Day |
Date |
Subject |
Readings |
Tue |
Jan 19 |
Digitizing the Past - An Introduction to Digital History |
You should consider purchasing Adobe Dreamweaver or locate a computer lab on campus where you will have access to this program throughout the semester. Set up a blog at UMass using WordPress. Also make sure you have secured a web space through OIT.
Read: Dan Cohen, et. al. “Interchange on Digital History”
Blog Assignment: As one of your first posts, you should reflect on your web scavenger hunt assignment - write about what you found, where you found it, any problems you ran into.
Be sure to "tag" your entry with "Scavenger Hunt". Begin building your blog out - add links of interest and also a "blog roll" that includes the students in the course as well as any other cool blogs you come across that cover history and new media.
|
Tue |
Jan 26 |
New Media and the World Wide Web |
1. Cohen & Rosenzweig, Digital History, Introduction, Ch. 1
2. Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media
Blog Assignment: Close reading of 3 historical websites - write an entry analyzing the good, the bad, and the ugly - find one example for each category (tag as "Website Analysis").
|
Tue |
Feb 2 |
Digital History Tools, Part I: Websites |
1. Cohen & Rosenzweig, Digital History, Ch. 2, 4, Appendix
2. Williams and Tollett, chapters 5-15.
Blog Assignment: Locate and write website reviews (2-3 paragraphs) of two public history websites of particular interest to your area of study (tag as "Website Review").
|
Tue |
Feb 9 |
Digital History Tools, Part II: Wikis, RSS, Podcasts, Videos, Soundbites, and Maps |
Class will take the form of a lab - bring a laptop if possible.
1. Listen to one episode of Digital Campus or another historical/educational podcast from a podcast directory such as Odeo. We will also work on building out your own blogs - add content to your blog and be prepared to present to others what you did.
Blog Assignment: Examine the “discussion” and “history” tabs of three Wikipedia entries (tag as "wikipedia").
|
| Tue |
Feb 16 |
NO CLASS |
Monday Classes Meet |
Tue |
Feb 23 |
Digitizing the Past |
1. Cohen & Rosenzweig, Digital History, Ch. 3
2. NINCH Guide, Chs. V-VIII.
3. Petrick, “Top Ten Mistakes in Academic Web Design”
Blog Assignment: Find examples from Google Books, the Open Content Alliance, and other libraries and archives. Write a blog entry that analyzes the benefits and drawbacks of such digital content (tag as "digitizing the past").
|
Tue |
Mar 2 |
Finding and Cultivating an Audience |
1. Cohen & Rosenzweig, Digital History, Ch. 5
Students present outlines of their semester project. [For reference on how to write a formal grant proposal, look at the Digital Humanities Start-up Grants Outline.]
Blog Assignment: Write a brief summary of your project proposal and comment on other students' proposals.
|
Tue |
Mar 9 |
Born Digital |
1. Cohen & Rosenzweig, Digital History, Ch. 6
2. Cohen, “The Future of Preserving the Past”
3. Visit these sites: April 16 Archive, Hurricane Digital Memory Bank, September 11 Digital Archive, Flickr (and Flickr Commons ). When viewing these sites, think in particular about issues of copyright, fair use, and preservation.
Blog Assignment: Reflect on the websites visited and how historians need to think about content that is "born digital" (tag as "born digital").
|
| Tue |
Mar 16 |
NO CLASS |
SPRING BREAK |
Tue |
Mar 23 |
Copyrights and wrongs |
1. Cohen & Rosenzweig, Digital History, Ch. 7
2. Licenses: GNU GPL, Creative Commons
3. John Willinsky, “Copyright,” chapter from The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship (Cambridge, MA: MIT 2005) - available on Reserve in the library.
4. Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture, chapter ten (”property”), which is available for free download.
Blog Assignment: Reflect on the issues of copyright dealt with in the assigned readings. What are some of the potential pitfalls that you see for historians working with digital media? What new challenges are there for institutions, such as museums and archives? (tag as “copyrights”).
|
Tue |
Mar 30 |
Digital Preservation |
1. Cohen & Rosenzweig, Digital History, Ch. 8
2. NINCH Guide, Ch. XIV
3. Roy Rosenzweig, “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era”
Blog Assignment: Reflect on the controversies and (potential) problems of digital preservation (tag as "digital preservation").
|
Tue |
Apr 6 |
Digital Scholarship |
1. Patrick Leary, “Googling the Victorians”
2. Cohen & Rosenzweig, “No Computer Left Behind”
3. Peter Norvig, “Theorizing from Data”
4. American Council of Learned Societies’ cyberinfrastructure report
Blog Assignment: Reflect on how digital tools have altered the way in which historians conduct research. Think about your own area of specialization and outline how digital technology will most likely influence how you will conduct research in the future (tag as “Digital Scholarship”).
|
Tue |
Apr 13 |
Popular and Public History Online |
1. Steve Dietz, “Telling Stories: Procedural Authorship and Extracting Meaning from Museum Databases”
2. Visit and closely examine the following sites (tentative list, subject to change):
Blog Assignment: write about one of the following questions:
1. Which of these sites most effectively conveys the past to a "general" audience? (And why?)
2. Which of these sites makes the most effective use of new media? (And how?)
3. Which of these sites has a design and interface that most effectively communicates its message and serves its audience?
4. Which of these sites has an interpretation of the past that either: a. best reflects current scholarship or b. challenges its audiences?
|
Tue |
Apr 20 |
Digital Mapping |
1. Mapping Concord: Google Maps and the 19th-Century Concord Digital Archive
2. View the following websites and be prepared to discuss
Blog Assignment: Write a comparative response based on two of the examples listed above (excluding the video tutorial). What do you see as the "best practices" that can be identified by these various projects?
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Tue |
Apr 27 |
Presentations |
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Tue |
May 4 |
Presentations |
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