Talk: Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning and Research

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Rachel Thompson

In some realms of the academy and administration, we are having more and more discussions about technology/content accessibility and universal design. We are seeing tremendous growth in the use of instructional technology, but little to no consideration for giving access to everyone. For instance, we upload videos all the time with no captions, which automatically makes the content inaccessible for a growing number of users. Even complicated language use (Yeah, I’m guilty of it.) makes our work less available to the world. Many of us are advocating inclusive, universal design for learning and research. I would like for us to talk about what this means, what is practical, and how to move forward to help more tools and content be accessible from the outset through universal design.

One of my UDL/A11y idols: Howard Kramer – UDL/A11y from 2013 AHEAD Conference

UPDATE: Here’s a link to our conversation about accessibility

Categories: Collaboration, Session Proposals, Session: Talk, Teaching | Leave a comment

Metadata ownership, transparency, and privacy

Posted on August 7, 2013 by jtfburgess

As recent massive leaks of classified data by NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed, the U.S. government is taking advantage of previous court rulings that metadata shared with a third party carries no reasonable expectation of privacy to conduct upstream taps of telephone and web traffic metadata. With computer storage costs plummeting and processing speeds continue to curve upward, it has become feasible to capture massive amounts of metadata and to search it for patterns useful in anticipating terror attacks, locating enemies of the state overseas, and prosecuting computer network related crime. This process only works well if everyone’s metadata is available and if those being investigated are unaware of the metadata they are producing. This creates a legal system and by extension a society with asymmetric transparency. Is this desirable? Digital humanities is an emerging discipline that is heavily invested in the creation and use of metadata. More than that, digital humanists just grok metadata. That makes us qualified to participate in the conversation about metadata privacy. This talk would be an opportunity to consider what role digital humanities scholars could or should play in the transparency policy debates.

Categories: Metadata, Session Proposals, Session: Talk | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Talk Session: A Discussion on Tools to Help Flip a Class

Posted on August 6, 2013 by Jeffrey Melton

I have been playing around with incremental changes to my courses to move toward a flipped design. It is a process I plan to continue. I would like to propose a session that encourages discussion on activities, assignments, etc. that may prove useful in a flipped course environment and how specific technologies may enhance the process.

A discussion should consider both the practical and aesthetic challenges to flipping courses. My experiences thus far are limited to working within a Blackboard platform, but the session should consider more options.

Categories: Session Proposals, Session: Talk | Leave a comment

Talk & Teach: My sometimes friend the database

Posted on August 6, 2013 by Holland Hopson

Databases are my friends. Every application that I use and care about has a database built into it somewhere: digital audio workstation, video editor, address book, calendar, to-do list (don’t forget online shopping…). Important research is predicated on the analysis of databases. Increasingly, many of my favorite works of art are driven by databases. I’m inspired by civic hacking projects made possible by the open data movement.

So why is it such a pain to create and work with databases? How come we still reach for a spreadsheet when we know darn well a database would be better? Would the world be a better place if everyone databased? Has the NSA made database a dirty word? What tools do we need to make databasing more like sledding?

Come share your love/hate experiences with databases. Teach us about your favorite tools for making life with databases more fulfilling. Let’s imagine together what will replace databases as we know them.

Categories: Archives, Coding, Data Mining, Digital Literacy, Libraries, Linked Data, Mapping, Metadata, Open Access, Session Proposals, Session: Talk, Session: Teach, Text Mining, Visualization | Leave a comment

Fight Club

Posted on August 5, 2013 by Melissa Fortson Green
pair of red, Everlast boxing gloves

“Boxing Gloves,” flickr/KWDesigns

“We tend to use technology to support, rather than transform, traditional modes of teaching and learning.”

“Publication in open access, electronic-only journals and publication in traditional print journals should not be valued equally for tenure and promotion.”

“Digital media are integral to scholarly work.”

“It is immoral to subvert the Digital Rights Management technologies companies use to protect their media from illegal use.”

“Digital humanities is a field that’s difficult to enter without significant support and collaboration.”

Wanna fight about it?

In this session, we’ll debate developments in humanities, technology, education, and digital culture. We’ll examine where we stand on a given issue or statement, vocalize our opinions and listen to others speak about theirs, and challenge ourselves to argue for positions or perspectives we do not necessarily agree with.

Is there a hot topic you’d like to debate or discuss with your fellow THATCampers? Please comment below.

Categories: Session Proposals, Session: Talk | Tags: | 3 Comments

Creating an Omeka site with Amazon Web Services

Posted on August 3, 2013 by g.cory.duclos

Update: To make the session run smoother, some lines of code we’ll need are in this Google document so people can just cut and paste

Perhaps in conjunction with the Omeka workshop or as a session for those who want to go further with Omeka, I can teach a small group how to create your own instance of Omeka running on Amazon Web Services. The same basic principles apply to starting a WordPress site. AWS provides the first year of web hosting free, making it an ideal environment for those who want to experiment with creating their own site free of charge. This will allow you to take full advantage of all the available plugins for Omeka, such as Neatline.

Anyone who wishes to participate should have their personal laptop. If you have a Mac, you won’t need to install any additional software. A windows machine requires installing Git so that you can access the server via bash (I can explain what this means later).

I have previously written a blog post about the process, so you can see what it would entail. If you’d like to learn, it may be best to do the basic sign-up process with AWS before coming, which requires providing a credit card number and going through a phone number verification process. I’m also working on putting together some screencast videos of the process, and I’ll provide those for anyone who can’t participate.

Categories: Session Proposals | 4 Comments

Workshop: Digital Project Management

Posted on August 2, 2013 by Franky Abbott

Project management is one of the most central skills to have on any digital project team  yet the role of project manager is one for which many of us receive little or no training. Many projects get derailed because they lack a team member whose job it is to take charge of planning, scheduling, and tracking the work required for a project to be successful (as well as getting his/her hands dirty when things fall apart). In this workshop, I will present some important areas of project management to consider and share some of my own success and failures:

  • project goals and contribution
  • environmental scans
  • building a team
  • project planning
  • roles and responsibilities
  • workflow and communication
  • gathering institutional support
  • funding
  • credit and attribution
  • outreach
  • sustainability

I’ll also share some resources from other experienced digital project managers for further reading. Come join me if you are working on a digital project or thinking about starting one in the future!

UPDATE: Here are my slides and a list of resources for further reading.

Categories: Project Management, Workshops | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Workshop: Digital Collections and Exhibits with Omeka

Posted on August 2, 2013 by g.cory.duclos

Omeka.net is a web-publishing platform that allows anyone with an account to create or collaborate on a website to display collections and build digital exhibitions (“About,” Omeka.net).

In this workshop for THATCampers with no previous experience with Omeka, we will:

  • talk about use cases for Omeka
  • look at some Omeka projects
  • describe the difference between omeka.net site and running your own instance of Omeka
  • talk about plug-ins
  • add items to an archive
  • assign metadata

If there is interest, following this workshop will be a session dedicated to running your own instance of Omeka through Amazon Web Services (which is free for a year). If you are interested in this, please see my session proposal which has information about what you will need to participate.

If you are interested in creating an Omeka.net site, please sign up for and activate a Basic (free) Omeka.net account before you arrive. You might also bring a laptop with some practice files to upload to your new Omeka.net site!

Categories: Archives, Libraries, Museums, Workshops | Leave a comment

TEACH: Tips and Tricks for Using the Cloud to Make Your Classroom More Interactive

Posted on August 2, 2013 by sara maurice whitver

As an instruction librarian, I have been doing a lot of experiments to try to make my classroom more interactive. Clickers and Poll Everywhere haven’t worked for me. My classes are usually very discussion-based, but in the discussion I felt my students were THINKING but not DOING, and I needed a solution!

Recently, I’ve been using a combination of google drive and bit.ly to facilitate workshop-style in-class interactivity. It has worked great, and I would love to show you how I do it!

Categories: Session Proposals, Session: Teach, Teaching | Tags: | Leave a comment

Workshop: Issues in Intellectual Property

Posted on August 2, 2013 by Claire Lewis Evans

This workshop examines the basic contours of copyright law as it applies in scholarly communication. What is intellectual property, what is the public domain, and how does fair use apply? What should be in a request when permission is needed, and what is worth negotiating for? Finally, what rights do scholars have as creators of intellectual property and how can those rights be exercised?

Categories: Copyright, General, Open Access, Workshops | Leave a comment