My mentor for this class, Stan, shared this with me. It made me feel better about my not so polished videos. I hope it can put others minds to rest, too!

Nice acknowledgement of the hurdles with teaching 'student centered, project-based investigations'. 'Rowdy' classrooms and undefined teaching rubrics are just a few.

"How do I balance my desire to integrate student-centered learning practices with my almost pathological need to have every last bit of the course planned out and thought through? Most of my pedagogy research has suggested that we as faculty should be looking for ways to give students a real sense of ownership in the classroom. One of our goals should be to create an atmosphere that leaves space for students take an active role in their own learning. How, then, do we design a course before even meeting our students? Isn't there a danger in showing up to the first day of class with a syllabus that shows the whole course planned out? By doing so, aren't we clearly communicating to the students that the instructor is in charge, that if you know what's good for you, you'll follow these rules?"

The Kress Foundation funded research to help clarify perceptions on digital scholarship and art history! I can only imagine the creative community being equally aghast and confused about earth art, conceptual art and performance art (among others). Wild to think about. We keep marching forward. "The findings reveal disagreements in the art history community about the value of digital research, teaching, and scholarship. Those who believe in the potential of digital art history feel it will open up new avenues of inquiry and scholarship, allow greater access to art historical information, provide broader dissemination of scholarly research, and enhance undergraduate and graduate teaching. Those who are skeptical doubt that new forms of art historical scholarship will emerge from the digital environment. They remain unconvinced that digital art history will offer new research opportunities or that it will allow them to conduct their research in new and different ways."

Digital Pedagogy Lab is host of a five-day practical institute that explores the role and application of digital technology in teaching. The institute has three tracks, providing hands-on practice with and discussion of networked learning, digital identity, new media, and critical digital pedagogy.

This Institute is almost full (and a tad pricy) in August in lovely Madison, WI. Interesting stuff.

The Office of Digital Humanities is happy to announce 17 awards from our Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant program from our September 2014 deadline. These awards are part of a larger slate of 232 grants just announced by the NEH. Congratulations to all the awardees for their terrific projects!

I don't know if the NEH is a bellwether or not, but this is pretty darn exciting!