Reminder

Posted on March 25, 2012 by jmcclurken

Remember that Tuesday we’ll be discussing “Text Mining, N-Grams and Searching in History”.  Come ready to talk about these ideas.

Reading/Viewing: Peter Norvig talk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU8DcBF-qo4 – Skim); Carr, Is Google Making Us Stupid? (2008); Dan Cohen, “From Babel to Knowledge” (http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march06/cohen/03cohen.html); William Turkel, “Searching for History,” Digital History Hacks (12 Oct 2006). “Applying Quantitative Analysis to Classic Lit,” Wired, Dec. 2009; Cohen, Google Books, Ngrams and Culturomics; Rob Nelson, Mining the Dispatch.

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The Decade Has Been Chosen

Posted on March 22, 2012 by jmcclurken

We will be recreating the 1950s

– What class/discipline should we re-create?

– What roles should people have?

– What sources will we use?

– How will we work in non-academic material?

– Material aspects (clothes? books?)

Blog your suggestions this weekend.

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Visiting Parson Weems’s House

Posted on March 18, 2012 by Jeffrey McClurken
A bit of a break from my normal discussions about teaching and technology:

Today, my family and I had the chance to visit a house once owned by Parson (Mason Locke) Weems, famed for writing the first biography of George Washington (and the man responsible for introducing that silly story about Washington chopping down the cherry tree as a child).  The house is for sale at auction next month and today was an open house.  My family doesn't have much chance of buying it (though I was assured that it could well sell for "under a million"), but we enjoyed touring the house and the 25 acre grounds of Bel Air (especially since after the sale, it's likely to be inaccessible again as a private residence).

Originally built in the 1740s, it was renovated in the late 19th Century and again in the mid- and late 20th Century.  It is oddly accessed by driving through a very modern neighborhood (a contrast which I tried to capture in the last group of pictures in the Flickr slideshow at the bottom of the page).  There is a great deal of land that comes with the house, but the house itself is quite close to the neighborhood and a nearby modern church building.  Still, the house is a wonderful blend of the modern and the colonial, from the formal sitting rooms on the main floor (see image below) to the wireless router and laser printer in the office, from the servant staircase that leads to a door on the second floor living room and the full hearth in the same room as the modernized kitchen appliances.  The grounds would be a wonderful place for a garden party, although they could use a little work.  There is also a small family graveyard, where Weems is apparently (though not definitively) buried.

All in all, it was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon with my family.  Now we just have to start a Kickstarter fundraiser to be able to buy the house ourselves.


Formal Sitting Room on Main Floor (captured using Photosynth)



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Vote now on the UMW decade sites

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Jeffrey McClurken
The research sites on the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s that my US Women's History students have created as part of our project to re-create the Mary Washington college classroom experience are now up on the course site.

Please check the sites out, and vote for the site that you think provides the best set of resources for our class to actually re-create the classroom experience.

Thanks!


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Further instructions on group sites

Posted on February 27, 2012 by jmcclurken

1) Building on the research done by each of the group members, each group will construct a site for their decade in UMWBlogs.  The design, format, and presentation of these sites will be determined by the group, with a broad audience in mind.  These sites are due by 11:59 PM on Monday, March 12 Noon on Friday, March 16.

2) Sites are completed by one (or more) members of the group creating a blog post introducing the site and linking to it.  Sites are “turned in” by emailing me with the links to  the group site and the blog post introducing it.

3) Starting Tuesday after class, based on these sites, we will vote on the best decade for us to recreate as a class using this page….  [In addition to the class votes, I will invite DTLT and the Alumni Association Board of Directors to vote, as well as those people who have been following the posts online.]

 

 

 

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Revised Group Contracts

Posted on February 15, 2012 by jmcclurken

Revised contracts are now due Friday at noon.  Create a new Google Doc and share it with me.  [And let me know that your group is ready for me to look at it.]

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Updated info about week 4

Posted on February 7, 2012 by jmcclurken

All,

Here are the plans for this week, as I also talked about in class:

Before Class Time on Thursday

  • Post (to your blog) a few observations (a paragraph) about one or two of the readings this week.

Thursday during class

  • Tim from DTLT will walk the class through some of the possible approaches to creating a project site for your decade, using UMWBlogs/WordPress
  • You will meet with your group and begin/continue to plan for the group project sites which are due right after Spring Break.  Take good notes.

Thursday (after class)

  • Post a brief summary of what your group decided (each of you should post your own summary, then compare notes).

By Tuesday (2/14) at class time

  • Have posted your 3rd Research Log Post, discussing your research progress and your findings related to the classroom experiences for your decade.
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What do we call that "digital" thing that we want to teach?

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Jeffrey McClurken
I've been wrestling with the notion of an interdisciplinary academic program for undergraduates that engages students in thoughtful consumption of digital media, in production of scholarly and creative work in various forms of digital media, and in exploration and analysis of the implications of such media.  In trying to clarify my thoughts before I go talk to people about this idea at my school and elsewhere, I asked for help on Twitter.  The following is the conversation that emerged.  I'm still analyzing it--I'm clearly still stuck, for example, in my quest to find a term that captures much of what I like about "Digital Humanities", while including the social sciences and sciences as well--but I thought it might be useful to have the whole thing in one place for me and for anyone else who is interested.  I'd welcome any other comments or contributions to the discussion.

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A Report from EduCon 2.4

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Jeffrey W. McClurken

EduCon 2012 Opening Panel

As I wrote in a post two years ago, K-12 education matters to those of us in higher education for many reasons, but especially because our missions are at core the same, and because we are reliant on K-12 teachers sending us students prepared for our classes.  This past weekend I attended EduCon 2.4, the fifth iteration of this conference that is put on by the students, parents, and teachers of the Science Leadership Academy (SLA), a magnet high school in Philadelphia that is partnered with the Franklin Institute.

EduCon’s guiding “axioms” and the approach they represent explain why as a teacher of undergraduates I find this K-12 education conference so useful:

  • Our schools must be inquiry-driven, thoughtful and empowering for all members
  • Our schools must be about co-creating — together with our students — the 21st Century Citizen
  • Technology must serve pedagogy, …

Read More

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Posting and comments

Posted on January 20, 2012 by jmcclurken

For those who have been asking about my expectations for posting and comments:

  • Post at least once a week.  Sometimes there are specific prompts on the syllabus for topics, but most weeks you should write about your projects and how they’re going.  Problems and successes, areas of interest, serendipitous discoveries all are fair game.  Individually these blogs posts are a project/research log of your semester.  Collectively, the class’s blog posts contribute to a community of experimentation and creativity and shared process.
  • Comment on at least two of your classmates’ blogs each week.  Part of being a community of practice is offering support, advice, and even constructive critiques.

Feel free to post and comment more often and more broadly.

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