What are good methods/platforms/approaches to telling stories–whether they are historical, narrative, fictional, autobiographical–in digital forms? What are characteristics of digital stories and how do they differ from other types of non-digital stories? What effective digital storytelling assignments have you encountered?

I teach at a SLAC (a small liberal arts college) with limited resources for strategic curricular development. Designing an introductory digital humanities course on one’s own is hard enough. Supporting undergraduate projects and research related to DH is next to impossible without experienced staff and appropriate space. I would like to discuss what it would take to build a collaboratory among SLACs and similar institutions to support teaching and research for undergraduates. Adeline Koh proposed this a year ago. One way to start might be to set up a Commons In a Box for SLAC DH where contributors could highlight their projects, document how to do things, and answer each other’s questions.

One specific project I would be interested in developing through the collaboratory is an inter-institutional collection of digitized student newspapers. Each college and university has archives of its student newspaper, and these archives are relatively inexpensive to digitize. An online edition of the student newspaper would be a valuable resource for many constituencies. Students can study the newspaper as a primary source for the history of their school, and they can learn about creating digital resources through text encoding and web design. Alumni would love to be able to reread the issues that were published when they were students. An online student newspaper could help build the affinity of students for their institution (thus improving retention) and reaffirm the alumni’s relationship with the institution (potentially increasing gifts). Institutions could share data from their digitized newspapers and build a resource for they study of undergraduate life in the US during the 20th century.

I know very little about organizing projects such as the one described above, so I would welcome the advice of anyone who has ideas about how something like this could be done.

What sorts of pedagogical experimentation can the format of a hybrid (part online/part face-to-face) course facilitate? What are some limitations or tricky spots?

What kinds of experiences have people had teaching hybrid courses, and would you have advice for someone embarking on such a project? What questions do people have about designing and teaching hybrid courses?

I love maps. Maps are fabulous. Judging by the crown in the geo-spatial mapping workshop today, many of us remain fascinated by maps and the potential in using geo-spatial mapping in our teaching of the humanities. But anytime we design activities or assignments for a course, the pedagogy drives the use of the tools, not the other way around.

I envision this session as an informal follow-up to the bootcamp workshop on Tuesday (but open to all!) in which we share examples, questions and possible uses of digital maps and mapping tools to get a sense not just of the ‘how’ but of the ‘why’ of their uses. I’d like us to put together a shared a GoogleDoc or Notepad of resources, models, questions, and ideas.

Dear THATCampers,

We’re looking forward to seeing you this morning!

or how I learned to love the devices & stop fighting tech

I want to propose a session on what Rebecca Schuman most recently brought up in an article for Slate called “In Defense of Laptops in the Classroom.”

We need get over the digital panic in the classroom & learn how to engage students with devices. 

I envision a crowdsourced, teaching-tips focused session that would leave participants with a lengthy list to use, and take back to their campuses, in quelling the digital panic.