Speaking of final projects, we’ll schedule individual meetings for the first week back from spring break, March 17. This is to discuss ideas and directions for your final projects.

Additionally, we’ll have a guest speaker for next week’s talk. Tom Scheinfeldt, the Managing Director at the Center for History and New Media, and Co-Director of the Omeka project, will be joining us to talk about the impact of digital media on archives and museums.

In addition to discussing what you learned about Twitter, I’m also curious to know what you learned from people on Twitter this past week. If you can’t tell already, I’m a pretty big proponent of using Twitter to connect to various groups or individuals doing similar work, learn more about them, and engage in conversations that may require you to find a method more conducive to your conversation than 140 characters. There are lots of things you can learn from just following a Twitter stream, even for a week. Just as a quick example, here’s what I learned from following the au-digital-history group this past week.

• Students talk to their mother’s about Twitter (link)
• Some of you are concerned about lack of tech knowledge (link). Interesting because there are similar concerns about barriers to entry in digital history, which culminated in an interesting discussion on Twitter yesterday involving @cliotropic, @janaremy, @benwbrum, @footnotesrising, @candace_nast, @sterflu, and @melissaterras, among other. Someone even started a Google Group to take the conversation somewhere more conducive than Twitter.
• The Smithsonian and Library of Congress twitter accounts come across as narcissistic (link). Interesting given our reading of Bauerlein and Teen Narcissism…narcissism may be a trait of more people/institutions than teens? Also interesting in light of Clay Shirky’s recent “Rant About Women,” post advising women to be “arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks” if they want promotion or recognition.
• Former student researching captivity and “white Indians” (link)
• Some possibilities of finding connections between this class and classes you’re currently taking, or have previously taken (link). I always love this possibility, and welcome talking about it anytime.
• Interesting design problem for digital history: Can (or should) physical browsing be simulated in the digital? (link). Similar to other questions centered around how some experiences historical content that’s been digitized. What is gained? What is lost? What are the ramifications, and are they positive enough to embark on a specific digital history project, or doing digital history in general?
• Even history folks can understand/appreciate programmer geek humor (link)
• Where do I experience history? (link) Certainly a pertinent question for a course about history in the digital age. I hope we could talk about how the Web, and digital history, changes the way history is experienced, and what that means for our work.
• What are the some concerns and possibilities about using social media for therapy and counseling? (link)
• Some of you are doing dissertation research, and are wondering how in the world you’ll be able to wade through archives. (link) Will certainly inform our discussion about digital scholarship, research, Zotero, and using search tools in general.
• NPS is considering allowing Twitter to employees, but the NPS email seems less reliable/accessible. (link) Leads to lots of interesting questions about the technical capabilities of cultural heritage institutions, their resources and staff.

This is just a list of things I learned from you all, a group of 25 people, who have just started using Twitter. I learned a lot about you, about your concerns, your likes and dislikes, and these things contributed something back to my work, and will certainly inform how I conduct the class the rest of the semester. There’s a lot of stuff here, a lot of good stuff that will pop up in class as the semester unwinds.

This evening we’ll do some introductions, get to know each other a little better, and talk a little about social media. I created a wiki page to help us get started with social media. If you don’t already have a Twitter account, we’ll create one tonight and explore using it. Once you do, I’ll add you to our AU Digital History list on Twitter. Next week we’ll discuss more broadly what the concept of “Web 2.0″ is, and how it is affecting academia. For the first week I’d like you to sign up for Twitter, follow a bunch of people (including others in class), and try to follow some conversations. You’re free to contribute, but I’m more interested in you sitting back, watching some activity on Twitter, and come prepared next week to discuss your observations.

You can also download a PDF of the syllabus.