So my ambitions to blog and be an intern and study for 10 weeks this quarter and be a librarian and manage a restaurant was just simply one-too-many "ands". So I have returned with gusto! That is until I start classes again in a couple of weeks. Instead of playing catch-up here's some links to the internship instead:
http://citizenarchivistproject.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizen-Archivist-Project/
So last week I attended my first "unconference" and as a vet conference attendee, might I say that it was a blast. I enjoyed the last minute details being hammered out by a raise of hands. It gives the attendees more of a say rather than following the guidelines of a planning committee.
http://thatcamp.org/
One major disappointment for me...
I attended it with a messed-up laptop. For shame. Nothing more embarrassing than attending The Humanities and Technology Camp with screwed up technology. I blamed Hulu.
Here's the recap
We all met in rainy Fairfax, Virginia at George Mason University on Friday and Saturday June 7th and 8th.
Note to self: don't attend a conference, excuse me, unconference, in the rain, in sandals. Bad move.
As a distance learner and semi-historian I attended first
It was interesting to chat with other educators about teaching, not just about history but teaching in general, when there's a resistance to learning technology, whether if it's the faculty or the student. There were other discussions too but this was my section- resistance to technology. We threw out some ideas about creating an incentive program for faculty to increase professional development to learn the technology needed. If a professor, teacher, etc. feels embarrased about the lack of knowledge- then maybe created a "technology center" where he or she can be paired with a coworker, student, etc. for some one-on-one instruction if there's a lack of interest or fear of group training. I refered the PHD student leading the discussion to my library system because we do the same for technology requests from patrons called "Your Personal Library" where a patron may essentually "check-out" a librarian to receive technology, or any other help. Check out the notes.
I attended this section simply because it relates to my internship. I'm working on creating box lists for Revolutionary War pension petitions. The Papers of the War Department is an gathering of papers from the War Department that was burned down in 1800. These papers were assumed destroyed forever, but as most information, there were copies found from various repositories all over the country. It's free to sign up for an account and you just work on transcribing the uploaded images. It's actually kind of fun, if you're used to 18th and early 19th century writing- I've had practice. Also, I'm a supporter of access to digital history so I say, go for it.
Perhaps a bit too basic for me. I've toyed around with Omeka before although I didn't realize until the unconference that GMU was the creator. www.omeka.net or .org are open source platforms to portray digital collections using Dublin Core as the metadata. .net has a basic, free login with limited space. You could pay for larger accounts, but why do that when you can play around with .org and create a free account as long as you have server space. Mainly you become the content manager and the IT department and have more freedom to edit and design using .org, but requires a bit more technical knowledge...more on that later...
Remember how I said my laptop was messed up? Yeah, this really hindered my learning for something that I was really interested in but have absolutely no experience. Here's the instructor's (Fred Gibbs) notes on the lecture which I have to try later since my laptop took an hour, that's right, AN HOUR to download and run the Quantum GIS software. This was also only an hour and a half course, needless to say, I was disappointed and very confused. BUT I have the software, on my shitty computer, locked and loaded and ready for me to give QGIS a shot again.
Since I've already been accustomed to basic omeka.net, I wanted to hear how the .org operated and if I could run it. Oh, my, I'm so excited. I thought I had to run a home server, which is why I've been putting it off so long. I just have to have web hosting space. The help page even comes equipped with suggestions. Duh, now I feel dumb for not reading it and could have started my project already. This will take some playing around with. I bought space with Dreamhost with the domain name shadowbrok3r.com. I'm in transit of moving Clippers website to that new space and mentally planning my new Omeka project. My family has a restaurant in honor of my grandfather. I plan to use Omeka to host digital pictures, oral histories, newspapers, what have you online so that our customers may get a better background of our family history. PLUS I can use this a backing for my technical skills for my resume/CV (YAY!). I'm super excited for my new project, which will also involve moving this blog as well eventually.
Wrapping up, I enjoyed the atmosphere. Humanists discussing theories and technology behind sharing information with each other and the public was just up my alley. We tweeted, we instagramed, we blogged, we did it all. I'm looking forward to being more involved in THATCamp Virginia in October!
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