Omeka Workshop, April 3

The Graduate Student Digital Humanities group is organizing a 90-minute workshop on the digital content management system Omeka. The workshop will be led by Alex Gil, Digital Scholarship Coordinator at Columbia University. It will take place April 3, from 11:00-12:30 in Keating 318. This workshop does not require you to be a digital expert. Simple familiarity with common tools like Microsoft Word, Google or WordPress will suffice. Sign up here with your Fordham email address. Space is limited.

Workshop description:
In this workshop you will learn how to create and organize a digital archive using Omeka, an open-source tool designed to manage and display collections of cultural objects in digital formats (images, video, documents, sound, etc.). Omeka is used by researchers, archivists, museum curators, students and teachers. As you explore this user-friendly but powerful tool, you will learn about its functions and design. Participants will use the free version of the software provided at omeka.net.  Bring to the workshop a small collection of files that you would like to collect online. These can be .mp3′s, .pdf’s, .jpg’s, .txt’s, or any other common file format. For examples of humanities projects that use Omeka, look at the Showcase.

Looking ahead:We are excited that Matt Gold, from the CUNY Graduate Center and editor of Debates in the Digital Humanities, will give a talk entitled “Teaching to the Network: Digital Humanities and Public Pedagogy.” May 1, 12:00-2:00, Walsh Library, O’Hare Special Collections. A light lunch will be served.

Both events are made possible with funds from the Center for Teaching Excellence.

Fordham's Citizen Cartographers

What do you do with a growing collection of international maps that contains over 433,000 sheet maps and 20,000 book atlases, some of which date back to the 15th century? As twelve graduate students and one post-doc from Fordham University recently learned, you digitize it, of course. At the New York Public Library’s Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, that effort has begun with some of its New York City and antiquarian maps. But more than just make high-resolution images of these maps, the library also developed “Map Warper,” a tool which allows anyone with a computer and an internet connection to digitally align (also known as “rectify”) these maps to match today’s precise maps, such as OpenStreetMap and GoogleEarth. The project joins “What’s On the Menu,” another fabulous crowdsourcing project at the library.

IMG_0198
Mishka Vance, a library technical assistant, shows Fordham University graduate students Tara Foley, Christy Potroff, and Melissa Whalen some maps in the NYPL’s collection at the Map Division.

On a grey February day, this group from Fordham assembled at the library to learn how to use MapWarper and become what the library calls “Citizen Cartographers.” The patient and delightful Mishka Vance, a technical assistant at the library, used a digitized, early twentieth-century Bronx fire map to demonstrate how to trace buildings, add information (brick, wood, or stone? residence or business?) about them to the database, and rectify the old map with a contemporary one.

Participants then proceeded to trace and rectify maps of their own choosing from the library’s digitized collection. Among the maps rectified that day were an early postal map from the Midwest, an ancient map of Cyprus, and a 1916 survey of Morningside Heights.

The people who attended this workshop hailed from several departments, including English, Classics, Theology, and Medieval Studies. They came for reasons that ranged from using Map Warper in their research, to using it in their teaching, to simply adding to their knowledge base of digital tools.

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This spring, the Fordham Graduate Student Digital Humanities Group continues its efforts to make more opportunities like the Map Warper workshop available. Our next event will be a roundtable organized by Sarah Cornish and Jane Van Slembrouck called “Digital Traces.” It takes place on March 2 at the Graduate Student English Association’s Conference, “Remembering, Forgetting, Imagining: The Practices of Memory.” On March 6, HASTAC Scholar Patrick Burns leads a  discussion of Stephen Ramsay’s Reading Machines. See the Events page for more details on these and other spring programs.

The events sponsored by the FGSDH Group are open to all members of the Fordham community, no matter their level of technological expertise. With limited formal opportunities on campus for humanities students to learn how to incorporate technology with their coursework, research, and teaching, this group aims to at least partially fill that gap by teaching each other and learning together.

Citizen Cartographers are a happy bunch!
Citizen Cartographers are a happy bunch!

ReformationVille: Utilizing Games and Social Media for Historical Role-Playing in the Classroom

When I began teaching as a graduate student at Fordham University, I was not only a first-time teacher with anxiety about the unknown territory that lay ahead, but I was also in the midst of preparing for my comprehensive exams. So I did what I imagine most do… I depended heavily upon the most familiar and “safe” pedagogical method of my own education: the lecture. Admittedly, I had some doubts about the effectiveness of lecture-driven teaching. But looking back, it made sense. Lecturing was what I knew and, while I still risked delivering a bad one, at least I would feel some control over the classroom. Over the past few years, however, I have come to realize that teachers and students alike miss out when multi-faceted learning activities are not utilized and students’ freedom to be creative is restricted. As a result, I have found myself more and more willing to branch out pedagogically-speaking. In particular, I am becoming increasingly interested in utilizing an experiential pedagogy, even though it would require me to relinquish that sense of “control” that I coveted as a first-time teacher. That said, what might this look like in a college course?

As I ponder new opportunities, I have been also reflecting on which creative and experiential activities made the biggest impact on my own education. In doing so, one thing keeps bubbling up to the surface. Role-playing. All these years later, I still vividly remember participating in an American Revolution simulation in 8th grade History. As Sean Devlin, a friendly tavern-keeper, I wrote an autobiography, networked with classmates to win others to our cause, and participated in mock continental congresses. Then again, in high school, my IB History class engaged in a series of trials derived from our study of the Cold War. I served both as a prosecutor in the case against American meddling in Latin America and a defendant (an East German president) in another team’s charges against the Soviet Union for doing likewise in Eastern Europe. Looking back at these experiences, I am convinced that they were invaluable for fostering those higher levels of learning (critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, etc).

Now, as a historian of Christianity, I have been toying with developing a Reformation role-playing simulation wherein my class would become an “idealized” late medieval town. Not only could I plug this activity into a number of classes, ranging from surveys of Christian history to Reformation specific ones, it could offer unique pedagogical advantages. For example, my students could hopefully experience the important reality, which text-based courses can sometimes struggle to convey – that the Reformation, like most theological disputes, was not simply waged with pen and paper, but dramatically affected families, friendships, the workplace, and the public square. The challenge, of course, is getting students motivated and participating. But it seems to me that I might be able to get the most traction by incorporating some of the ways in which our students interact with games and social media. Using this approach, I could encourage them to invest in developing their persona’s theological convictions and supporting their particular faction by drawing explicitly upon the skills of character development and  alliance building found in games like World of Warcraft as well as the desire to garner comments and “likes” on Facebook status updates.

Admittedly, this is just the beginning. Building on this foundation, I hope to grapple in future posts with which digital tools (e.g., Twitter) and parameters (e.g., various game dynamics) might help realize my goal of role-playing as a way of teaching the history of Christianity. And I’d love to hear your thoughts as well! For instance, what creative and experiential activities were most influential in your own education? Have you tried anything like this in your own classes, and how did it go? Which digital tools have you used or think might work?

*This post has been also cross-posted at hastac.org.

 

Learn about Digitally Rectifying Maps at the NYPL

Wednesday, February 6, 2:00-4:00PM.
New York Public Library, 42nd St and 5th Ave.
The New York Public Library has kindly agreed to offer a workshop to Fordham Graduate Students who wish to learn how to use the digital mapping tool, Map Warper. Space is limited and available on a first come, first served basis. The NYPL Map Warper is a tool for digitally aligning (“rectifying”) historical maps from the NYPL’s collections to match today’s precise maps. This workshop is for anyone interested in learning a new digital tool, particularly for people using maps in their research. Sign up by following the link below.
http://www.doodle.com/9kt3hhz7gkw9zic7

Follow the Fordham Graduate Student Digital Humanities on Facebook.

NYPL Map Warper

Introducing: The Jesuit Hacker

“The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.”

E. S. Raymond’s insight kept popping into my head this past Wednesday when I had an opportunity to sit in on the most recent Jesuit Pedagogy Lunchtime Discussion. It was an opportunity for faculty and graduate student instructors to talk about effective practices for teaching in a Jesuit environment. Among the many threads in the discussion was the role of creativity as a pedagogical tool. Participants offered examples of creative projects being used to great success in the classroom. My mind, however, wandered very easily from creativity to creation. I can appreciate the mental exercise at work in imaginative assignments, but what are we building from them? What will we do with them? One of the participants at the discussion expressed dissatisfaction with “research qua research” in the classroom. I’m not sure I’m more satisfied with creativity qua creativity. Look at how much talent we have in the classroom. Let’s use this creativity to make something. Let’s work together to solve some “fascinating problems.”

Solving fascinating problems is the first element of the “hacker attitude” as defined by Raymond in his essay “How to Be a Hacker.” The essay is freely available (not an unimportant point, as we will see in future posts) online at: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html. Raymond’s essay contains practical wisdom for coders and people interested in computer work. It also has much practical wisdom for graduate students and instructors, particularly, I would argue, those of us in Jesuit surroundings.

For the moment, I will simply introduce Raymond’s five aspects of the “Hacker attitude.” Before I explain what each of these has meant to me in a Jesuit context, I think it would be a good idea for readers to reflect on whether or not these ideas readily map onto whatever they think the corresponding “Jesuit attitude” would look like.

Raymond describes the aspects of the “Hacker attitude” as follows:

  1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.
  2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice.
  3. Boredom and drudgery are evil.
  4. Freedom is good.
  5. Attitude is no substitute for competence.

The required reading for you—and only a blog post on Jesuit pedagogy would begin with required reading—is Raymond’s essay. Over the next few posts, I plan to explain what we, as graduate students and educators at a Jesuit institution, can learn from computing culture and I will start by elaborating on each of the five points above. I think there will be real benefits from us all adopting, at least in some part, the role of “Jesuit hacker.” It is my suspicion that Raymond’s essay, in addition to other foundational works on hacker culture which I plan to discuss in future posts, will be unfamiliar to average graduate student in the humanities. I hope that this interdisciplinary clash inspire new ideas and approaches and lead to a deeper understanding of the “digital” side of digital humanities.

Final FGSDH Meeting on 12/4 from 2:00-3:45

12/4 2:00-3:45 Dealy 208A. Join us at the final meeting of the semester. This will be an important organizational meeting to make this group better than ever. Here’s your chance to take a lead in planning the FGSDH’s future, as well as find out the exciting things already in the works for next semester.

Here’s your chance to take a lead in planning this group’s future. Volunteers are needed to

  • Assume a more active role in the FGSDH: Social media. Web design. Meeting planning. Marketing.
  • Plan DH-related events to take place at Fordham.
  • Help plan “Teaching and Research with Technology Day” in the spring, a day of discussion and workshops with special guests from the NYC DH community and beyond.
  • Lead or organize a mini workshop on coding, digital pedagogy, and designing born-digital research.
  • Help draft a request to the administration that Fordham University should offer institutional support to all graduate students wishing to pursue research and teaching in the digital humanities.

Learn more about the early winter trip to the New York Public Library’s map room for a workshop on the “map warper tool.”  This free workshop will be especially tailored for our group. At the 12/4 meeting, share what would you like to discover about digital mapping at the library.

Give your input (become the organizer!) for a possible spring reading and discussion group. Texts we’re considering are Stephen Ramsay’s Reading Machines and Howard Rheingold’s Net Smart: How to Thrive Online. Is there a book you would like to read with group? Share your suggestions on 12/4. Using FGSDH funds, free books will be provided to all reading group participants.

THATCampNY 2012: Following Up with Fordham Students

 

Reflections on the recent THATCamp NY (The Humanities and Technology Camp) by three of Fordham’s graduate students appear after the following report.

From digital pedagogy to text mining to library support for digital scholarship, THATCampNY 2012, which took place at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus on October 5-6, included almost thirty sessions related to the digital humanities. At least 95 students, faculty, librarians, and staff came from CUNY, Columbia University, the New York Public Library, Rutgers University, Cornell University, as well as from Michigan and beyond. THATCampNY 2012 was organized by Elizabeth Cornell, Pre-doctoral Fellow in Fordham’s English Department, along with Jonathan Cain, Reference and Instruction Librarian, Hunter College, and Tatiana Bryant, Reference Associate, NYU Libraries.

“I hope Fordham will continue to host and support such innovative, interdisciplinary, and collaborative events as they will only serve to strengthen our community’s research and pedagogy.” –Sarah Cornish, English

Several workshops were offered. Kristen Garlock, Associate Director of Education and Outreach at JSTOR, the online library database, introduced participants to a set of web-based tools for selecting and interacting with content using JSTOR’s “Data for Research” tool. Alex Gil, Digital Scholarship Coordinator at Columbia University, led a workshop on Omeka, a tool for the management of collections of digital assets. Chris Sula Assistant Professor of Information and Library Science from the Pratt Institute, led a workshop on Gephi, an open source program for network visualization and analysis.

“As with any great gathering of university folk, I left energized and excited, because I’d experienced a new, unexpected way of thinking about what I do.” –Kem Crimmins, Philosophy

Discussion sessions had a more informal structure than workshops, but were no less dynamic. Roger Panetta, Visiting Professor of History at Fordham, directed an information-gathering session on ways to take online student work beyond sophisticated blog posts. Kimon Keramidas, from the Bard Graduate Center, led a discussion on platforms and best practices for online scholarly publishing. Lucy Bruell, who oversees NYU’s Literature, Arts, and Medicine database, had a working session on how to overhaul this vast resource. Jared Simard offered an introduction on platforms available for mapping and timelines, and he explored questions of how the DH community can facilitate acquisition of programming tools. Other sessions dealt with the logistics of collaboration among researchers spread out across the globe.

“What do we mean when we encourage interdisciplinarity and collaboration?” –Alan Kline, Medieval Studies.

THATCamp is a series of free “unconferences” devoted to hands-on work and discussion of the intersection of technology and the humanities. It is hosted by research and cultural institutions multiple times a year. THATCamp participants include researchers, students, librarians, archivists, curators, educators, technologists, and others interested in using technology to produce humanities scholarship. Popular with both scholars and practitioners, there were over forty-five THATCamps worldwide between 2008 and 2011, and over twenty are planned for 2012.
(A version of the above also appears on Fordham’s English Connect.)

What did Fordham’s graduate students think of THATCampNY?

 Sarah Cornish, PhD candidate in English:

As a recent initiate into the world of digital humanities and on my way to attend the first day of THATCampNY, I had no idea of what to expect. An unconference? No schedule posted? No panels? This was new, and as a volunteer representing Fordham’s Graduate Digital Humanities Working Group, I worried I was ill-equipped to be there. But, as a PhD candidate who is working on representations of city space in literature, I was also enticed by the possibility of learning about platforms that might be useful for my research and pedagogy. On that first day, I was treated to a series of “lightening talks” in which professors, research librarians, independent scholars, and graduate students presented the ways in which they employ (and in many cases, build) DH tools to enhance their work. I learned about CUNY Graduate Center’s Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, an online publication and forum for creative and critical approaches to including technology in the classroom and beyond. I was inspired by a talk on digitizing treasures found while doing archival work and making them available for other researchers. Through listening to the various presentations, I was amazed at how much I don’t yet know, but also able to envision ways that my own work will benefit through digital tools. I hope Fordham will continue to host and support such innovative, interdisciplinary, and collaborative events as they will only serve to strengthen our community’s research and pedagogy.

 Alan Kline, MA student, Medieval Studies:

For me, fundamental questions are the most fun. My favorite session at THATCampNY dealt with text mining, which brought up a number of fundamental questions. Before we sort, collect, and explain data, how do we define data? What gets left out after settling on a definition? How should we account for omitted data? Those familiar problems take on a new dimension in a digital context: programming is a tool that enables a researcher to collect and visualize a vast amount of data, but that fact generates its own well-documented problems. Supplementary digital tools not only enable us to sail the oceans of digitized literature faster than ever before, they also provide an excellent opportunity for expansive collaboration. Given that many humanities programs emphasize interdisciplinary scholarship, it seems a little ironic that students and faculty must rely principally on themselves to pursue their interest in digital literacy and its consequent research functionality. Nearly every one of my professors has made it a point to destroy the myth that a scholar’s work is solitary, yet most of the participants at the text mining session with knowledge of basic programming were self-taught. What, then, do we mean when we encourage interdisciplinarity and collaboration?

 Kem Crimmins, Philosophy:

This was my first THATCamp. Although I had followed a few previously on Twitter, the live tweets do not do these events justice. Not your traditional conference, THATCamp is full of energetic, to eenthusiastic and supportive academics who embrace technology to further their research and develop an innovative and effective classroom.

I attended three sessions, and, interestingly, they all shared a theme: presenting humanities research visually. Whether mapping the relationships among ideas or thinkers, using Prezi to organize data rather than simply as an alternative to Powerpoint, or building online, visually enhanced archives in the classroom,the THATCamp participants were keen to dig deeper and and to build new platforms that would lead to new, potentially paradigm-shifting insights both for themselves and their students. As with any great gathering of university folk, I left energized and excited, because I’d experienced a new, unexpected way of thinking about what I do.

Prep for Markup Basics Workshop

I’m really looking forward to next week’s workshop: “Markup Basics: Build an Online CV in 45 Minutes”. We will be meeting Tuesday 10/23 at 3:00pm in Walsh 047.

In order for us to get our CV marked up in 45 minutes, it will helpful to have a few things taken care of before the meeting. The workshop assumes that everyone will be working on their own laptop, but it is not a necessity. If you want to work on one of the lab computers (or do not wish to install any software), that’s fine. Some (relatively minor) parts of the workshop will not be available, but you will still be able to markup your document and leave with an HTML/CSS-based CV.

Note that this is a markup workshop aimed at complete beginners. That said, if you have HTML/CSS experience but do not have a formatted CV, consider using the 45 minutes to get this done. Your shared expertise will no doubt also be appreciated by those sitting around you.

Bring to the workshop:

  • Your current CV. A .doc or .pdf might save you a bit of time, as you will be able to cut and paste.
  • Your laptop. I will be using a Mac but the workshop will work for any platform. You will need to have a browser installed (e.g. Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.) and a text editor (e.g. TextEdit for Mac, Notepad for PC, etc. but see below)

Before the workshop:

As mentioned above, these are not required, but I plan to share a few time-saving hints that take advantage of their features. NB: I will be using a Mac with TextWrangler and Chrome.

See you next Tuesday. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments.—Patrick

From Public Course Blogs to Grand, Aggregated Experiments

SAVE THE DATE!

10/23 FGSDH Meeting, Walsh Library Computer Lab 047
>>”Markup Basics: Build an Online CV in 45 Minutes” A workshop on HTML led by Patrick Burns.
>>Group members who attended THATCampNY will briefly share their experiences.
>>”Brainstorming an Appeal for More DH at Fordham for Graduate Students in 45 Minutes” The group will begin research and collaboration to create a document to be presented to Fordham University requesting that a program for basic digital literacy be implemented for graduate students. The appeal will also outline what such a program would entail.

Here is Will Fenton‘s Prezi from Tuesday’s meeting on digital pedagogy.

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