In my teaching I have designed assignment sequences that combine the use of wikis and archival research. In doing so, I intend to introduce my students to the critical dimensions of collaborative digital forms of knowledge production as well as the experience of classic hands-on archival research. In this session I hope to discuss strategies of using wiki-style technologies as a collaborative tool for students to engage in writing as well as interacting as a community of writers and editors with an eye to the public dimension of knowledge production. I also want to explore ways of  exciting our students about the possibilities of original research and the importance and experience of pre-digital archival work.

As someone who works on Sound Studies, I am constantly looking for new ways to effectively incorporate sound into my teaching. In the past I have asked my students to listen to podcasts like Radiolab and This American Life and use them as models to create their own. I have asked them to analyze music videos, practice “close listening” with thematically relevant songs, and consider the complex relationship between written and oral modes of communication. In this panel I am interested in discussing how sound is used in the classroom and what kinds of benefits students gain from these multi-sensory projects. One of the problems I have faced with my own students is that they are often unfamiliar with software like Audacity that allows them to manipulate and edit recordings. On an even more basic level, I had students who were unaware that their computers had microphones capable of recording their speech even though they were long time Skype users. Hopefully this panel will allow for a productive exchange of ideas regarding the role of “sound,” broadly speaking, in humanities and the potential for digital technology to enhance that role.

Kinds of Sound
Podcasts
“Soundscapes”
Archival Sounds
Music Videos
Music
Lyrics
Interviews
Found Sounds
Readings
Experimental Sounds
Field Recordings
Live Performance
Sound Effects
Speech
Radio
Soundtracks

Resources
Pennsound
Poets.org
YouTube
Audacity
Smithsonian Global Sound
Judaica Sound Archives

In thinking about the Creative Uses of Zotero discussion I proposed, I realized it might be worthwhile to have an informal intro session for people who are new users first. So, I’m proposing a quick and dirty Zotero workshop. Attendees should bring a laptop computer and questions. Hopefully we can schedule this in advance of the other session in order that attendees can brainstorm and develop their newly-learned Zotero skills.

I’m an avid user of Zotero, and an alumnus of a regional Zotero train-the-trainer session we held at SU last year, so I know I’m only scratching the surface. I’d love to have others willing to join me on the teaching side of things in this session.

Potentially linking in with (perhaps preceding) Thomas Beebee’s session on new projects for the NEH grant, I would like to hold a session on current digital projects. I am contributing to a couple of (open access) web resources within my field and would be interested in hearing about digital projects that others are involved with. I think it would be fruitful to discuss the benefits of collaborating on such projects—both on a larger scale and best practices from specific examples. Then we could troubleshoot the challenges—namely obtaining funding, new modes of working (as scholars in the humanities frequently have less experience with collaboration than scientists), and balancing the pressure to publish in more traditional forums with the various draws of digital projects.

As a relatively recent convert to Scrivener, I feel that I am only starting to scratch the surface of some of the features that it offers. Despite its lack of a seamless interface with Zotero (another tool with which I could not do without), I have found myself using Scrivener increasingly over more familiar word processing tools for projects both small and large. But after seeing a post (or a comment on a post? or somewhere else entirely?) on ProfHacker, I have now started to use Scrivener for other purposes including course management. And now I can no longer imagine organizing a course and teaching it without the program. I am interested in traveling further down this slippery slope and talking with other members of the Scrivener cult to discuss how you are using it. Ideally, this session would provide a venue for hardened Scrivener vets and newbies alike, allowing us to share best practices for the use of the tool for writing and for whatever else people have found themselves using it.

4/12/14 Update
Links mentioned in session:
1. Overview of Scrivener Features
2. Tutorial Videos
3. A fantastic post by Ryan Cordell on ProfHacker discussing academic use of Scrivener
4. Case Studies
5. Using Zotero and Scrivener

As you may have seen on the tentative schedule, we are planning to have a session of Dork Shorts concurrent with our lunch session on Friday. What are Dork Shorts?

Dork shorts, known in some corners as “lightning talks,” are brief (2-minute or 3-minute) presentations in which attendees discuss current or upcoming projects, demonstrate new tools, or call for collaborators. Like most of THATCamp, Dork Shorts are meant to be as informal as possible… Dork Shorts let you learn a lot in a little bit of time.

Dork shorts will also allow us to get to know each others’ interests quickly. If you would like to present to the whole group on a THATCamp-y project, tool, or idea you have, we’d love to hear from you. No need to prepare an elaborate presentation, but you’ll have a computer and projector and can show a web page or a slideshow– just remember: you’ve only got 3 minutes.

We’ll have a sign-up sheet for Dork Shorts at registration Friday morning, but feel free to chime in in the comments to this post if you already know you want to participate.

This proposal is in the PLAY category, as we will play some games.

One genre of games that is popular in the tabletop games space, but not in the digital space, are social deduction games.  Growing out of the public domain game Werewolf/Mafia, these games are team-based games where you don’t know who is on your team.

Players in these games are assigned secret roles and have different goals based upon what role they have.   The core mechanism in the game is roleplaying, as players attempt to deduce what sides people are on.

During this PLAY session, we will play several of these social deduction games, and then talk about how they could be re-skinned in different domains to be used as a training or learning activity.

A comment on another proposal mentions algorithmic text analysis. I would love a session focused on how people are taking advantage of digital tools to deal with particularly textual information and questions of textual (or even literary) analysis. This could include tools like Voyant, approaches like topic modeling (with software like MALLET), or using a language like Python (with a package like NLTK) to manipulate text in other ways. (Indeed, I’d be just as interested to learn about other things that I’ve never heard of!) And, as I hope my title suggests, just as interesting as questions of what software to use, and how to use it, are questions of why folks are doing such analysis. What sorts of questions can we ask?

If there is a critical mass of interest in these sorts of questions, we could have a couple sessions focused on different technologies—one on topic models, one on Python and NLTK (for instance), et cetera.

I would be honored to facilitate a session where ideas are discussed that might lead to grant applications for the following:

NEH has announced a new funding program titled “Digital Projects for the Public:”

“The Digital Projects for the Public program supports projects such as websites, mobile applications, games, and virtual environments that significantly contribute to the public’s engagement with humanities ideas. Projects must be analytical and deeply grounded in humanities scholarship in a discipline such as history, religion, anthropology, jurisprudence, or art history.  While these projects can take many forms, shapes, and sizes, you should apply to this program primarily to create digital projects or the digital components of a larger project. NEH is a national funding agency, so these projects should demonstrate the potential to attract a broad, general audience.”

Awards are up to $30k (Discovery grants) or $100k (Prototyping grants).

Details below.  First applications due on June 11.

www.neh.gov/grants/public/digital-projects-the-public

Proposer: Thomas Beebee (tbeebee@yahoo.com)

I can present for discussion a recent attempt at Colgate to apply the concepts and technology of Social Network Analysis (SNA) to data in the Humanities. We use NodeXL (Hansen et al, 2011), a relatively recent addition to SNA software, remarkable by is simplicity of user interface, based on MS Excel. While not as powerful as, e.g., Pajek (De Nooy et al. 2011), NodeXL is best suited for introductory projects because the base of competent Excel users is huge, and any such user needs only conceptual foundations in SNA and no new software skills to start experimentation. This is not to belittle the intellectual challenge of acquiring such foundations, but the learning curve to initial competence is short and relatively painless: many interesting concepts and almost no drudgery.

So what I would do is briefly present the concepts and illustrate on simple examples; describe the pedagogical materials for learning and practicing those concepts; and present two humanities projects currently underway at Colgate and one project outside Colgate that I’m involved in.

Much of this has been supported by Colgate’s Faculty Development Council.

References

De Nooy, Wouter, et al. (2011). Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek. Cambridge University Press.

Hansen, Derek, Ben Shneiderman and Marc Smith (2011).  Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a Connected World, Elsevier/Morgan-Kaufman.