Continue reading »]]>

I would like to examine, discuss, and debate the benefits of continuing to publish academic work behind pay walls, logins, or other restrictions. I understand that there are some — I just want to take the rhetorical position that there aren’t and see what happens. Some possible directions for the discussion are: institutional benefits, liabilities, issues of promotion and tenure, peer review processes, etc.  Link to open Google Document notes here.

Some articles for context:
Giving It Away for Free: Sharing and the Future of Scholarly Communication | Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Publishing Outside the Academy | Audrey Watters
Is Open Access a Business or a Moral Issue? A Conversation with Penn State UP | Adeline Koh

Starter examples, please add more:
Hack Education
Journal of Digital Humanities
Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy
Hybrid Pedagogy: A Journal of Teaching and Technology

Continue reading »]]>

Good morning and welcome to THATCamp SE 2013!

Just removed the Countdown Clock from the sidebar, which means we’re go for flight in 1 hour and 55 minutes!

We’re looking forward to an invigorating 28 hours, so … stay caffeinated. Don’t forget to disconnect your #Twitter account from your #FB account and keep your hands and feet outside the vehicle at all times.

Let’s get started!

Continue reading »]]>

I would like to propose a play session on retrocomputing and platform studies. Hardware willing, I will bring two Macintosh Powerbooks from the early 1990s loaded with some software and an early, floppy disk-based ebook of William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy. While playing with these old computers, we can talk about reading these kinds of texts (hardware, software, games, written texts) and strategies for preserving/accessing digital texts.

Continue reading »]]>

Word Cloud created with Voyant

I often assign literary analyses that ask students to work with data visualization tools such as Wordle, Prezi, Google Maps, Voyant, and Many Eyes. While it’s fun to play around with literary texts in word clouds and word trees, it is much more difficult to use visualizations for an effective “distant reading” to use Franco Moretti’s term. In the brand new online MLA Commons publication Literary Studies in the Digital Age, Tanya Clement writes in the chapter on “Text Analysis, Data Mining, and Visualizations in Literary Scholarship”:

These [data visualization] methodologies defamiliarize texts, making them unrecognizable in a way (putting them at a distance) that helps scholars identify features they might not otherwise have seen, make hypotheses, generate research questions, and figure out prevalent patterns and how to read them.

I imagine this session as a combined Talk/Play session in which we discuss the benefits and pitfalls of using data visualizations in the literature classroom (and in our own research) and play with some of these tools to see if we can come up with new hypotheses, research questions, and interpretations of patterns. I’d also be happy to share what I learned about Voyant at this week’s DiSC workshop.

Continue reading »]]>

With the economy in its current state, money -or the lack thereof- is a constant concern. The world of Higher Education is not immune to this problem, sadly. How do we create a model that’s sustainable and still provides the tools and education for the next generation of students to become part of the global community? What about technology as a lifeline?

FOSSELs (Free and Open Source Software Equipped Libraries) could point the way toward a potential source for shrinking expenses in a vital area: technology. By adopting a model that embraces Free and Open Source as its inspiration, Higher Ed institutions could explore lower operating expenses without sacrificing access to technology for students and faculty. Without the large expense of “brand-name” software, a significant amount of funding could be applied to the mission of education.

I have worked in a FOSSEL in my previous life in public libraries. The model, when properly implemented and maintained, has the potential to be a great asset with implications in all areas of education. Is there a real possibility that this could become a defining (or redefining) movement in education? If so, where does that movement start? What are the roadblocks to such an effort?

Continue reading »]]>

There is a bunch of stuff I want my students to know in my literature courses, but that I am not qualified or don’t want to teach- identifying countries on a map, translating key terms from other languages, grasping basic historical information, grammar.  Is there a low-stakes, self-directed, automated, and (maybe even) fun way of doing this?  I am proposing a Talk Session on developing and using online quizzes as games.

I’ve never used quizzes in my classes because I think there are far better ways to make sure students are engaged with the course content.  However, I have come to accept that sometimes we do learn simply by rote memorization. Too often though, quizzes just seem punitive and pointless.  You get one chance to get it right and then we move on.  After attending Katie Salen’s 2012 SXSW session, “Don’t Shoot the Player While they are Learning,” I began to think about how I could gather and create quizzes that taught students material that I wanted them to know, but that I didn’t want to spend class time on.  Also, I wanted to figure out how to make the quizzes feel like a low stakes game.  My approach:

• Students would not be graded on how well they did on any particular quiz.  They got a small number of points by taking any quiz 10 times over a period of at least 3 weeks.
• Students didn’t have to take the quizzes. They had many choices for assignments and could decide for themselves how to get points for the course.
• All of the quizzes were self directed, outside of class, and automated.

I was teaching courses on Contemporary American Ethnic Literature and Comics.  The initial quizzes I linked to or created were:

• A brief Spanish quiz using quotations from Junot Diaz’s Drown
• A bunch of online regional map quizzes
• A grammar quiz I helped create

Students could create quizzes as one of their assignments.  Some of the best ones I combined and let the other students take for points:

• An image-based quiz on Scott McCloud’s theories in Understanding Comics
• A culture, language, and history quiz for Maus

Some possible questions for the session:

• For what types of material is this quiz approach to learning effective?
• Could we create a massive bank of quizzes that students could access on their computers or mobile devices?
• What are possible problems with this approach?
• How would you assess the effectiveness of this approach?

Continue reading »]]>

Much of the conversation on the utilization of technology in the classroom revolves around undergraduate classes, but in this Talk session, I’d like to discuss whether graduate students can or should likewise be asked to use Twitter, ebooks, blogs, Premiere, etc. in their seminars. Should graduate students create posters about Derrida, for instance, or digital stories about a Dostoevsky novel (or a historical, political, sociological text, depending on the discipline)? Practicing the use of particular tools can certainly help graduate students shape their assignments for the undergraduate classes they are set to teach, but many graduate students might (understandably) be wary of the prospect of devoting less time to writing traditional papers.

Continue reading »]]>

Materialist theories in the area of Composition in the last 10-12 years have reveled that much of the way we talk about what happens in our classrooms controls how we act toward our students, how they respond, and what the public sphere thinks about the work we do in classrooms. Linda Adler-Kassner argues in her 2008 book, The Activist WPA, that the way we frame our discussions of writers and writing can have an effect on everything from our day-to-day teaching to the funding that comes from up on high.

I currently teach a New Media Literacy course tied to the required beginning composition courses at Georgia State University. I am constantly embroiled in discussion over how much students already know about new media, and how much they could learn and actually use it in a classroom. These discussions happen IN my classroom, as well as with colleagues, and even with the gentleman I end up riding next to on a plane when I visit my brother for the holidays.

My proposal fits within the talk and play areas of the conference. I propose we have a session to discuss how ‘native’ our young adult learners are when it comes to digital and new media literacy. What do they bring to the classroom, and what is it important that they take away? As we have this open discussion, the group will sit in a circle, with a small gap between the first person and the last. Any time a person in the discussion says something negative about their work, they move to the end of the circle. This way, as we have the discussion, we can also visually see (and stay kinetically interested) what kinds of values we deploy more often as we discuss. The simple rules for this game, of course are up for discussion within the group.

Continue reading »]]>

I propose a session discussing open-source educational materials, particularly open-source textbooks.

What would an open-source textbook look like? What is the difference between open source and open access? What are the advantages of an open-source textbook? What are the potential drawbacks of using an open-source textbook? of creating an open-source textbook? What other types of educational resources could benefit from an open-source model?

Over the past year, I have been building an open-source, online, multimedia textbook on Github for the four-semester Musicianship course sequence that I teach. I would be happy to demo this site briefly during the session, showing how I manage it, and how it can be forked, modified, and redeployed.

For more information about my project, please see this blog post.

Continue reading »]]>

Archives have gone digital. From the Modernist Journals Project to bloggers with a knack for collecting rare books, the archive itself no longer has a stable relationship to space, place, or institution. I propose a discussion about successful integration of online digital archives in the everyday classroom. What do digital documents do that the traditional archive cannot do? How do we as teachers emphasize the importance of such documents when access is at the tip of our fingers? How do you use digital archives in your classroom? How do we teach an ethics of the archive that also teaches respect for copyrighted materials?

Continue reading »]]>

I’m proposing a Talk  about how digital publishing, blogging, creating ebooks, and research guides can be incorporated into undergraduate course work as assignments. Specifically, how publishing projects work pedagogically and practically. I’ll be discussing how this type of activity is promotes engaged learning. I’ve recently work with several groups/classes on ebook and digital publishing assignments. Some have worked great and some not so great, and would like to hear if anyone has suggestions or personal experiences.There can also be a little bit about how libraries can work with faculty on projects like these to promote literacy.

Here’s a research guide I had student create in a course last semester: libguides.gcsu.edu/sevenrevolutions This guide was then the springboard for an e-book.

Continue reading »]]>

I propose a “talk” session in which we will discuss relations between comics and digital humanities and ways of using comics to engage in digital humanities research and teaching. I am currently working on a book manuscript which argues that in order to understand how the material parameters of literature are being affected by transitions to digital technology, we need to look at comics and graphic novels. I feel that this research would benefit from actually being presented as a comic. I would therefore like to discuss why we might want to use digital humanities tools to produce comics and/or help our students do so, and

Continue reading »]]>

We all may remember this gem from the MLA Jobs List Tumblr last fall:

Many of us will be faced with this task in our job searches, and we should have an answer to give committees who know they want a digital humanist, but aren’t able to articulate what a digital humanist is or does.  I propose a session where we try to tackle this question:  “What is digital humanities, candidate?”  This is a “talk” session.  Anyone who has tried and succeeded/failed to answer this question on an interview is especially encouraged to join!

Continue reading »]]>

Teaching “Academic” Writing in the 21^st Century: a collaborative talking group in which we identify (and perhaps begin to articulate solutions for) the challenges of teaching academic writing in the digital age. Some framing questions might be: What constitutes “academic” writing today? What (and who) determines if a non-peer-reviewed source is “scholarly”? How do we make space for teaching digital writing literacy in a traditional academic writing course? What are the similarities and differences in teaching how to research and write an analog critical essay and a multimodal one?

Continue reading »]]>

Emory Digital Scholarship Commons presents at GT

On Friday afternoon Stewart Varner and Brian Croxall from Emory University’s digital Scholarship Commons (DiSC) will share their insights into their work at DiSC and details about the digital projects they’re building at Emory Libraries.

When? Friday, March 8 1-2pm

Where? Clough Commons, Room 125

About DiSC:
DiSC offers faculty members and graduate students the space, expertise, and project management assistance they need to develop innovative multidisciplinary projects. DiSC projects involve a range of tools and multidisciplinary methods, from electronic text encoding and geographic information systems to statistical analysis and digitization. Located in the Research Commons of the Robert W. Woodruff Library, DiSC is supported by funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
DiSC website

Stewart Varner is DiSC’s Digital Scholarship Coordinator. He has a Ph.D. in American Studies from Emory and a M.L.I.S. from the University of North Texas. He co-authored the grant that made DiSC possible. Before coming to DiSC, Stewart served as a Beck Foundation Fellow and a Woodruff Fellow at Emory Libraries.

Brian Croxall is DiSC’s Digital Humanities Strategist. He has a Ph.D. in English literature from Emory. Before coming to DiSC, Brian served as a Council on Library and Information Resources Fellow at Emory Libraries and taught literature and media studies courses at Emory and Clemson.

More Information: DiSCEvent_Mar8

Continue reading »]]>

Stephen C. Hall building, Georgia Tech

With under two weeks to go, there’s still time to submit a session proposal for this year’s THATCamp Southeast. Please join us!

We welcome session proposals, especially those relating to modes and approaches to teaching with technology.

All THATCamp SE activities will be held at the Stephen C. Hall Building, the new home of the Writing & Communication program. The Hall Building is located at 215 Bobby Dodd Way, right across from the football stadium.

Continue reading »]]>

Georgia Tech skyview

Once you’ve registered for TCSE and written your proposal, you’ll probably start thinking along more practical lines: Where on Georgia Tech’s campus will TCSE be held? Where should I stay? What will I eat? For answers to these and other important questions, look at the “Directions and Settling In” page on this site.

If you need help, please complete this form … or you can always tweet us at @THATCamp_SE.

[contact-form-7 id=”134″ title=”Have a question?”]

Continue reading »]]>

Once you register for your THATCamp and are approved, you will receive a user account on the THATCamp website. You should receive your login information by email. Before the THATCamp, you should log in to the THATCamp site, click on Posts –> Add New, then write and publish your session proposal.

Your session proposal will appear on the front page of this site, and we’ll all be able to read and comment on it beforehand. (If you haven’t worked with WordPress before, see codex.wordpress.org/Writing_Posts for help.) The morning of the event, all THATCamp participants will vote on those proposals (and probably come up with several new ones), and then all together will work out how best to put those sessions into a schedule.

Remember that you will be expected to facilitate the sessions you propose, so that if you propose a hacking session, you should have the germ of a project to work on; if you propose a workshop, you should be prepared to teach it or find a teacher; if you propose a discussion of the Digital Public Library of America, you should be prepared to summarize what that is, begin the discussion, keep the discussion going, and end the discussion.

When do I propose a session?

You can propose a session as early as you like, but most people publish their session proposals to the THATCamp site during the week before the THATCamp begins. It’s a good idea to check the THATCamp site frequently in the week beforehand (perhaps by subscribing to its RSS feed with an RSS reader such as Google Reader) to see and comment on everyone’s session proposals. You can also come up with a last-minute idea and propose it to the THATCamp participants during the scheduling session, which is the first session of the THATCamp.

Why are sessions proposed this way?

Proposing sessions just before a THATCamp and building a schedule during the first session of a THATCamp ensures that sessions are honest and informal, that session topics are current, and that unconference participants will collaborate on a shared task. An unconference, in Tom Scheinfeldt’s words, is fun, productive, and collegial, and at THATCamp, therefore, “[W]e’re not here to listen and be listened to. We’re here to work, to participate actively.[…] We’re here to get stuff done.” Listen further:

Everyone should feel equally free to participate and everyone should let everyone else feel equally free to participate. You are not students and professors, management and staff here at THATCamp. At most conferences, the game we play is one in which I, the speaker, try desperately to prove to you how smart I am, and you, the audience member, tries desperately in the question and answer period to show how stupid I am by comparison. Not here. At THATCamp we’re here to be supportive of one another as we all struggle with the challenges and opportunities of incorporating technology in our work, departments, disciplines, and humanist missions.

See the About page for more information on the philosophy of unconferences.

What do I propose?

There are roughly four things people do in THATCamp sessions: Talk, Make,Teach, and Play. Sometimes one session contains elements of all these, but it’s also a fair taxonomy for THATCamp sessions. In a Talk session proposal, you offer to lead a group discussion on a topic or question of interest to you. In aMake session proposal, you offer to lead a small group in a hands-on collaborative working session with the aim of producing a draft document or piece of software. In a Teach session, you offer to teach a skill, either a “hard” skill or a “soft” skill. In a Play session, anything goes — you suggest literally playing a game, or you suggest some quality group playtime with one or more technologies, or what you will.

Continue reading »]]>

Registration Cat says ‘Register Now!’

Registration has been extended through March 1. We look forward to having you!

For those of you who have already registered, you should have received a notification on your acceptance.  If you have not, Don’t Panic.  We’ve have an email coming to you as well.

We want to invite you to head over to the Propose page and begin to work on your proposal for THATCamp Southeast.  We’re very excited to get the conversation started & can’t wait to see what you come up with!