I’m interested in developing a mobile application for field research. My goal is to use mobile phone’s functionality to create a versatile data collection tool. The app I envision allows the user to collect and organize information. I believe the app’s design can be structured in a way to allow users to collect, correlate, and upload data to a repository with both predefined and manually designated content tags. Growing from previous experience using technology in the classroom, MAFHR is intended to be an app for student researcher. I believe MAFHR can function as a powerful teaching tool by guiding student users with research goals, prompting permissions linked to visual or audio data, and provide geographic information for all data collected. MAFHR should allow users to upload information to a centralize location and it should allow users to interact with data already in the research database.
Archive for the ‘Teaching’ Category
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14 Feb
Category
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Programming the Digital Humanities
Edit 2/16: Here are the PPTX slides from our panel: Programming the Humanities. Thanks for everyone who joined and participated.
In a prior book I co-authored with JD Applen (The Rhetorical Nature of XML — see Will Dorner’s review here for a good overview), we looked at the composition and structure of the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and explored the rhetorical implications of a metadata language that allows individuals to author their own tags, as well as the constraints and politics imposed by the necessity of tools and languages (DTDs, Schema, XSL, XSD, Doctbook, DITA, etc.) for ensuring validity and interoperability between systems. As part of this work, we ventured into the territory of programming when we started thinking about the implications of the software parser in this context. For example, what happens to the data after it is described and written down is (to me, at least) interesting enough to prompt one to consider the rhetorical implications of the software that is designed to act upon particular tags when it encounters them. So, for the last few chapters of the book, we spent some time introducing readers to basic programming techniques and then discussed how implementing such techniques would allow them to build their own XML parsers for a variety of rhetorical purposes.
This is a long-winded and probably inefficient way to introduce the topic I’m currently most interested in, which is the nature of (computer) programming in the humanities. My current book project involves partly theoretical work (along the lines of Stephen Ramsay and inspired in part by this post from Matthew Kirschenbaum) examining the role of computer algorithms and programming in the humanities and how these things do and don’t fit together. This is coupled with an introduction to computer programming for humanities practitioners. Rather than spending the entire book focused on one language, I instead introduce several different languages that are used by different audiences. These include Scratch (a programming environment designed to teach children how to program that emerged from Mitch Resnick and the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT), Processing (a programming language environment designed for visual artists), PHP, Python, and Ruby.
In the spirit of the unconference, I have several different proposals for things I could talk about that may or may not be of interest for the THATCamp 2013 audience. What I am most interested in is hearing from digital humanists about their own experiences working with code and tools in order to better understand the audiences who may find such a book useful. Potential things I would be interested in discussing / yakking about:
- What are the particular needs of digital humanists working in different fields (in terms of tools and software)?
- Where do extant tools break down and how would you extend (or how have you extended) existing tools to better allow you to pursue your research?
- Do you know how to program? If so, what was your pathway to learning this skill?
- If you code, what were some of the most valuable tips and lessons you learned while acquiring this skill?
- What are some of the non-programming skills digital humanities practitioners should be aware of?
- Where do you stand on (or what do you think of) the “users vs. builders” debate? See Mark Kamrath and Patricia Carlton’s proposed session.
In terms of a less interactive format, I could also discuss the following:
- My proposed chapter outline and organization, and what reviewers had to say about it so far
- An overview of some of the programming languages I mention above
- My own experience learning to code as a humanities major and teaching coding to other humanities majors
- The Texts and Technology PhD program at UCF and how I believe programming relates to this doctoral program
Note: I am only able to attend on Saturday morning and early afternoon, so if any of this is of interest, hopefully we can figure out a good time. I’d also be happy to sponsor a “hacking” tutorial session using one of the languages above if there is any interest in that sort of thing.
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Robinson Crusoe in the Public Sphere
Robinson Crusoe and the Robinsonades are a major part of digital humanities scholarship, particularly in the fields of English, Education, History, Religion, and the Fine Arts. Robinson Crusoe was published in 1719 by Daniel Defoe and has remained a popular adventure and colonialist text to this day. The University of Florida’s Digital Collections (Baldwin Library) has a subset collection on Robinson Crusoe – ufdc.ufl.edu/defoe – that allows scholars to compare the numerous editions of the text since its first printing.
I would like to have a discussion about how Robinson Crusoe is used by digital scholars. In particular, I would like the discussion to emphasize how Robinson Crusoe is used in the public sphere and the classroom to create new interpretations of digital information and metadata.
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Disruptive Pedagogy Meets Procedural Rhetoric
Okay, the title must look like a horrible Hollywood-style “high concept” description of … well, something. Something awful, probably. Or something fun.
I hope the latter. Can we play with the core ideas of our disciplines in a way that is unavoidable, that forces students (or others we engage) to think about those core ideas? There are two concepts dancing around the edge of Digital Humanities that might help. On the one hand are the ideas Mills Kelly presents in his talk about disruptive pedagogy (see the notes taken at his session at THATCamp CHNM last year), where he argues that it is very useful to disrupt normal classroom discourse in ways that deliberately play with the sacred underpinnings of a discipline/field. Kelly has a number of interesting applications, not least of which is his historical hoax class that has become famous in the past few years (and gotten him a lifetime ban from Wikipedia).
The other useful concept I grab is the argument of Ian Bogost about the procedural rhetoric of games, the argument that a computer algorithm pushes players to encounter a certain form of reality that can persuade. This has become famous in game studies — see for example Gail Carmichael’s application of procedural rhetoric to analyzing the game Agricola. But it might help us play with the idea of procedural rhetoric more broadly, either as games used in the classroom to disrupt discourse or as the broader rhetorical consequences of classroom structure.
In any case, the session would have less yakking than this entry.
