Let’s Put on a Show

April 16, 2014 – 8:20pm
James Marten

“I am hardly an expert in the digital humanities, although I was the director of a fairly early example of the projects that characterized the field during the first phase of the movement, when content tended to trump technology and many of us had romantic and ultimately naïve notions of what it meant to “democratize” history, in the words of Ed Ayers, the developer of the iconic The Valley of the Shadow.”

Read more: www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-beta/let’s-put-show
Inside Higher Ed

Thanks again for coming out. We hope that you’re now back in the swing of things, perhaps a little wiser for a day or so’s discussion with other folks.

If you have a moment, we (and the good folks at THATCamp headquarters) would very much appreciate it if you could complete this survey on your THATCamp experience.

Please also feel free to use the blog to comment on sessions you attended or ask questions; one of members has begun constructing a Twitter list of THATCamp CNY attendees, so you can find some of those folks you met in sessions but whose twitter id you forgot. Your can also find a Storify collection of all the tweets from the #thatcampcny hashtag here.

Here’s the April 2011 American Historical Association blog post
100 Film Reviews by Historians blog.historians.org/2011/04/100-films-reviewed-by-historians as referenced by the mashup (via YouTube playlist) of yesterday’s 9 decades in 3 minutes Dork Short.

Drop by Todays TALK session on the SWOT of digital and traditional newspapers.
Lets consider issues and opportunities likely to arise when assembling primary source news references to these same films across the same 9+ decade lifespan. Lets share current and emerging practices for interacting with this history and these sources in the online space.

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.

Between the end of the 3-4:30 breakout sessions and the screening of Get Lamp (d. Jason Scott, 2010) at 6pm in 107 Hall of Languages, you have some free time to eat & drink with your new-found THATCamp buddies and potential collaborators. Here are some nearby walkable options:

Strong Hearts Cafe
Marshall Square Mall (720 University Ave)
Vegan soups, salads, and sandwiches. Delicious vegan shakes.

Cafe Kubal
Marshall Square Mall (on University Ave)
Coffee & tea, sandwiches, pastries & such. Also, it’s inside a thrift store.

Faegan’s Pub
734 S Crouse Ave, Syracuse, NY 13210
It’s a pub. Pub food & lots of beers.

Sitrus on the Hill
(inside the Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel & Conference Center)
This is a hotel bar, but you can also order food. Lots of room for a bigger group.

Varsity Pizza
802 S Crouse Ave
Pizza, sandwiches, pitchers of beer. Affordable and dripping with Orange Pride.

There are, of course, other options. If any SU people want to recommend places in the comments (or use the area to organize), I’ll add them to the map.

You can find all of these on this Google Map: THATCamp CNY Food & Drink Options.

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.