Version 7.0ish. Digital Humanities. Running. Linux.

I have a new post up at Blogging Woolf. Again, I am writing about Mrs. Dalloway; this time, I am focused on looking at how Woolf reveals Clarissa’s day chronologically. I use an Anna Benjamin article to break down the day.

I will be teaching Mrs. Dalloway this semester, so expect a lot more from me over at Blogging Woolf as the semester goes on.

I have a book review in the College English Association’s new journal issue. I review the new anthology Teaching Literature and Language Online. Big thanks go to my editor Janine Utell for putting up with my delays during the summer.

I also strongly suggest checking out the other reviewer, Lee Skallerup’s, work both in the journal and for Inside Higher Ed.

Long time readers will remember Signifying Nothing, my one time webzine and final resting place for the print fanzines I did during the nineties. On and off over the past year, I have been updating it with new podcasts and reviews. In 2012, I am going to try and keep this running each week. Stay tuned.

I am quite disappointed with the Kindle Fire I recently purchased. I have shopped for a tablet for about a year, but haven’t been impressed by what I saw on the market. The $200 price tag intrigued me, so I picked one up during the preorder period. The Kindle Fire is, at best, a starter tablet, and, at worst, more or less just a portal to Amazon’s infrastructure with some, and I mean *some*, apps allowed in. I will hold onto it, but I see myself upgrading to something else eventually. Here are some other observations:

• Recently, I have looked for a new Twitter client to replace TweetDeck. After trying out Tweetcaster on the Fire, I have settled on Hootsuite as my client of choice not only on my Fire, but on my phone as well.
• The biggest problem with the Fire is how annotations are stored. On earlier Kindles, there was a simple .txt file called “clippings” that stored any portions of a text that were highlighted or annotated. This was simple and JUST WORKED. Every so often, I could plug my Kindle into a laptop and export the clippings.txt file. On the Fire, there is no .txt file and annotations are kept on Amazon’s server. I DO NOT want my clippings in the cloud, especially a third-party who has been . I just want it to simply work and the Fire is very pretty, but makes this extremely more complex than it needs to be.
• The best part was that Amazon’s customer service didn’t even know about the change. Wow.
• An Android tablet that can’t open any open source documents like an .odt is a pretty terrible use for Android. I was going to use the Fire to edit and grade student work, but that doesn’t seem to be happening now.
• No wall charger. Yeah, I know that most people charge via USB these days, but I would still like the ability to charge via a wall outlet from time to time. Having to pay extra for that is pretty ridiculous.
• I ended up ordering a Kindle Touch as well for book reading. This Kindle works just like my earlier Kindle. The touch screen interface is fantastic. I am quickly getting used to touch screens in general.
• I haven’t used the Touch in class much yet, but the other day I used it to follow along with a student led lecture. I will post more in the new year about classroom uses for the Kindle Touch.

This will be my last post for 2011. Grading and end of semester activities will take up the rest of the month. Afterwards, I will be taking some time off around the holidays. Normal posting will return early in 2012. See you then.

After my initial panel proposal was accepted, I ran this panel on working with students who have low technology skills as the opening panel for ThatCamp Philadelphia. I wanted to run this panel because this is an issue I deal with on a day to day basis and I am always trying to find new ways to initiate learning for my students. Technology skills are extremely important in this job market, so I really stress them in my classes.

Janine Utell took notes for this panel as well.

• Digital citizenship is important. Not just for student work, but also for the job force (applications, etc)
• Many participants noted that their students had a hard time interpreting what they found online. An example given a lot was clicking on “sponsored links” on a Google search.
• Some schools offer a one credit technology course (that can be tested out of by students)
• Library sessions are helpful, but more time needs to be spent on evaluating sources
• This whole “digital natives” thing is nonsense. Many students don’t even know how to use ctrl-f!
• Solutions to this need to come from the curriculum side, not just the classroom
• An issue brought up, and I have heard this from students, is going from high tech classes back to really analog ones
• A list needs to be made, on a school by school basis, of what students need to know for composition level technology skills
• A big requirement that should be built into school handbooks is mandating that they check their email
• There should be “technology across the curriculum” ala writing across the curriculum
• An idea Sherri Block and I have talked about here at BCC is doing workshops for students on a monthly basis.
• There was a large concern in the room to not just outsource all of this to the library
• I require my students to send me an email from their BCC email to prove they can open it and that it works. I use this for their first quiz grade
• Another great idea that happens in my classes anyway is to have high tech students team up with low tech students
• Walmart has computer only applications now. If you can’t figure it out, you can’t apply
• New Jersey does have a K-12 information literary requirement according to Deb Gussman
• There needs to be outreach to local principals/superintendents
• Have students do a tech survey on their way into college
• Gussman gives her online students a list of what they need to know before taking the class
• I’ve introduced Zotero to my sophomores in the past
• An idea I had was to have to students put programs like Zotero, Firefox, Google Chrome, etc on a flash drive using Portable Apps
• Students absolutely need to learn how to cite before being allowed to use Easybib, Zotero, Moodle, etc
• As Deb Gussman points out, Easybib, Zotero, Evernote and others output errors sometimes
• An idea Utell had was to do coffee sessions with faculty who could be allies

The Stockton family ran a number of sessions at ThatCamp Philadelphia, including Deb Gussman’s session on small scale publications and digital editions.

• Gussman is doing a digital edition of the works of Catharine Maria Sedgwick.
• Deb’s steps of a digital project: Strategy and Approach, Scope, Content, Design, Development, Testing, Support.
• Collaboration is very important. Need to find others who have skills you don’t have.
• There are no guarantees that apps, websites, etc will work in a year.
• I suggested the use of emulators ala what is done in modern times with classic interactive fiction.
• Deciding on what app/website/cms to use can often come from other colleagues/friends.
• I brought up the work of Cory Doctorow and how, by releasing his work under a creative commons license, readers can create versions of his works for different platforms.
• It is helpful to be familiar with remix culture in general.
• A great idea from John Theibault: in grant applications, include money for development of emulators for later editions when platforms become obsolete.
• Creative Commons licensing allows others to care more about the preservation of your work than you do.
• A lot of Gussman’s work with Sedgwick is coming from Google Books.
• Theibault’s students digitized Philadelphia’s directories.
• Back in 2003, I worked on the digitization of the American Weekly Mercury in one of Tom Kinsella’s classes.

The final session I attended at ThatCamp Philadelphia was run bu Janine Utell on integrating the digital humanities into regular literature classrooms.

• Amanda French defines the digital humanities as “open access”
• How can student work be put online? WordPress, PBWorks, etc
• Digital Humanities Quarterly given as example of open access
• Should give students option to take down work at the end of the semester
• I am going to try out commonplace blogs with my eng102 classes next semester
• Utell: Digital humanities is essential to keeping the humanities alive
• Some discussion about establishing comment policies
• Crowd sourcing comment policy to students
• Peer review is important before work goes online
• Instructor comments on blogs tapers off as semester goes on
• French and Siobhan Phillips bring out Google’s ngrams, wordles
• I’ve had students A/B an Obama speech to a Jefferson speech
• More incorportation of audio, video, etc into literary classes
• Modernist Journals Project
• Amanda French stresses the need to teach bibliographic software like Noodle, Evernote, and Zotero