Workshop on Annotation Studio – an annotation tool for humanities pedagogy

Posted on December 31, 2012 by lipshin

Hi everyone!

My name is Jason Lipshin and I’m a research assistant with Hyperstudio, MIT’s digital humanities research lab. Along with HyperStudio’s Director Kurt Fendt and Lead Developer Jamie Folsom, I’d like to propose a workshop on Annotation Studio, a digital annotation tool we’re currently in the process of developing. Created specifically for classroom use, Annotation Studio enables online, multimedia annotation of source documents by allowing users to collaboratively comment on a text at any scale (from a single word to an entire chapter, using different kinds of media).

Although there are many annotation tools currently in existence, Annotation Studio differs in its emphasis on pedagogy. While other tools often focus on annotation for the purposes of historical scholarship or assume familiarity with technical standards like TEI, Annotation Studio makes sophisticated analytic tools immediately accessible to students, with the aim of fostering skills in close reading and composition. Implemented in many MIT humanities classrooms over the past year, Annotation Studio has been used to support every step of the writing cycle, from students’ first engagement with primary sources to essay writing and revision. By supporting such practices as the filtering and exporting of annotations, as well as the importing of student texts (so that teachers can use the tool for feedback), many instructors have responded that Annotation Studio has allowed their students to engage with texts at a greater level of granularity.

In addition to its current, core functionality, Annotation Studio will also eventually feature innovative data visualization tools which track students’ interaction with a text (these tools are currently in development). Such visualizations could allow teachers to better understand how students read and interpret (for instance, identifying particular “hotspots” of interest within a text), while also allowing teachers to iteratively revise their lesson plans based on this dynamic feedback. Through this workshop, we hope to introduce Annotation Studio to interested parties, but also discuss the larger significance of annotation practices to humanities pedagogy and how such insights might fold back into the development of our tool.

Categories: Collaboration, Digital Literacy, Teaching, Workshops | 3 Comments

Make session: digital bibliographies

Posted on December 31, 2012 by dawn

Anyone interested in helping create an XML schema (customized TEI?) for encoding bibliographies for the web? We are working on a “black box” solution for scholars wanting to publish bibliographies to the web and the first step is to create a schema that can serve as the input and storage base for the data. We are wanting to create a schema that can accommodate all types of bibliographies and their “added value,” including annotated bibliographies, linked data, and descriptive bibliography. We may not leave the session with a complete schema, but may be able to come up with a substantial list of elements that need to be included. No knowledge of XML needed — just an interest in putting bibliographies on the web!

Categories: Linked Data, Publishing, Scholarly Editions, Session: Make | 2 Comments

Digital Literary Studies

Posted on December 31, 2012 by dawn

What are the DH tools and methods used to study literature? How are these being used and to what end? I’d like to talk with others about the forms that digital literary studies have taken and the underlying methodologies. This could take the form of a “Make” session where we draft an inventory of DH tools and methods used in literary studies with notes on application, context, skills, methodology, etc. For example, what can mapping (topic modeling, text mining, digital editions) do to further scholarship and/or teaching? What is needed to complete a project?

Categories: Coding, Mapping, Publishing, Research Methods, Scholarly Editions, Session: Make, Session: Talk, Teaching, Text Mining, Visualization | 1 Comment

Cyberteacher: Digital Writing and Digital Pedagogies

Posted on December 31, 2012 by k.freeman

While I don’t have a particular technology in mind, I’m particularly interested in exploring how digital humanities may impact what we teach as writing, from mutlimodal composition to video and audio and mashup, as well as how we teach it. No longer is writing just alphabetic. So for this panel, I propose discussing specific assignments and techniques but also considering larger theoretical issues, such as what do we owe our in students in terms of these expanding definitions of writing.

Categories: Digital Literacy, Session: Teach, Teaching | 3 Comments

Topic Modeling?

Posted on December 31, 2012 by dawn

Can anyone talk about topic modeling in the humanities? I certainly cannot, but would love to hear others talk about their experiences, tools, methods, and projects involving topic modeling. Anyone?

Categories: General | Comments Off on Topic Modeling?

Workshop: Let’s plot to learn GIS

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Patsy Baudoin

I’d be very interested in learning how to map a corpus of data (text and its metadata) to a map. Using a single example and the fewest tools necessary to begin to plot data onto a single map would be terrific first step. Hands-on, for beginners. Details about all of the available software, existing projects, etc., are available, but the time to learn and practice is far less. Can anyone take on a workshop like this?

Categories: Mapping, Visualization | 4 Comments

Building DH Community, Competency, Capacity

Posted on December 31, 2012 by dawn

Building on bernierr1‘s proposal, Designing DH Projects, I would like to explore ways of building local community around DH to generate ideas, build competencies, and determine what infrastructure is needed to support DH work in research and classrooms. We are working now on building such a community at my institution and, while we’ve had a great start with a surprising amount of enthusiasm, we’re still working out what our next steps should be. For example, how do we keep the momentum going? What do we need to get humanists working together (and learning together)? What are good “beginner” projects and methods to get folks interested and serve as examples? How do we determine what tools/methods should be supported to meet the needs of the majority? What are some solutions to hosting/customization problems? How do we maintain the focus on scholarship in DH projects? Lots of questions — let’s get together and discuss!

Categories: General | Comments Off on Building DH Community, Competency, Capacity

Juxta

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Christopher Ohge

I would like to propose a session on the Juxta collation software. I understand this is a very good tool for textual editing, but I’m wondering if it can be manipulated for comparing, say, different translations of the Aeneid. Ideally, too, I’d like to know the difference between Juxta & the new Juxta commons.

Categories: Publishing, Research Methods, Scholarly Editions, Session Proposals | 2 Comments

Twitter/Technology and Class Discussions

Posted on December 31, 2012 by rybakc

I spend a lot of time in literature classes doing class discussion. Often, we spend the entire 90 minutes of any given class discussing our reading (often a novel or group of poems), and these student-directed discussions move in very unpredictable ways (I don’t script discussions). I’m often disappointed that these discussions disappear into the ether, just like any everyday conversation, and what remains are fragments of memory and a diaspora of notes. I’d like to introduce technology into our class discussions (starting with Twitter) as a way of documenting the class meetings, but also finding other uses for it. Here are some ideas I’ve been kicking around:

1. Assigning students to Tweet class discussions. But what are some different ways to structure this? Can a version of inner/outer circle work? How many students should be doing this? A small group or anyone who has the desire? How do you archive and are there unforeseen problems with archiving? I’ve been running this through my head quite a bit, and I see a lot of initial structuring that has to be done.

2. If there is a successful and consistent way to accomplish the above, how might technology outside of Twitter give further life to that record? Storify is one obvious option, but are there other ways our class discussions, via technology, might become usable/interpretable texts of their own? Might they, instead of being relegated to the past, be reintroduced into the class in interesting, even creative ways? (For example, how might those discussions be used to “perform” the issues of our reading, rather than document them? Could something like a Timeline be incorporated?)

3. What might some advanced end point be? Is it possible to imagine a visualization that in some way documented an entire semester’s worth of discussion, made it a text of its own, much in the way people are visualizing social network interaction?

One final note: I’ve read all the proposals posted thus far and am interested in all of them. If this is too basic of a proposal, trust me, I’m ready to participate in other things!

Categories: Session Proposals, Session: Make, Session: Talk, Social Media, Visualization | Comments Off on Twitter/Technology and Class Discussions

Multi-text Projects

Posted on December 31, 2012 by bernierr1

I have an idea for a research project that brings together visual images – paintings and magazine and book covers – the written (archive) correspondence between collectors, galleries, and museums that tie them together, and the scholarship (and popular writing) that has been done on both.  It has to do with pulp magazines and novels of the early 20th century.  I’m thinking of turning this into a course where students (undergraduate) help with original research and writing, and ultimately publication – traditional book form or not – of all this.  I need help getting started – how to shape this into an ongoing project.

Categories: Collaboration, Museums, Project Management, Session: Make | 1 Comment