The Humanities and Technology Camp—or THATCamp—is a user-generated “unconference” in the digital humanities. Instead of being constructed around a specific theme or discipline, participants will be invited to contribute to the THATCamp Pedagogy website and share their ideas for potential THATCamp sessions. Once at the event, participants will collectively agree on the sessions where discussions of current issues in digital scholarship, pedagogy, and curation will take place.
All 75 participants will convene on the morning of Saturday, October 15th to propose, negotiate, and select sessions. We will then upload the tentative schedule here, and update it as conversations converge and new sessions are established.
Session proposals are listed in the comments below
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Blogging and Community Engagement Doc (updated)
docs.google.com/document/d/1V6sdWsZbiQiy66qX4u4q9mseFdJfiHX_dFX8PnHQ8mo/edit?hl=en_US
Google Doc for Blogging and Community Engagement
docs.google.com/document/pubid=1V6sdWsZbiQiy66qX4u4q9mseFdJfiHX_dFX8PnHQ8mo
docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1V6sdWsZbiQiy66qX4u4q9mseFdJfiHX_dFX8PnHQ8mo
Opportunities for cross-institutional blogging collaboration:
newsactivist.ning.com/
ccr.stanford.edu
Notes from Collaboration session – Anything to add?
docs.google.com/document/d/1VFxhS7jUERaeFZGUG6cNkepGu_1zo-KdEQZZk-wb0cU/edit?hl=en_US
google doc for teaching with TEI/XML:
docs.google.com/document/d/1YvJcaZBHqrWhxFGAlR50DRyonOaYjPj0sICP9KClOto/edit?hl=en_US
3D Virtualization Link: docs.google.com/document/d/1mzUgPHGzvuDg_dxqjjcXCRYwdxktZ3Wl_aGVaUUgC-U/edit?hl=en_US
Digital storytelling: docs.google.com/document/d/1196E4KvMM7xy_CKU1XIHZpO1B2oaNypjQHe79XAQLHY/edit?hl=en_US
link to google doc for Omeka follow up:
docs.google.com/document/d/1MPUDMkzuJ1BBLfKMv7nkLTfpRxPJGFomnoAeo9lHyoI/edit?hl=en_US
link to google doc for visualization session:
docs.google.com/document/d/14lA7Fi2RoMYlCQiNqotVQTpRTmuGsc94ky3zCVESAh4/edit?hl=en_US
link for the session on the absent object / teaching in the community session:
docs.google.com/document/d/1zFQie26ex3NwP_8fpZUWMyukkjdEH2sDamt5XfY2l_Q/edit?hl=en_US
Proposal from Jesse Stommel (and me):
Teaching with Twitter: How can you use Twitter to increase class engagement? What assignments can you design with Twitter? Why use Twitter?
Jesse and I are huge Twitter-philes and we’d love to discuss the issues surrounding Twitter in the classroom.
I have two possible proposals:
One is working with the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives in a Comp I or Basic Writing class. The DALN allows students to upload digital (audio or video) or printed files of literacy narratives that they have created or collected. This semester, I’m asking my students to create a digital anthology (as a blog or website) of stories that reflect the cultures of literacy they represent.
Another possible proposal has to do with blogging and community engagement. Gabe Flacks at Champlain College created a curriculum called “Newsactivist”, which asks students to blog about news issues and then do some work with a non-profit organization. I’ve adapted that model and asked students to create blogs in advocacy of the issues they have been researching all semester. We have been trying to expand Newsactivist in an effort to create a network of instructors who may be interested in blog exchanges between classes at different institutions.
@ Arden: great idea about archiving all THATCamp Pedagogy sessions. Looking forward!
@ Arden – I would love to talk with you about potential ways to communicate the facets of context that you are trying to convey.
Also, I have been on both sides of the using wikis, blogging, and Google docs in education discussion. I may have something of value to add there.
I think Arden has a great idea about building session documents, too.
@ Arden: sounds like a plan. At the very least, we can road-test the kinds of collaborative we’re hoping to encourage in our students. 🙂
@astiefvater I am interested in using google.docs with my comp classes. It would be great to get some input from you. Look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
Thanks for posting about Google docs, @astiefvater – I’m very interested in how a variety of tools (like Google docs) allow for collaborative knowledge-building and how that collaboration is significant in its own right.
Since you mention Google docs, that reminds me of something I wanted to propose. I’ve attended one THATCamp before, and followed several from afar, mostly through Twitter, and I appreciate how important it is for participants to take notes and share them. Personally, I’m not very good at live-tweeting, and twitter archives can be pretty unwieldy for those trying to follow along from home, especially at a later date. I’ve always been grateful when the participants in a session have created a central document in Google Docs to share notes, links, etc.
Can we agree to do that for the sessions of THATCamp Pedagogy?
Each session/bootcamp could:
create a Google Doc for the session
make it public (and able to be edited by anyone)
and share the link (both on twitter and on the blog, even just in these session proposal comments if there’s no better place)
then, anyone in the session could add notes there as they come up, anyone following along from home could post questions there, and we’d end up with a nice neat archive of our notes and links.
What do you think? Any other ideas for note-taking and sharing?
As a visual resources professional who volunteers at historic sites in the Hudson River Valley, I am very interested in ways to assist faculty in collaborations between faculty and local cultural heritage sites. I created a stack in Delicious for some interesting programs for collaborating on the internet for ThatCamp discussion. delicious.com/stacks/view/PcJjw6
I have two proposal ideads:
1) I would like to talk to other people who are responsible for implementing technology not only at the course level but also at the programmatic level. At the Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan I am responsible for making things happen digitally across all classrooms and work with our publications and exhibitions departments as well. Along with challenges getting students involved and interested I have to consider how to negotiate with faculty and administration and convince them of why digital practice in pedagogy is important. I’d love to hear strategies, successes, and failures.
2) The other thing I would like to talk about is publishing, technology, and pedagogy. Myself and a group of faculty and students from the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy certificate program at the CUNY Graduate Center (which I completed, helped develop, and teach in) are launching an open access online peer-reviewed journal called the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy this coming spring with the hopes of providing an accessible platform for publishing on technology and pedagogy. I would like to propose a session about: how pedagogues publish; people’s experience applying those publications to tenure cases within other fields; what models can be used to publish theory, history, praxis, and reviews; and good models for encouraging the creation of multimedia publishable materials.
How can we teach a Digital Textuality/Digital Humanities class and bring TEI/XML into the classroom without making our undergrads melt down. What are the resources we would need? What sort of prep and exercises would work? I am interested in doing an Old Media (i.e. Manuscripts-I’m a medievalist) contrasted with a New Media (TEI/XML) class to think about these things.
I’m primarily interested in connecting with folks using or interested in using Omeka — an extended session will be great, Jeffrey. We are embarking on a project to build an Omeka collection of video, audio and other formats on the history of square dancing. Lots of questions so that we can get off on the right foot!
@karenschrier: count me in.
@kevin and @kristina: I’ve been doing things with blogs and wikis for a couple of years, and use them differently in different kinds of courses (I teach media studies, both theory/crit and production). We should definitely plan on a blog session, and a wiki session too if folks are interested.
@Roger: Sounds very intriguing. Let’s try to schedule a session.
I’m currently using GoogleDocs in a first-year composition class, and would be interested in hearing ideas/war stories from other people who have used the GoogleDocs platform (I’m going to be integrating it into an education class during spring semester…). In the larger scheme of things, I’m particularly interested in looking at digital literacies (a broad term, I know) and how they are approached by (many/most) students as something of a mechanical tool (something used to accomplish a set task, like writing an essay). How can we move toward encouraging the conceptualization of digital literacies as a culturally/historically mediated tool (something used to move toward full participation in a sociolinguistic group)?
I taught an undergraduate course “Introduction to Digital Humanities” in Spring 2011 and am scheduled to teach it again in Spring 2012. I taught the course as a kind of “effects of the digital across the humanities disciplines” to mixed results. I’d be interested in a discussion of what an Introduction to Digital Humanities course ought to cover. Most of the templates for “Introduction to Digital…” are for graduate courses.
By the way, in real life I’m John Theibault. I seem to be in the THATCamp WordPress system as jerseyshore2011 because I organized the THATCamp at Jersey Shore back in April and never got around to changing my username.
Great proposals so far! I’m already anticipating the hardest part about a THATCamp – choosing which sessions to go to when they all sound so great.
This comment got stuck in the moderation queue since I included a few links, so I’ve taken the links out and re-posted – my apologies if it ends up coming through twice.
Among many other things, I would love to talk about digital material culture in the classroom – as in: how do we teach with or about physical objects when we can’t actually bring them into the classroom (or when the classroom is online)? I work with Vassar’s collection of historic costume, and I’m slowly building an Omeka site to share this collection online, including images, videos, and documents. My argument is that current technology can move us past the slide lecture model of one (or a few) slides per object, to multiple views and multimedia that allow for greater understanding of the physicality of the object.
We’ve been experimenting with video (students film each other discussing and handling historic costumes from our collection) and with ObjectVRs (whenever we exhibit, we have a photoshoot of the objects and then create high resolution interactive movies that allow the viewer to rotate and zoom in on any detail on any side of the object). Take a look at one at vcomeka.com/vccc/items/show/615 (though this project is a work in progress, so it is slow to load and may not work in all browsers). If people are interested, I can briefly discuss/show how we make these ObjectVRs (in the spirit of “more hack less yak”), and I can show more of them.
Do you teach with artifacts, or about artifacts? Do you share actual objects in class? Do you show “slides” in class? Do your students have access to your slides on the web, to study on their own time? How does that access facilitate their learning? Have you worked with any other forms of multimedia to study artifacts? How have they enhanced student learning?
Can’t wait until Saturday!
All, in addition to our BootCamp session on Omeka, Amanda and I would like to propose a later session for either more detailed brainstorming of people’s individual plans for class-based student Omeka projects or more time working in small groups on specific uses of the Omeka platform (or both).
@patriciahetu:
Great! Looking forward to meeting you this weekend–and that goes for everyone. Lots of great ideas percolating; I’m about fried here at midterm season–looking forward to an invigorating “unconference” to recharge my intellectual batteries.
BTW-anyone flying in to Stewart/Newburgh later Friday night (9-ish), I’m renting a car to drive to Poughkeepsie. email me at kgannon [at] grandview dot edu if you want to claim a seat.
@Deb + @Lilleth: I’d love to discuss those same things. The last Bootcamp of the day (disclosure: it’s the one I’m running) will address many similar issues, coming from a cognitive perspective. Just to clarify a bit, though the description might sound a bit lecture-y, we’ll largely alternate between small-group/big-group discussion in order to think through effective tools and methods for both the physical and virtual classroom. I think, too, this will allow us to share our successes and failures in a very focused way, and allow us to consider how to best apply teaching methods and tools to any kind of class. If we can brainstorm some sessions before the Bootcamp, I think we can bring a lot more to it. Looking forward to it!
Great proposals so far! I’m already anticipating the hardest part about a THATCamp – choosing which sessions to go to when they all sound so great.
Among many other things, I would love to talk about digital material culture in the classroom – as in: how do we teach with or about physical objects when we can’t actually bring them into the classroom (or when the classroom is online)? I work with Vassar’s collection of historic costume, and I’m slowly building an Omeka site to share this collection online, including images, videos, and documents. My argument is that current technology can move us past the slide lecture model of one (or a few) slides per object, to multiple views and multimedia that allow for greater understanding of the physicality of the object.
We’ve been experimenting with video (students film each other discussing and handling historic costumes from our collection) and with ObjectVRs (whenever we exhibit, we have a photoshoot of the objects and then create high resolution interactive movies that allow the viewer to rotate and zoom in on any detail on any side of the object). Take a look at one at vcomeka.com/vccc/items/show/615 (though this project is a work in progress, so it is slow to load and may not work in all browsers). If people are interested, I can briefly discuss/show how we make these ObjectVRs (in the spirit of “more hack less yak”), and I can show more of them.
Do you teach with artifacts, or about artifacts? Do you share actual objects in class? Do you show “slides” in class? Do your students have access to your slides on the web, to study on their own time? How does that access facilitate their learning? Have you worked with any other forms of multimedia to study artifacts? How have they enhanced student learning?
Can’t wait until Saturday!
I’m very interested in project-centered DH courses. I have a group of great students voluntarily working on a scholarly edition that will become a peer-reviewed digital scholarly edition next semester. But, how do we achieve this type of project in a traditional curriculum. How can we assess it? And how do we inspire our students towards this more active style of learning than the sage on the stage? (BTW, my co-presenter undergraduate is participating in this voluntary project; perhaps we can convince her to talk about it during Dork Shorts?)
Hi All —
I wanted to take a moment to differentiate the two bootcamps about DH and undergraduates. The first one, Integrating Digital Projects into Undergraduate Courses, is a nuts n’bolts (if I can speak for the presenters?) about scaffolding different kinds of projects into your course curriculum. My bootcamp on the Undergraduate Voice in the DH Classroom focuses on how to integrate that same undergraduate into the planning of your courses. We will field different kinds of courses and then cede the floor to an intrepid undergraduate who will discuss her experiences in all levels of these courses. My role will then be to address some of the overarching goals (and if they were successful/failure) in these undergraduate courses. The undergraduate (a graduating English major) is also very open to taking your questions about her experiences.
I propose doing a session on teaching ethics using games. This will be a highly interactive session, where we will play games and even co-create a game! This session is based on my research on using games to support ethical inquiry, as well as my experience as a game/media producer and writer/co-editor of a series of books on ethics and games. I may need to do the session on Sunday, due to some scheduling conflicts. Looking forward to it!
Kristina and Kevin – I have experience in both of those areas. I would be glad to work with both of you.
@Roger: Excellent! So far my experience has been with assigning digital stories (for a personal essay writing workshop), and I am interested in tailoring the digital multimedia “essay” assignment to fit the variety of undergrad courses I teach (from writing 102 to advanced humanities seminars). Thanks for the link to Southern Spaces–I will check it out.
A somewhat related aside: this week my students are I looking at (listening for?) narrative elements in radio storytelling (specifically, Radiolab). We are examining the way Adumrad and Krulwich take on big ideas in science and create a narrative (or many narratives). I love how my students are starting to pay attention to how sound affects the narrative in interesting ways.
Anyway! Looking forward to a productive and edifying weekend!
@kristina: I think a session on multimedia assignments would be great. I’m very interested in getting both undergraduates and graduate students to incorporate multimedia in their projects. One of the things we’re currently trying to change at Emory is the idea that dissertations need to be exclusively writing-based. I’m far more interested in multi-media “essays” (for lack of a better term) that incorporate video, audio, etc. Southern Spaces is a great journal that encourages just this type of schlolarship: southernspaces.org/
I am interested in the the intersection of technology and writing, esp multimedia storytelling.
I have begun incorporating digital story assignments into my writing courses, and believe that assignments that combine words and images and sound can provide a powerful learning experience for students who often do not see college writing as innovative, inventive, or relevant to their lives. Are others interested in teaching/assigning forms of multimedia narratives in their classes? Can we pool our resources and swap stories? I would be happy to show some examples of student digital storytelling projects for those who are interested, and to share assignment guidelines and the like.
And like Kevin Gannon, I am also looking forward to learning more about course blogging and wikis. This is something I have yet to do. Looking forward to meeting you all this weekend at Vassar!
Any thought to moving session proposals to the blog and moving the great stuff you have on the homepage to the About page? It would be easier for me to look at all of the proposals and comment on them if the sessions were actually posts instead of comments. This is how, for example, CHNM did their THATCamp: chnm2011.thatcamp.org/
I’m using both blogs and wikis in my classes this year, and so far the results are decidedly mixed. Is there anyone with more experience with these tools that can help us noobs with the ropes, provide suggestions for effectiveness, and impart general wisdom? That would be excellent.
As a retired high school teacher working as an adjunct English instructor at a community college, I am concerned with the so-called “digital natives” who are lacking in necessary skills to use the meager technology available. How do we bridge the immense gaps in their skills? How do we provide the technology they need to move into the 21st century? I question the growth of on-line education when these students have little ability to produce a paper to hand in, much less work with email and on-line documenting. The idea of a chat room seems alien to many and their access to the hardware (other than a cell phone) seems minimal.
Since the amount of money available for education seems to be diminishing, what can we do to move forward with the changes so necessary for future generations? Computer labs are often equipped with out-dated hardware and software. Finding tech assistance is often difficult.
I echo the concerns and interests presented by Joshua.
I am very interested in Lilleth’s proposal, but I would also appreciate a session where we – discuss technology tools to connect learners and provide a platform for engagement, interaction, and learning; share experiences – both positive and negative – on technology use for facilitating interaction and learning in the physical and the virtual classroom; and brainstorm pedagogical strategies for building and sustaining communities of learners in a variety of contexts and using a variety of technology tools.
Looking forward to sharing with and learning from all THATCampers! I will bring the marshmallows 🙂
I am interested in sharpening my skills in online instructional design for ‘returning’ (adult), non-traditional learners in a small college. Factored in our session may be some focus on what are the tools and methods necessary to facilitate the best quality teaching and learning.
I am trying to find a way to combine 3D Virtual Technology with theatre (particularly social theatre). My hope is to integrate the work of Augusto Boal with technology to create a new type of learning environment. I’d love to be able to just hear from others about this, and possibly brainstorm ideas.
From Roger Whitson: I’d like to use THATCamp Pedagogy to propose a new project that will – hopefully – involve THATCamps from around the globe. THATCamp Documentary is an idea I’ve had for a little while, but I’ve never fully figured out how to implement it. The idea is to crowdsource a film in about a year, where people can take footage of various THATCamps, include interviews with organizers and participants, criticize and celebrate the ideas behind THATCamp, etc. Here are a few issues I’d like to use the session to brainstorm:
-Do we need funding? Would we want to use a model like the kickstarter project?
-How would we get people do film? Would we supply cheap cameras or rely upon filmers to supply their own?
-What kind of script should we create? What should the writing process look like?
-How should we edit the film? Should a small group of dedicated people do the editing from a larger pool of participants?
-How do we manage the project? Should there be a monthly meeting with dedicated participants via Skype or a Google Hangout?
My model for THATCamp Documentary is Star Wars Uncut, a project that asked fans to individually recreate 15 second segments from Star Wars. The segments were voted on by an online community, then an editing team recreated the film using those segments that were most popular. The film looks great if you look at specific segments, but tends to fall apart if you view the film as a whole. So, I feel our greatest challenge will be how we can crowdsource a documentary yet still maintain a sense of film cohesion with a narrative arc, pseudo-consistent filming styles, etc. While the session idea has, admittedly, little direct connection to the theme of our unconference, I would also like to see how a project like this can involve faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students in a large-scale collaborative work.
Hello! I hope this is an acceptable format for this post. As a freelance science educator (adjunct, K-12, and community ed) I am interested in/worried about: (1) making course materials, e-tools, and design as useful as possible to those with old PCs, Linux, smartphones, iThings, sporadic tech/net access (libraries, Starbucks), etc.; (2) freeing our course materials from the university/Blackboard “paywall” (with everything from technical to contractual and legal issues) while restricting access (as needed) to sensitive student contributions/interactions; (3) a course-management-system rubric/checklist/user’s guide/shootout (Blackboard vs. Moodle/sakai vs. weebly vs. engrade vs. … ); (4) archiving courses that are mostly/entirely digital, along (optionally) with student/participant content/contributions; and (5) ways to share best practices, war stories, minor victories. Honored if any of these takes root and sprouts. Peace – JR