I didn’t see anyone posting yet, so I thought I would start the discussion myself and invite others to join in to this post, if you want (i.e. go ahead and edit it, or respond).
I have a few things I would love to discuss, but as this is my first THATcamp, I am not sure exactly how specific I should be . . . so, I’ll just jump in!
IDEAS . . .
Using Social Media in the Classroom
I use Facebook and Twitter to interact with my students, mostly just as a communication tool . . . but I have also begun to use Facebook as a tool for classroom “group presentations.” How have others used FaceBook, Twitter, and MySpace in the classroom?
What Happened to “Humanities” in Digital Humanities?
I don’t know about you, but when I try to look into the field of “Digital Humanities” I find it mostly populated with computer geeks who seem to have learned programming in utero. I’m an English professor, not a programmer! How can we make this field more accessible to people who love technology as an end-user, not as a developer?
Using ePortfolios in the Classroom
This is probably passé for many participants at THATcamp, but my program uses WordPress blogs as ePortfolios for our students (and for class websites). I would love to share my experience doing this, and hear some great new ideas for ePortfolios.
I’m interested in social media in the classroom, both as a means to potentially replace the campus CMS, and as a tool to engage regular responses to coursework either outside of class or during it.
So far, I’ve done the former with a Freshman Seminar (the topic was New Media), I have all my classes blogging in some form, with varying degrees of interaction with one another and with existing blogs as a kind of extended course reading, but never that last piece, like using Twitter as a backchannel for in-class questions. But then, I don’t ever teach classes larger than 25, and I’ve always thought of it as a means to manage larger groups.
Regardless of the specifics, I’d be interested in hearing about successful uses of social media in others’ classrooms.
B”H
We have a “Slave Narrative” project in my class, and my students are required to adopt a particular narrative for a group project and for a research subject. This year, many of them did the regular AV group project, but some of them did a facebook project where they established slave personas on Facebook, then interacted with other students’ Slave personas from the perspective of their slave. It was an interesting way for them to grow in knowledge of the history, sociology, and situational experience of those slaves.
All of these ideas are of interest to me.
I’ve used student blogs for years, but next year I’ll be teaching several sections of a first-year writing course on writing in/about social media–so my pedagogical experience will rather suddenly expand (explode?) into Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Storify, Digress.it, and all sorts of other tools and conversations with these students. I’m looking forward to hearing about other people’s experiences of teaching with social media.
Michelle,
As a writing consultant, I’m putting a +1 next to your Where’s the Humanities in the Digital Humanities. I know it’s there, but I think it’s worth articulating it and pressing on the common understanding of it.
Add me to the list of folks interested in this idea, especially since I’m one of the geeks who is acutely aware of the gaps which still exist in digital fluency between the “adept” and the “just getting by”.
Another +1 for the twitter backchannel. I think a lot of us have used social media for outside-the-classroom student interactions. But I’d really like to see some discussion of how to bring social media into the classroom itself.
All of these ideas sound intriguing to me.
Using Social Media in the Classroom: I’m personally overwhelmed by media, so I’ve been slow to adopt social media. (Thinking about joining Twitter for this unconference…) On the other hand, I am using more and more interactive technologies (mostly web forms) in my teaching, and I find them very effective. I’d like to listen in on this conversation, hoping to see how it relates to things that have been working for me.
What Happened to “Humanities” in Digital Humanities? I’m a computer scientist interested in collaborating with humanists. I am actively seeking projects in which humanities professors and their students team with computer science professors and their students, to produce useful computational tools for exploring questions those humanists care about, with everyone contributing from their own areas of expertise. Having a professor or student with expertise in both fields obviously facilitates this kind of collaborative project, but I aim to show this isn’t a necessity.
Using ePortfolios in the Classroom: I’d like to hear what the state of the art in ePortfolios may be — what features they offer, what makes them effective, how flexible they may be. (We plan to use them primarily for program assessment at this point.)
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