Journal #1 Julia

I am excited and anxious for this process.

It was really nice to see all the familiar faces from DH1. The project I put forward for DH1 is something I will be pursing on an individual level. I think using DH in a preformative space to help me construct my artwork will push my work in ways that I have yet to know and understand. But this work is dependent on travel and is not appropriate for a group project it is to self serving. I will have no idea what information I have until after I take my trip and sift through my collections.

I am not one to get anxious in class, I love everything about school, work shopping, talking, and getting through ideas. But I will admit that I am anxious to know how this DH class project will move forward. My favorite teachers, teachers I base my own teaching ideals on, have always had  skills components to class and a theoretical components to class. I appreciate projects that have something to show at the end. I appreciate final projects that have a bit of showmanship and theater. Even if a project does not function in exactly the way it set out I like projects that have finished edges.

I like to have a plan an idea of the knowns and unknowns and I am anxious to know what I will be working on (besides my own side projects).

my goals for this class are to expand my technical DH skillset. I hope to learn enough about this workshoping teaching process to find ways to implement this kind of project based learning in my library profession. Digital Humanities  librarian is a job that has hit the librarian list serve, I have an idea about how I would brand my skillset for a position like this and there are some skills that I want to shore up before I claim this job title. This class will be  chance to showcase examples of my DH deliverable.

@yougenee skill set posting

I would like to describe my basic characteristics and strong point. Also couple of weak points…
-social science studies background
– organized/ neat
-analytic- good at summarizing long paragraphs.
-good at mediating opposing ideas
-liberal & open-minded/ flexible
-punctual in time, time management
-arranging time
-negotiation, communication
-I think I am a trainable person. I easily get used to a novel environment.
I have experience in designing google sites for my undergraduate course works.

I am thinking of doing project manager.
I want to avoid the designer because I have lack of knowledge of coding/ computer languages.
Outreach collaborator… maybe I will think about it.

To be honest, I am not still familiar with coding. I am afraid of making huge mistakes once I have to serve the role related to the coding.

I look forward to hearing interesting ideas for next class.

Thanks.

Lab Journal 1

Earlier in class I felt unsure about whether or not to promote my project proposal: The Tokyo Destruction Diary. To recap, my idea was to create an interactive map of Tokyo where certain points of interest were highlighted and when a user clicked on them they gave data and historical context to an actual attack or disaster that happened there (earthquakes, fire-bombings, terrorist attacks, etc). Other points would give information about popular media (comics, movies, games) that have stories tied to the destruction of Tokyo. The two categories of fictional and actual destruction would cross reference each other to give the viewer an encapsulation of Japanese media and history, and how societal fears can be expressed through popular media.

 

I felt genuine conflict about whether or not my project idea was worth pushing, whether it was a battle worth fighting. The final grade on my proposal for my project made me realize some of my shortcomings. Prof. Gold considered TDD a good general project idea, but found it lacking in a humanities focus and I was at a loss for figuring out the nitty-gritty about how to execute the project beyond just using a map based program like Neatline.

 

I have the basic idea (explore Japanese art/culture through events in history and vice versa). I have the knowledge and passion for the subject. But ultimately, I lack the technical know-how to fully realize my idea, and I would find myself relying on other people almost completely to realize certain aspects of it. Granted, part of this exercise is learning how to rely on others, but I feel like it would be irresponsible to rally the class to construct a building I didn’t have blueprints for, so to speak. Also, the information about fictional destruction would be tricky to gather in mass quantities or from databases. It would rely more on an individual knowledge of the subject matter (mostly from me). I feel like the project would need a serious re-evaluation before it could be considered good enough to pitch.

 

@jojokarlin’s Memory Trip pre-pitch

I am massively intimidated by the awesome pitches people are composing so concisely! I feel like Little Red in Into the Woods— scared, well ExcITED AND scared. I offer a rather hasty outline of what my pitch might be on Tuesday…

Memory is tricky stuff. In these digital times, it is a tradable commodity. How many gigs is your phone?

I want to create a memory map of my grandmother’s memory (loosely based on the map of a road trip) and in the process model a platform that others could use to assemble their own memory map with elderly relations who are not particularly digitally inclined. (My grandmother buys disposable wind up cameras).

1. Memory Map—  I am interested in modeling, in a map of sorts, my soon to be 97-year-old grandmother’s remarkable (largely pre-digital) memory. The Dodge ad from the Super Bowl somewhat made my argument for tying my grandmother’s memories to a road trip. She’s been driving a long time and her life almost spans the history of the automobile industry in America. Not only is the road trip a tradition I have with her, time in the car tends to be fairly meditative. The metaphor is useful — roads more and less traveled in life take us down paths we maybe remember– and the project becomes more memory tourism than memorial monument. (I don’t want to build a museum or a family archive — it’s not about ossifying the “true” facts of my grandmother’s life. I want the map to be an interactive spatialization of the way memory from all her years live in her today.

2. Platform for others to use– I have been thinking it should be done in Neatline with some fancy plugins. I would love to make something that doesn’t require elaborate tools for data collection (I’ve done initial interviews and video with my iphone). Ideally, once built, the memory map could be available to people wanting a way to digitally document the way older generations go about remembering.

IMG_1375

I offer a photo of my grandmother at the Getty Museum — I bit their social media bait and had her pose and tweeted it. Naturally @theGettymuseum responded:

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I would like to help my grandmother continue to win the internet.

 

 

 

Lab Journal #1 – James Mason

The first day of class was much more exciting than I thought it would be. Sort of like The Hunger Games, but with more desks…. I’ve never actually seen/read The Hunger Games–did they have desks? Well then, I guess it was more like the Tri-Wizard tournament, they TOTALLY had desks:

“Each competing school is allowed one Champion to represent them during the Tournament. Students wishing to participate write their names and the school they attend on a piece of parchment, and enter it into the Goblet of Fire. The Goblet is an impartial judge, and selects what it considers to be the best student from each school. At the appointed time, the Goblet ejects the names, making each selected student the official Champion for their school. Each selected Champion is then bound by a magical contract to see the Tournament through to the end.” –Thanks Harry Potter Wiki.

Sure, there are some differences, but let’s roll with it. We write our name on the parchment and cast it into the flames… those flames being the will of our peers. This isn’t exactly how I thought the process would go; I figured we’d come in on day one and the projects would already be selected for us by the teachers… less dirty, but less fun as well.

As for my project, I am still on the fence about pitching it, and it being so close to the eleventh hour means that I might shelve it for the time being. A few others have expressed interest in seeing it come to fruition, and I think that it would also be a good “refuge” project for those who are afraid of serious coding and development. Not only that, but as many skillset posts have suggested, we have a group very strong in outreach. Those truly looking for a challenge in that regard might have found one…. if I were pitching it.

Let’s suppose for a moment I were to pitch it. Not only is the project itself a work of DH, but it would create new opportunities to develop additional DH projects. Every podcast, curated via CUNYCast or not, is an object of Digital Humanities, specifically they are as Matthew Kirschenbaum puts it, born-digital objects. While this seems a mundane classification, that they are born digital allows them to be manipulated in ways that true-material artifacts cannot be. That said, I notice the aim of many projects proposed seems to be taking these true-material artifacts and digitizing them, such they might be as malleable as born-digital objects already are. In that regard, working with born-digital media skips several steps, and allows us to instead focus on different ways of making these artifacts even more useful and more malleable. I’m not the only one who thinks this, as I’ve already heard several great ideas from other students, such as Min’s desire for interactivity via podcasting and Julia’s ideas of creating a way to automatically tack on intro and outros without editing the audio feed. Already two awesome ideas in the FIRST WEEK…

…you know, if I were pitching it.

 

 

skillset — Kelly

With my professional position ingrained in technology, my primary skill set involves digital knowledge organization, in addition to remote/online collaboration and project management.

With that said, I’m interested in branching out to expand on my design and web development skills.

I have experience in designing for print and the web — illustration (by hand, Adobe Illustrator), color theory, CSS/XHTML, layout design (InDesign) — both for myself (fine art, and customizing websites and blogs) and professionally (for library and society websites). I would like to increase my coding abilities; right now I get by with what I know, and am able to use Internet forums to fill in any gaps.

syllabi DHify (pre-pitch)

In preparation for Wednesday’s class, here’s my pre-pitch for Syllabi DHify:

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A syllabus should be a living document that evolves as the semester progresses. However, in practice a syllabus becomes quickly outdated — from the moment a single student scrawls marginalia onto a handout, indicating that something was incomplete, something had changed.

At the most basic level, Syllabi DHify will be a platform for both students and professors to quickly access and update course syllabi, removing the need for erroneous print-outs or Word documents shared via e-mail.

For teaching professionals Syllabi DHify will go a step further by providing a space for active pedagogical collaboration. Users at this level will have the opporutnity to share existing syllabi, collaborate with peers, and re-use shared content. Syllabi DHify will facilitate the incorporation of new pedagogical methods across disciplines. The platform itself will be an exercise in Digital Humanities methods and practices, drawing on the open sharing principles behind Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and Open Access (OA). As such, it will provide provide teaching professionals not familiar with Digital Humanities a means to incorporate its technological, collaborative, and systematic practices into existing student course work.

Syllabi DHify aims to improve upon the way in which information is shared, allowing for a more fluid, collaborative learning experience.

If you’re interested in sharing the work of DH to the larger knowledge community — come join me.
If you’re ready to see higher education move forward — come join me.
We can take our methods from DH and share it. With anyone.

#Skillset – Min

Outreach Coordinator, Project Manager: Simply not my forte.. My English needs improvement..

Developer: Not horrible but very limited.. So I’d say.. not my forte..

Designer/UX Designer: I think this is most likely going to be the part that I’ll participate in. As you may know by now, I went to an art school. My major was fashion design but I’ve always been interested in communication design as well. I have experiences in logo design, web design, branding and so on (I’ve done the entire communication design for my own brands and for some other people’s brands.). I know how to use Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. I have numerous friends who are actually in communication design industry and programing who could potentially help our projects a lot (I also have a friend who’s amazing at 3D modeling and rendering although I’m unsure how we can apply that to our projects.). I’m confident when it comes to aesthetic. But I am aware of the difference between design and UX design. Therefore, I’m also going to attend as many workshops about UX design as possible this semester to focus on it. The attachment is a mockup design from Tessa and my final project last semester.MICROFASHION

Individual Lab Journal #1

James’ interactive podcasting sounds amazing to me (although I’m not sure this project is to be opened to the public). As I mentioned in class, I always try to find video lectures and podcasts to supplement my scholarly insufficiency. I have indeed learned a lot via those media. Yet, there has been an insatiable element of them – engaging. I personally think questioning and participating in discourses are the most imperative parts of pedagogy. For that reason, I’ve been looking for some online methods to engage in some dialectic activities with other people, but it hasn’t been easy. I bet there are some online communities and platforms where people can do so like Lynda (it seems like you can at least ask a question there.). But another problem to a lot of people like me is “finding” them. They are not well exposed or advertised among non-academic people. Now that I’m in an academic school, I’m always surrounded by intellectuals and informative sources. But before I came here, as a fashion designer, finding educational sources was really tough other than books. When I tried to find them online, I couldn’t help being skeptical about “credibility of the information and knowledge” I found there since I was simply unfamiliar with those. Anyhow, the bottom line is.. Not only developing this project well but also efficiently exposing it to the general public ought to be one of our primary concerns.. I think.. I’m very interested in publicizing fashion design/making education as well as providing core materials such as garment patterns (Patterns are some sort of 2-D paper blueprints of garments to be cut with cloths before sewing. They are one of the most important parts of making clothes.) and fashion history with a preponderant amount of visual data. If James’ project becomes true, it’ll be tremendously convenient for me to start this project!

Another thing crossed my mind as I was listening to Juliana’s project was rearranging and reorganizing existing data must be another mission of DHers.. I think.. For example, NYPL’s online picture collection website that I posted last semester on our blog is a great example. They have a fabulous and prolific collection of images which is really hard to find just by googling – their costume collection is AMAZING! The only problem is its interface is not so convenient or user-friendly. Also, there are no further explanations or descriptions about the images other than the titles of the images. Again in terms of fashion pedagogy, providing well-organized, informative and user-friendly visual data/sources are one of the most significant elements.. I think.. Reinforcing (with further information) and redesigning (as a user-friendly interface) NYPL’s online picture collection website would be really helpful not only to design/art students but also to historians and other intellectuals.. Just a thought..