanities, and Campus Culture

What was so interesting in this discussion was that there was a lot of legitimate disagreement and I actually found myself kind of angry at the comments of someone else. The normally so cordial ThatCamp took a different, but very interesting, turn for a little bit. I strongly objected to the calls for students to "automate" their citations/coding/etc.
  • Discussion of community on college campuses.
  • How can colleges support the digital humanities outside the classroom/curriculum?
  • I want to work with local LGBTQ college groups to archive local queer history.
  • A lot of what is learned in college is not learned in the classroom.
  • Existing campus new media=local college adaptation of memes.
  • Differing roles of commuter schools and others.
  • A big issue is allowing students to have control over how they engage with resources.
  • Important for students to have a say in how these things are implemented.
  • Discussion of schools giving blogging space to students.
  • Differences between CMS and learning code by hand.

Replacing Google Reader With Newsblur

With the coming demise of Google Reader, I have spent some time recently trying to find a good replacement for the RSS reader. Despite all of these idiotic proclamations that RSS is dead and apps like Youtube and Instagram not even offering easy access to it anymore, which is beyond frustrating, I am still an ardent user of RSS.

My usage of RSS has evolved over the years; previous to the past few years, I used RSS for almost all of my online reading. With the mainstream popularity of Twitter, I have been able to move a lot of my day to day reading to tweets. Apps like Flipboard let me read more frequently updating websites at my own leisure. These days my usage of RSS is for infrequently updates websites and for tracking various things, like certain Tumblr users I want to make sure I all their content.

After trying out a number of RSS readers including Net Vibes and even going back to the old Bloglines, which still exists, I have settled on Newsblur for my RSS reader. Newsblur is a modern app that works on the desktop, phone, and tablet. It syncs nicely and is constantly updating and getting better in both performance and appearance. Hoping that Newsblur will stick around, I even put down the $24 for a yearly premium account.

Cory Doctorow is also moving to Newsblur, which I take as a really good sign about its promise. Audrey Watters also has some good thoughts and goes through a long run down of various RSS readers.

ThatCamp Philly: Digital Literacy

After running a discussion on working with students who have low technology skills at the first ThatCamp Philly, I ended up on a panel discussing general digital literacy. There was a very productive discussion by attendees, which included friends like Rebecca Goldman and Janine Utell.
  • 55% of households in Philadelphia lack internet access.
  • 550, 000 individuals in Philadelphia are considered low literate.
  • A lot of questioning of the "digital natives" myth.
  • Students often do not realize they need to know technology to take an online class.
  • Digital literacy issues often combine with *literacy* issues.
  • Many employers do not have paper applications. Now what? Jobs do not have time/resources to train.
  • I have had students cite from Yahoo Answers.
  • An idea to survey students' technology skills.
  • Revolving door of adjuncts means repeated training.
  • All humanities classes should have lab component.
  • Everyone keeps talking about digital natives!
  • How do we get expectations to line up?
  • Generational differences in how technology is used could be part of this...Rachel gives example of Using Google Street Maps in class and students being blown away by it.
  • Jazmin does work with a library "tech van" to teach citizens how to use email, Office, etc
  • Students don't know how to do research for transferring to colleges...
  • Often digital literacy can be connected to *literacy* issues...
  • 550,000 adults in Philadelphia are "low literate" (half the population of adults!!!)
  • Connecting service learning to literacy and digital literacy
  • Jobs don't want paper applications
  • You have to have baseline of programmatic literacy or you're just not going to get the job
  • A lot of our returning students are not tech savy
  • Computers can be used to create literacy
  • Surveys for what they use on desktop and phone 
  • Add what browser you use to survey
  • Students often form web searches as questions!
  • Discussion of relationships with libraries
  • Freshman Comp students required at multiple schools to attend a library session...
  • Issues with adjuncts not being "invested" in programs to add this stuff...
  • Yahoo Answers can be solved with better understanding of credible sources...take a day to discuss them specifically...
  • Yahoo Answers is not New York Times is not Science
  • Rebecca: Why do they need scholarly sources!?!
  • Research project as a treasure hunt!
  • Grammar, syntax, protocols, of digital literacy
  • Discussion of what is required for K-12 programs...
  • Students frightened by changing thesis as research goes on
  • Rebecca: Students come to her already written paper and looking for sources afterwards...
  • Have empirical library days in Comp II and/or Lit classes
  • Another call for digital literacy across the curriculum
  • Having, besides the four papers, allowing students do pick and choose platforms for assignments (150 points)
  • By presentation day, must have sources that need to be DEFENDED
  • A big change these days is students don't have to learn how to code/wysiwyg 
  • List of approved sources for papers (make using these part of rubric)
  • Rebecca: students have to do background research first before expert research
  • search involves failure!!!

Google Docs Quizzes & Conditional Formatting

One of the best things I did this semester was giving my students quizzes via Google Docs. My Composition I students are given weekly grammar quizzes during the first half of the semester and I used to have them send answers back via email. This has become time-consuming and burdensome over time. This semester, I began giving them quizzes via Google Docs and added conditional formatting so they could be graded as students submitted answers.

Google Docs exports student answers from the form to a spreadsheet. If you add conditional formatting, you can make the spreadsheet grade it for you. I put wrong answers in yellow, so all I have to do with each student is see how many yellows they had. This has really helped a lot.

Weekly Reader

  • The Quarterly Conversation reviews Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star, which I read recently.
  • The Av Club on Curtis Mayfield’s fantastic first album Curtis.
  • Jill Walker Rettberg’s tour of the new Electronic Literature Knowledge Base.
  • danah boyd on “digital self harm” as a proactive measure. I have worked with young people long enough to know this is not surprising at all.
  • I know it is Maxim, but this oral history of The Wire is awesome.