I’m afraid someone may come along and pinch me, to wake me up from this awesome dream. As Bethany Nowviskie has already announced, I’m going be a visiting scholar for Scholars’ Lab at the University of Virginia for the Fall semester. To say that I’m honored would be an understatement. The work that comes out [...]
Participating in the Bazaar: Sharing Code in the Digital Humanities
Can sharing more code help the digital humanities be a better place? I think so! Here’s how and why.
Hacking our Conferences
Coming off another successful THATCamp, I keep thinking there is so much more we can do with the unconference model in academia. The ideas generated from THATCamp, the collegiality and openess lends itself to an intellectual playfulness and exchange that is almost wholly lacking in traditional academic conferences. It’s time we start hacking our conferences. [...]
But I Want You to Think!
Early last semester, we had a conversation in my Clio Wired 2 course about building websites to meet user needs, and the strategies to take to ensure our websites were usable. Most of our reading focused on strategies for building commercial websites, but unlike building websites for business, digital humanities projects have to walk a [...]
Assigning Wikipedia in a US History Survey
As some of you might guess, I get mixed reactions whenever I reveal that I use Wikipedia in my history classes. And not just for reading; I actually assign my students to research and write an article for Wikipedia. And it has consistently been one of my most successful assignments. It shows students the difference between fact-only writing and analytical writing, it provides an introduction to research methods, and it gives them more insight into the working of Wikipedia, so they understand why they should or shouldn’t use it for various circumstances.
Academic Technology Goals for Higher Education
Jeff McClurken’s recent post, “Writing a Strategic Plan for Academic Technologies and Libraries,” asks a really great question: If given the task of writing a strategic plan for a small institution, what would your top academic technology goals be? After teaching several undergraduate courses, and while currently teaching a graduate course, I’ve thought about my own goals at a classroom-level, and I think these goals could be applied to a broader strategic plan for a university.
Frontiers in Digital History Conference
The American Association for History and Computing has extended the deadline for its 2009 Annual Conference to March 2. The conference theme is “Frontiers in Digital History,” and its taking place at George Mason University April 3-5. Here’s the updated Call for Papers.
THATCamp 2009
THATCamp, the immensely fun and popular digital humanities unconference hosted by CHNM is back in 2009. Its a true working weekend, where people show things their working on, get feedback, toss around ideas, and connect with others equally excited about the possibilities of digital humanities. If that sounds like your kind of event, keep reading.
Three Roles for Teachers using Technology
Since speaking at the American Historical Association meeting last month about Teaching History in the Digital Age, I’ve thought a bit more about what my new roles are as an educator using technology and social media. I’ve come up with three that I think help me be a better teacher.
New (and Updated) WordPress Plugins
I spent a little time this weekend updating some plugins I’ve had in the hopper. First, Zac Gordon and I updated ScholarPress Courseware to work with WordPress 2.7. Many thanks to Zac for helping to update Courseware’s interface elements to match 2.7′s admin theme, and for adding an easy date picker to the schedule edit [...]