Learn more about the proposal process and then fill out the form at the bottom to propose your session. Be sure to include a description of the session, as well as any other pertinent information. Remember: If you propose a session then please be prepared to conduct that session!
A proposal from Dennis Jerz:
I suggested running a workshop with Scratch (MIT’s tool for teaching programming fundamentals to kids, but in its version 2.0 incarnation, a surprisingly powerful development environment). I would also be willing to introduce Inform 7, a tool for writing interactive fiction “text adventure” games using Inform 7. (Both are free; I’ve taught both at the college level.) Perhaps others could join me on this panel, and we could each introduce our favorite new media story creation tool; or, perhaps a group of Scratch coders or interactive fiction enthusiasts could come make, critique, teach, learn, and play
I would like to propose a brief discussion/brainstorming session about OCR software and methods for efficiently processing/tokenizing antiquated typeface. Methods that have been used before and strategies for reducing the amount of human editing that needs to be done are the kinds of information I am interested in collecting. A small collection or a survey of OCR software that people may have had success with would be useful for my research and would expedite the trial and error process that goes along with any exploratory research venture. I do not need anything downloaded. The objective of this session would be the collecting of resources and methods that people have used to digitize poorly scanned, poorly printed, or antiquated typeface. Additionally, I would be interested in finding out if there are methods for “teaching” OCR software to recognize a fixed number of predetermined or human-identified characters. There are a number of well-developed natural language parsers out there. I’d like to know which work best for my specific texts: eighteenth-century science magazines.
I would like to propose a session on integrating digital tools into the classroom. I have used many things, from simple tools like Zotero and Evernote, to more complicated ones like Google Tools, SketchUp, and Panopto, with students in the classroom as part of their assignments. I would like to facilitate discussion with others, including teachers, learners, and interested observers, about what the place of these tools is, how much time should be devoted to teaching students how to use them before ‘setting them loose’ with them, and what the benefit is to learning them along with so-called ‘traditional’ classroom skills.
I would like to propose a talk session on fostering a culture for digital pedagogy and scholarship. What strategies have helped to foster an interest in the digital humanities? What support and systems have to be in place? What are some of the big obstacles that deter faculty and graduate students? How do we recognize and encourage interdisciplinary, open, and collaborative work? We are developing a Humanities in a Digital Age Initiative at my institution, so I can talk about some of the steps we are taking, but I’m interested in facilitating an open discussion on successful experiences others have had in nurturing a digital culture among faculty.
I’d like to propose a conversation session around the role and value of chance and serendipity in interacting with digital content. Serendipitous discovery in archives and the browsing of print and paper materials has long been an important component of research in the humanities. The formlessness of digital content makes some physical-world methods of browsing impossible, while at the same time opening all sorts of new possibilities for chance-based discovery. We might start the discussion by looking at some recently-released examples of tools or services that use chance, or randomness, to promote discovery, such as the British Library’s “Mechanical Curator” [background], Twitter bots like DPLAbot and TroveNewsBot [also see Conversations Between Collections], and tools that try to recreate some of the affordances of traditional browsing, like the Harvard Library Innovation Lab’s Stack View. We could then talk about what sorts of tools we’d like to see built.
I would like to propose a session on crowdsourcing. We are increasingly seeing crowdsourcing used in DH projects for various purposes, including transcription, user generated content, and annotations. I can imagine two possible topics for this session. 1) How are folks using crowdsourcing for their own work, or what interesting or inspiring projects have they seen, or how would they like to use it (if they haven’t)? I have some examples to get us started. 2) How can we go “beyond transcription” to consider new and more advanced uses of crowdsourcing in DH? For example, I’m interested in how we can use crowds not just for data collection, but also for the analysis/interpretation part of the research process, and the ethical/coordination/technological issues involved.
I would like to propose a Play session in which board and card games are played. The games (including, but not necessarily limited to, Bananagrams, Tsuro, and Fluxx, which I’ll have in my backpack anyway) will allow players to explore how algorithms are designed and implemented in real-world situations; the session itself will provide an environment in which introverted attendees (including me) will be able to relax and recharge in the middle of the unconference.