ENGL 481: Digital Humanities

metaLAB is a research and teaching unit at Harvard University dedicated to exploring and expanding the frontiers of networked culture in the arts and humanities. They're part of the Graduate School of Design and work in Cambridge. It is defined as "a community of scholars, artists, designers, journalists, technologists, architects, and students engaged in team-based experiments that merge research, teaching, publication, social action, and the use and development of digital tools."

This post attempts to discuss and explor the possibility of the "thinking machine." Could computers become so smart as to function on a human level: think, feel, act, etc. as if it were really human? A panel discusses these phenominons and the reality behind the questions.

This article is about a professor who's notion of digital humanities infuses technology with their writing, publishing, and pedagogy. She revised her old teaching philosophy of a pedagological approach to having an editorial pedagogy that helped her with editing, teaching, and administrating in a digital humanities world. This approach helps teachers and students learn from each other by having them act more as equals. Her teachings help students analyze certain genres and set up feedback in which the genre will be recieved or evaluated and adapt these skills to any reading, writing, or editing.

This future course at a University wants to show how the human and the new machine are used for research and teaching. Their online learning method is used to incorporate different learning styles that are used in research with computational tools and networks that are connected throughout the world. This class is designed to prepare students in the humanities and social sciences that use new ways of thinking, teaching and learning. Their hoping with showing how online learning better educates students that it transforms higher education making it more meaningful to the present and future. After students have finished this course they will leave with many e-portfolio projects, public online writing, multimedia and collaborative productions.

With computers, we give up alot of face-to-face trust when we begin to engage in a more technology driven culture. So what steps need to be taken when we hand over the trust we give or revoke from human to human and hand it from human to computer. How can we build a safe and trustworthy relationship with this technology that we use everyday.

A newer, faster, more reliable version of internet is coming: IPv6. It's coming and most of us didn't even know that it existed in the first place. Basically this article is about the "World IPv6 Launch Day" and that all major coorporations will be involved without a single "everyday" internet user having any idea.

A Chief Ranger of a historical site and a digital media specialist collaborate together to create a class that discusses mobile media design and digital storytelling. The students also visit a historical site weekly and discuss the history of the village during the Fur Trade Era. Special guests are also included in the teachings such as archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians that know more about the history during this era. The students final project is to create an app that shows some aspect of this village during this era. This will help the students learn how to design a digital media that can be accessed mobile.

Internet has revolutionized our current culture and that is what this article seeks to point out. We can do just about anything on the internet, and now scientists are using this to their advantage. In this article scientists are using the internet and games that are associated with their research and allowing their participants in these games (regular internet users) to do their crowdsourcing research for them. Internet allows these scientists to take advantage of the system, so to speak.

This website describes what hybrid pedagogy is and how it is useful for classrooms. It gives article and forums that also allow other people to add to their website if it pertains to digital pedagogy. The articles are divided up by subjects such as: hybridity, digital pedagogy, online learning, and collaboration. It also gives opportunities for digital writers.

The World Science Festival has attempted to to make a video to explain a new technology that will supposedly revolutionize the internet. This video allows you to vitually experience this new software and take it for a "virtual test drive."

To prepare for a digital discussion Sean Morris gathered information containing education technology that shows new ways to communicate and new organizational tools. In the beginning of his teaching career him and a coworker created a paperless class that forced students to turn in assignments online; eventually turning it into a fully online course. Educational technology classrooms are created worldwide to use new modern ways to teach. Through online learning, students can use smaller parts to create a bigger picture which are then small parts for the collaboration of all the students work that is brought together. He leaves the readers with many questions about how to make the information accessible and accurate across the internet.

This article addresses the topic of online voting. Is it the next step in voting? It raises the pros and the cons of the question. It address the major concerns: encryption, integrity, and privacy. How will others know that it is I who voted, will my vote count, or even be private and safe? Many panel members who are experts on cryptology are called together to weigh these options.

This article highlights the issue of technology assisting to those who could potentially do powerful and bad things with it. Some of this technology is in place today to help assist these terrorists to crumble our nation's infastructure. Security expert, Brian Snow, seeks to answer the hard questions concerning the intent to use technology in negative ways if put into the wrong hands.

Digital Media is always asking for comments on the topics discussed and this article teaches the difference in people who express their opinion and those that are trying to engage in discussion. In a classroom setting he suggests to have students participate in online discussions that make them responsible for showing what they have learned and how to summarize and analyze is properly. Online discussion also allow students to read all the information before saying a comment so that they have listened and taken in everything that has been said. In a classroom she suggest to divide the class into three groups that consist of "first responders," "arguers," and "consensus builders." Also she wants to teach social citation that requires students to cite posts from other students which they support. Online learning also allows students who are afraid to speak up in class to discuss without feeling embarrassed.

This 'conversation' by Patrick Murray-John is about the tension caused by collaborating with people of different focuses and specialties (more hack; less yack). He challenges the thought that technology has invaded the humanities. he believes that it is the other way around, owing to the detail to structure of the digital representation. He argues that explicating code as you would a dissertation is a great approach because the code does contribute to how people will perceive and process the information on the page. He compares user interface to kids learning to analyze literary text. The question many students ask ("Why can't we just read it? Why does it have to be work?") should not be questions posed about the interface. He believes that users should not be able to view or deal with the inner workings of the application.

Can emotions be replicated by a machine? Yann LeCun, a computer scientist at NYU, discusses the importance of emotions being prevelent in intelligent machines.

This post talks about the intricate role that Quantum Physics play as an undertone in nature. How could we function without a GPS these days, furthermore how does nature know instinctively how to coordinate with its inner instincts and does quantum physicas have something to do with this?

Ostracology is a Tumblr for the course "Fragments of a Material History of Literature," taught by professor Jeffrey Schnapp and Matthew Battles of metaLAB at Harvard. It illustrates a way in which educators can utilize digital tools to better engage and challenge students. The instructors post lessons in blog-form for students to read, leave comments, and discuss. Also included are random class-related musings, invitations to events, and neat online finds.

Mrs. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin blazed her own trail in the Harvard School of Astrology in the early 1900's. She, and a group of other women known as the "computers." They worked hard to make a name for themselves, and make a name they did. These women, in particular, were some of the first to blaze new trails at the university.