Jefferson's Newspaper

Should Your Syllabus Include a Note on Web Browsers?

E. Bell — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 01:53:51 +0000

Given that one of my primary occupational roles is providing tech support, I offer the following question in part as preemption in my own self-interest but also in the interest of exploring the scope of instruction in the digital humanities (or the “digital” anything for that matter): Should Your Syllabus Include a Note on Web Browsers? If you teach an online class or a class with a significant online component, the answer might be yes.

Whether you are using BlackBoard, a blog platform, or a “proper” CMS, if your course site is doing anything remotely interesting, one of your students is probably using a browser that is not up to the task.

I get questions all the time about browser-related issues and even when I do instructional sessions and warn against using certain old browsers, the questions still roll in. My first troubleshooting question is invariably “what browser are you using?” If the answer is Internet Explorer, that’s usually the last question, followed by many “informative” statements of (arguably) questionable relevance and utility. If nothing else, my mini-rants leave a student with — if not a full understanding of the problem — at least a sense that the “blue e” on their desktop is called a browser, that it’s used to “open the Internet,” and that there apparently are multiple options from which to choose. For many this is a revelation of no small impact.

While not the higher order stuff we (think we) should need to teach at a college level, understanding browsers can still be an opening to understanding lots of “entry level” issues in new media and web publishing. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and more all rely on the surprisingly fragile ecosystem created by both the browser and the coder (even when the coder is a giant billion dollar company like Google, who themselves have given up on supporting old browser tech). If you plan to even broach the topic of web development and design, the browser is the natural place to start. Even if you just want your students to be able to use and evaluate web sources and digital projects, using an old browser is going to work against your sanity and their success.

Browsers are also an obvious choice for opening up discussions about open source technologies. Firefox, Chrome/Webkit, and Opera are great examples of a movement by which users have become creators/participants, and technology can — through small but scaled contributions — be bent to our will, rather than the other way around. If you are using Drupal, WordPress, Omeka or some other open source web publishing platform in your class, or if your students use open source desktop software like Audacity or GIMP, this is a natural connection. Open source is the key to so much recent innovation in education, academe and on the web more broadly, that if you don’t think being an open source advocate is part of your job, perhaps you should ask yourself why not.

Savvy students and instructors may intuitively understand that they can improve their online experiences by seeking out new approaches and alternatives when problems and questions arise, and that recency and novelty are actually important in technology, but this is by no means a norm in any non-tech sector of our culture. If you don’t know what you don’t know, you pretty much stick with what you do know — even if it sucks. I recently questioned a colleague for requiring that assignments be “prepared in MS Word”; if the end product is in the right format (.doc in their case), why require a specific software that comes with specific costs and benefits. Let students choose what software to use and note that there actually is a choice to be made (yes, OpenOffice, iWork, GoogleDocs, and more all export into Microsoft formats if desired), instead of hiding a broader question (what software to use) inside of an unnecessarily absolute decree (buy and use Word) that addresses a specific problem (students turning in papers in unreadable formats) but ignores the bigger context. This is not Microsoft hate (I like Office and, surprisingly, even Windows7), but a serious question about how we prepare students for careers that will invariably involve software and hardware choices (if not by them, than for them). So maybe your students won’t be designers, programmers, IT specialists, or whatever, but they will be consumers of technology and perhaps digital creators of another kind. Scholars and writers (not to mention managers, etc) still need to be versed in the basics of technology so they can understand the options at their disposal, the forces that shape their world, and the language with which to convey their needs and ideas (try asking an 80 year old to describe the usability and effectiveness of a piece of software or a website; these are learned skills). Connoisseurship has its utility.

Security is another issue that needs little description here. Basically, keeping your browser, your OS, and all of your other software updated will go a long way in preventing spyware, viruses and generally poor performance.

A “note on browsers” doesn’t directly address all of the issues above, but it’s potentially a start and it probably can’t hurt.

Even if you are not interested in any larger questions about digital literacy or open source advocacy, or it simply does not fall into the purview of your course, you still might want to include some kind of note on browsers, if only to reduce time spent troubleshooting and haggling with tech-averse students. So with that in mind, I offer the following:

Prefab “Note on Browsers”

This course requires extensive use of the Internet, including websites and other online resources that may require the use of a up-to-date, standards-compliant web browser. Web browsers are free to download and may be installed on any computer in a matter of minutes. Acceptable browsers include the most recent versions of Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer. To ensure that your browser is updated to the most recent version, open your browser and go to Tools >> Options (PC) or Help >> Check for Updates (Mac), or download the latest version of your browser choice at http://www.browserchoice.eu

A randomized list of browser choices:

www.browserchoice.eu
This is actually the same interface that is shown to new computer buyers in the EU, where it was decided that Microsoft’s bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows was anti-competitive and potentially harmful to innovation.

IE6 No More

www.ie6nomore.com
A nice little script you can drop into the header of your site so that users of IE6 and IE7 will get a warning reading “For a better experience using this site, please upgrade to a modern web browser” with links to upgrade to the latest version of IE or download an alternative. Don’t forget to update the code when IE9 comes out in late 2010/early 2011 to be sure your students/users are taking advantage of Microsoft’s promise of greater support for existing and emerging HTML/CSS standards.

Browser-Update.org

www.browser-update.org
I haven’t used this script yet; it looks similar to IE6 No More but apparently checks for outdated versions of Opera, Safari, Chrome, and Firefox as well as Internet Explorer. Billed as an “an initiative by web designers, webmasters and bloggers who want to bring the web further and help their visitors.”

NOTE: The images above are from the very awesome looking Harmonia Pastelis Icon Pack by Teekatas

Adding a Featured Image Gallery to Omeka Using GalleryView

E. Bell — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:39:39 +0000

Following on my previous entry on adding an image Lightbox to Omeka, today I’ll run through the steps it takes to get a featured image gallery running on your Omeka homepage. I searched for awhile to find a gallery plugin that a.) looks good, b.) works well and c.) is not too complicated for me to figure out. Fitting the bill nicely, I found GalleryView, a fairly lightweight jQuery plugin with lots of options for your tweaking enjoyment. It’s a bit more challenging to implement than Lightbox and requires a fair amount of CSS knowledge to prettify, but this should help you get started.

Step One: Download and Install GalleryView (and edit the GalleryView CSS)

Download the GalleryView package and place it in your theme’s /common/ directory. Be sure that you have placed the whole shebang directly inside the /common/ directory and renamed the outer folder galleryview (if you use the default galleryview-2.1.1 name, you’ll need to adjust the scripts below to match). Go into your theme to common/galleryview/galleryview.css and edit the first id, changing it from #photos to #featured-gallery (or something else if you prefer, see below for details).

Step Two: Edit your Header (Scripts and Configurations)

The code below will work as is if you are using the popular Berlin theme, but if not simply replace the word berlin below with the name of your Omeka theme. Be sure the paths below match with where you actually placed your files in the previous step.

*** To save hours of confusion, watch out for typos and try using your browser’s “view source” feature to ensure that your links are reaching their destination.

 echo WEB_ROOT;?>/themes/berlin/common/galleryview/galleryview.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />

That final, multi-line script above initializes GalleryView and contains your configurations. You can change them however you like according to the GalleryView documentation, but here I’m setting the dimensions, timing, theme, etc. There are a couple other things worth highlighting here if you are not familiar with JavaScript. First of all, the string containing #featured-gallery is setting up the gallery to run automatically on images displayed in the html div with the id of “featured-gallery” – you can change this to whatever you like, but remember that it needs to match the outer div on your index page in the next step. Also worth noting, the script generally runs on a generic placeholder function called $, but in order to get around the conflict with the Prototype library (which also uses $ as a generic placeholder), I’ve included the jQuery.noConflict() line and replaced $ with jQuery.

Step Three: Edit your Index Page (Looping Items and Calling GalleryView)

The code below uses a custom loop to retrieve the images. As noted, the outer div uses the id “featured-gallery”, as well as a required class, “galleryview” — #featured-gallery is the only id or class that you can change below!

	<h2>Featured Itemsh2>
	<div id="featured-gallery" class="galleryview">
	<ul id="gallery">
		< ?php 
		//this loops the 5 most recent featured items
		$items = get_items(array('featured'=>true, 'recent'=>true), 5);
		set_items_for_loop($items);
		while(loop_items()):
		?>
			< ?php $index = 0; ?>
			< ?php while ($file = loop_files_for_item()): ?>
			    < ?php if ($file->hasThumbnail()): ?>
			    
			        < ?php if ($index == 0): ?>
		    	       < ?php echo /*Image URL*/'.item_file('square thumbnail uri').'"/>'; ?>
		    	    < ?php endif; ?>
			    < ?php endif; ?>
			< ?php endwhile;?>
			< ?php
			echo '';
			echo /*Item Title*/''.item('Dublin Core', 'Title').'
';
			echo /*Item Description Excerpt*/''.item('Dublin Core', 'Description',array('snippet'=>175));
			echo /*Link to Item*/ link_to_item(' ...more ').'
';
			?>
			< ?php endwhile; ?>

I’ve added some comments inline with the code above to describe what it’s doing, so if they make sense to you, you can probably figure out any changes you might need (for example, looping more or fewer images meeting whatever Omeka-friendly criteria you like).

*** I’m using square thumbnails in my loop because they’re easy, but you may need to adjust the max thumbnail size in your Omeka settings to avoid blurry images.

Step Four: Season to Taste

Though the example above works pretty nicely “out of the box” in a two column homepage theme, the GalleryView documentation contains a list of configuration options, so you will probably want to fool around with those, as well as your CSS, to integrate GalleryView properly into your theme’s overall aesthetic. You might also want to customize the loop in Omeka (personally, I’m not a huge fan of the one used above, but haven’t figured out a better one just yet).

Hope this has helped a few folks out there who, like me, are working near the edges of their skill set. As always, feel free to share your comments, questions, suggestions, critiques, etc. I’ll try to keep this updated as needed.

By the way, I’m planning to release a new Omeka theme that incorporates both Lightbox and GalleryView, as well as some other fun stuff, so stay tuned.

Some Problems with School IT

E. Bell — Wed, 19 May 2010 03:09:42 +0000

Today I think I’ll share a few email excerpts to illustrate some of the more annoying aspects of my job, each of which involves public school district IT Departments acting in ways that are (in my very partial and partially-informed estimation) either a) lazy, b) incompetent, c) draconian or d) all of the above. If I come across as a curmudgeon in the process, it’s because I am. Still, it’s important to note at the outset that I understand the challenges faced by the well-meaning folks charged with managing school (and perhaps also business/enterprise) IT. They do so with many skills I do not come close to possessing and under tremendous pressure to meet legislative and policy directives, but are often lacking in the money, staff, and training required to keep up to date with the demands of acting as local gatekeeper and eternal overlord of the internets. Nevertheless, in my brief experience thus far as a member of the ed. tech community, I have yet to meet a school IT coordinator (in public primary and secondary schools, that is, and not in higher ed where the environment is a bit more competitive) who was what I would call “in touch” with the latest goings-on in education/technology/educational technology. In any case, I hope this comes across as constructive. That is my sole intention, to save the fucking children.

Issue number one: filtering. CIPA basically requires that school districts filter their internet access as a means of protecting children from pornography and other sundry objectionables across this big bad internet. I actually do not generally disagree with this, though I do make some obvious qualifications. For one, filtering should not be any broader than what is actually needed. Unfortunately, this is a tall order. Google Safe Search might provide some indication of how this works and doesn’t. Safe Search is essentially the same kind of filtering algorithm that a school might employ through purchasing a third party application. Try googling “firefighter” with safe search turned off and see what kind of image results you get. Firefighter is a pretty innocuous term and one that a kid is pretty likely to be interested in at some point. But without some kind of filter, even Google cannot avoid returning some questionable material on the first page. But turn safe search turned back on (set to moderate or even strict) and the results are generally more wholesome, right? Actually, no, they’re pretty much the same. Take a look yourself. This is not a jab at Google, just a quick way to point out that algorithms – even the best of them – are not infallible. They make mistakes. So instead of endlessly refining their algorithms, third party filtering apps take a hammer to the web, locking down students’ web experience and blocking content on the broadest of terms in an effort to overcome their own inherent limitations.

Which brings me to my second qualification, that filters should be locally configurable. If a teacher or student needs access to a site that is blocked, there needs to be a mechanism for whitelisting it and/or adjusting the parameters of the filter. This seems not to be the case for many districts. For example, as discussed in the email below, on several occasions lately, I’ve been told by teachers and other education professionals that some of the educational and professional development sites I’ve created and/or maintain for work are actually not accessible by educators in their classrooms or in the school building. One teacher was told by their IT department that it’s because “the site is a blog and blogs are blocked.” Sometimes that is true (the site is a blog), and sometimes not. I’ve never looked into the blackbox that is an internet filter but my assumption is that to determine if a site is a blog (whatever that actually means these days), this school’s filter detected that the site in question used WordPress (we use it a lot as a CMS and for course blogs) and thus came to the conclusion that it =blog and is therefore somehow unsafe or inappropriate for minors. Don”t believe it? Check out this “tutorial” about protecting children from blogs from a filtering software company.

So, anyway, on with the email excerpts.

…By the way, it’s pretty unsatisfactory that a district would block any of our sites. Presumably they do this automatically (i.e. they use 3rd party “child protection” software without retaining any control of their own) by deciphering which platform is being used (WordPress, Omeka, etc.). We’ve had similar issues with the [OMITTED] site. Frankly, I think it’s time that teachers forced their districts to adapt to current web publishing models rather than letting some outdated software make decisions for them. Considering that we use the same kinds of software that the NYTimes and other major sites use, this is clearly an injustice for students and teachers alike (if not for small “publishers” like ourselves) and also gives school IT admins an unearned sense that they’ve done their job. But I digress…

And another (regarding the blocking of a Google Docs data collection tool)…

[OMITTED] may have some responses recorded on paper that she will send me if/when she gets them (one of the teachers had Google blocked in their district for some inexplicable reason so they did them on paper).

That’s right. Google is blocked. The problems with this are so glaringly obvious that I will move on.

On to the next problem, not one that is unique to school IT, but nevertheless a problem at schools and far beyond. Yes, I’m going to do it. I’m going to write (part of) a blog post about how I hate Internet Explorer. And yes, particularly the 6th version of it, which I’m required by Internet Law to mention was released about a decade ago. And so on. So… Issue number two: IE6.

The following was to be a public response to a very polite and well-meaning message from a user who, judging by his email address, works in government and academia, informing me that a particular site is broken in IE6. I’ve gotten similar messages for sites we manage that are created both in house and by well-regarded professional designers (i.e. it’s not just my sloppy design). In the end, my response was not posted, owing to the better judgment of a colleague to whom I sent the message first. They decided it was not necessary and, I think, maybe it sounds a little defensive. Nevertheless, I think it’s an important issue and one that should not be taken lightly.

Thanks for the feedback. We get such messages from time to time, so please allow me to explain what we are thinking about this issue, which is somewhat more complicated than it may seem to some folks.

I cannot speak for [OMITTED], but our view [...] is that we can realistically only expect to support modern browsers in our smaller projects. Internet Explorer is not a modern browser, though the latest version (8) has made significant strides and is fully capable of rendering the new site visually and functionally. We serve a message to users of older browsers that they need to upgrade. If they choose not to, they will at least be aware of the source of their frustration. It is ours as well.

We make this compromise for a couple of reasons that I think are well-considered. For one, it is extremely time-consuming to debug for old versions of Internet Explorer and we value lower-cost projects. Second, if we “dumb down” our work to be 100% backwards compatible, we are cheating those visitors who use modern software and want a more modern experience. We cannot provide that service at our usual (very low) cost of publishing. Third, we believe that the time has come to give up on outdated browsers. Google and other major publishers and service providers have already made the decision to drop support for IE6. Microsoft does not even stand behind it’s older software in this regard and has expressed regret that it is still in use.

Finally, we trust that users are fully capable of taking responsibility for their web experience. Browsers are free. They are easy to install. New ones work better, look better, do more and provide greater protection against malware. The best browsers include auto-update features so you never have to worry about getting left behind. We understand that many work environments lock their employees into using the outdated software required to access their older enterprise systems. This is an unfortunate reality but one that we cannot control, trusting that market and research needs, as well as increasingly vocal employee dissatisfaction will take care of this over time. In the meantime, we always design for the latest version of IE, as well as Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera. This covers the great majority of users, including those that we track on our own analytics.

This is not to say that we do not continually look at this policy. We always appreciate feedback of any kind and if we are shown over time that we have erred in this approach, we will certainly do our best to adapt.

The question to my mind is, do we need to support every piece of hardware and software ever released (a decade is a long time for a piece of software, especially one that is freely replaceable), or should we focus our energies more wisely on following web standards and providing a better experience for users who employ appropriate software. You can’t open an iWork .pages file with Electric Pencil (or so I assume). You can’t play Modern Warfare 2 on an Atari 6400. If a site requires Flash, you either install Flash or you don’t use the site (or wait until you get home and use a laptop instead of your iPhone). I am okay with these limitations. How did Adobe and it’s publisher-users get consumers to agree to the Flash arrangement at a 90+ percent rate of adoption. I don’t know but it wasn’t by creating alternate, crippled, backward compatible versions of every Flash site (though as an iPhone user, sometimes I wish that were the case).

But these are essentially questions for designers and content creators, not for IT professionals. The questions for IT are different. The goal of IT, at schools or elsewhere, is to serve their communities’ needs while maintaining the security of both the users and the broader infrastructure. So why in the hell do many schools insist on continuing to run outdated browsers like IE6? If the answer is that they keep running IE6 because they need it to access other outdated enterprise systems, then they have doubly failed in their mission.

If the transition away from outmoded tech has been neglected due to financial constraints, then I don’t want to see that school running MS Office or BlackBoard or maybe even Windows. If money is that tight, I want to see OpenOffice.org. I want to see Linux Ubuntu. I want to see Moodle (or something better, but equally free). But I have not seen that happening. At a recent ed. tech conference I attended, the same teachers who were locked into shitty IT environments were all atwitter about tablets and clickers and robots and so on. The tech coordinators and district admins I met were most interested in gimmicky proprietary gadgets and LMSs that provide no justifiable value proposition. And meanwhile, the students can’t even access Google? The modern, connected, social web is off limits. The sites that get through are broken and dysfunctional due to outdated hardware and software. Where is the creativity?

I’m not trying to trash anyone, really (especially not an entire profession), but there is a cultural problem that is so readily apparent in how our schools deal with technology that I find it hard to be polite. Ditching IE6 is not going to change that culture, nor is better monitoring of filtering systems, nor new iMacs or clickers, nor anything else you can buy. And this doesn’t even begin to address the question of how/when/if we actually give students real tech instruction and who is qualified to do so. It’s not me. For the most part, at this moment, I’m just an onlooker to this mess. I don’t work in a public school district and I’m not a teacher and I’m not really in IT. I work in a university and deal in the (digital) humanities. I have autonomy (sometimes) and access to money (sometimes) and people that can help me (sometimes). But mostly, I try to be creative, I try to keep up to date, and I try to always be learning something new and useful so I can always be doing something new and useful. Take that for what it’s worth.

Why I’m (Probably) Deleting My FaceBook Acount

E. Bell — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 20:39:25 +0000

Mecha-Zuck ruthlessly semantifies your profile

By now, everyone has heard about the latest round of FaceBook updates. Without a doubt, some of the changes are really cool and lots of folks will love the way that certain websites will seamlessly adapt their content to suit their tastes and preferences (based on FaceBook profile information). After all, who doesn’t want more relevance on the web? We can also expect just about every major content provider to be adding a “Like” button to their sites within a matter of weeks. I just tested it out on TechCrunch and it is in fact the best social sharing widget I have ever used. On the other hand, as with most FaceBook updates, those concerned with openness and privacy have some legitimate concerns. Rather than paraphrasing what others have already summed up very well, I instead offer a short reading list for those who are interested. Make an informed decision.

As we have seen before, there is always an off chance that FaceBook will adjust their policies in response to outcry from their user base. However, given the current size of their user base and the amount of money FaceBook stands to make from this (in the high krajillions, according to analysts), I really doubt they are losing sleep about a micro-exodus of privacy activists and open web nerds. However unlikely, things can change. So I leave the “Probably” as a qualifier just in case. Also, I have to admit that I am accustomed to the convenience and utility of FaceBook as a way of casually keeping in touch with people you might never hear from or see otherwise. So it’s possible I might just sanitize my profile and stop using FaceBook altogether but keep the account active so I can receive the occasional message from or hunt down (stalk) a casual acquaintance or old friend. Generally speaking though, I think FaceBook as I knew it is over. Knowing what I know, and knowing what they know, I no longer feel comfortable signing into or socializing on the site, and that is not likely to change.

UPDATE:
I took the plunge and deleted my profile for good after letting it sit unused for a couple weeks. Below are a few more of the articles that contributed to that decision, which was made easier still by the fact that I was late to join FaceBook to begin with and always found it kind of annoying and ripe for drama in the same way as MySpace (in fact, after leaving MySpace ahead of the exodus, I tried to get everyone to follow me to Twitter, skipping Facebook altogether, but to no avail). Nevertheless, Facebook did/does have its uses and was occasionally really fun and entertaining. I must admit that leaving it behind leaves me feeling a bit disconnected from some casual friends and acquaintances. The good news is that it looks like a real open alternative may be emerging in a new project called Diaspora*.

Unpacking My Record Collection

James Calder — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 02:30:52 +0000

Collecting Records and Walter Benjamin

I recently picked up a copy of Walter Benjamin’s Illuminations. I was completely struck by the first essay, “Unpacking My Library”, where Benjamin discusses book collecting. And while I myself take pride in my ever growing personal library, I almost immediately began to translate all his references to books as pertaining to record collecting. Not only this, but Benjamin’s words somehow summed up, far more eloquently than my own I might add, why, despite my professional stance that everything should be digitized and widely disseminated, I don’t and never will own an ipod. It made me rethink a few ideas I’ve become accustomed to, things like ownership and physicality, that have become essential to my work as a Digital Humanist. So, I thought I’d share…

Let me start by quoting part of Benjamin’s conclusion,

“…ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects”.

While this statement would possibly seem insignificant enough to your average person, “ownership” is an extremely weighted word for the Digital Humanist. Putting it simply, Digital Humanists hate ownership. Often, this disdain is directed towards corporations and their claims to proprietary software. This is easy enough, especially with the aggressive (unethical?) business practices of companies like Blackboard. The music industry, with its severely outdated business model, is another common target. Many Digital Humanists go further though. They challenge their colleagues and institutions, especially universities and museums, to give up traditional rights to scholarship, educational content and primary sources.

However, we can think of ownership from another side. What about an individual’s ownership of something? Now, as I’m pretty sure not all Digital Humanists are total Communists (just kind of), I think most are comfortable with the idea of an individual owning possessions like a house, car, whatever. Its more intellectual property rights, especially of digitized intellectual property, that irk us. Because Digital Humanists have created this distinction, most of us can live in relative peace with the belief that its okay for us to own all sorts of things, but Microsoft needs to stop charging people for software. It works for me at least.

There are some cases, however, where this distinction begins to blur, and I think music is an excellent example. I’m not necessarily talking about the consumption of music here, but the collecting of music. Lets return to Benjamin’s idea of ownership. I’ll throw another quote at you because I genuinely like how he writes:

“Even though public collections may be less objectionable socially and more useful academically than private collections [as the Digital Humanist knows very well] … the phenomenon of collecting loses its meaning as it looses is personal owner”

Think about that for a second and let me pose a question: do you own the songs on your ipod? I mean, not legally, that all depends on how you acquired them. But, do you feel ownership of them? Is that Vampire Weekend (or whatever the kids are into these days) mp3 yours? Speaking strictly for myself, I don’t really feel like a song on a copied CD is mine, let alone an mp3 file. Even if some feel that they do in fact own their mp3 files, looking deeper into Benjamin’s essay, I think I can demonstrate why this definition of ownership is inadequate or at least very distinct from the ownership I am trying to describe. Let me explain.

The Thrill of the Hunt

I really miss hunting for records. Don’t get me wrong, I still go to the record store to look for things, but its just not the same when what I’m looking for could just as easily be bought online while I’m watching TV. Especially for the collector of underground music, the joy of finding something you’ve sought for literally years is pretty hard to describe. However, guess who describes it perfectly?

“I am not exaggerating when I say that to a true collector the acquisition of an old birth is its rebirth”

In explanation of this rather odd statement, Benjamin explains how, for the collector, the acquisition of an item quite literally fulfills that item’s destiny, which is of course, to become part of your collection. All of that item’s history, from its production, to its past owners, real or imagined, becomes an additional property of the item (think of it like invisible metadata that exists in the collector’s head). Honestly, it sounds dumb, but I have to admit that I’ve shared this extraordinary feeling. Putting all real probabilities aside, it truly seems like destiny when you uncover that record that you’ve been searching for, perhaps for years, in the used bin at some crappy record store you dragged your girlfriend to on vacation. Every crease on the album sleeve, every marking, all the writing, it all stays with you, forever becoming part of a collection that includes but is not limited to the music itself. Basically, it all adds up to much more than the music itself.

Physicality, Ownership and the Digital World

The point of all this nonsense, besides that record collecting is cool, is that while the digital world has not necessarily changed music itself, it has certainly qualitatively changed the collecting of music. Physicality is one aspect of this, as the physical marks on something like a used record can perhaps be used to conjure up a richer history of that item, which, as Benjamin suggests, adds to the many joyful histories contained within in a collection, inseparable but distinct from the music itself. However, I would argue that physicality, while perhaps the most obvious, is not the most important factor. For instance, back in the days of peer to peer file sharing, I certainly felt Benjamin’s “thrill of acquisition” when finding an album after countless unsuccessful searches. I believe the more essential element is that “ownership”, in the Benjamin sense, is directly dependent on a meaningful acquisition. One that produces “profound enchantment” and a literal sense of destiny.

Its interesting for myself, as a Digital Humanist, to consider that part of Benjamin’s “ownership” as defined in his quotation, cites public ownership in direct opposition to this personal ownership that makes collecting so desirable in the first place. Its easy to see why this is so, if only because widespread availability would necessarily lesson the difficulties and joys of acquisition. Thus, some of my most cherished goals of dissemination and the eradication of the ownership of digital “property” also contribute to the deterioration of a different kind of “ownership”, that of an individual to that personal, intangible, yet very real aspect of his or her collection. In this case, its music. But perhaps the example can be applied elsewhere. When I reflect on all of this, I realize that receiving information of any kind, academic for instance, is not necessarily so different from listening to a record. Its certainly more than just memorization, critical thinking, or other mental processes normally associated with learning. In fact, my “collection” of academic knowledge has been dramatically enriched by everything else that took place while in school, at conferences, or in the archive. From the thrill of putting on those white gloves the first time I handled historic photographs to the memories of my music professor’s leather pants and rants about punk music (“Roots of Rock and Soul”, a legendary class). Of course, I’m not saying Digital Humanists should abandon our, in my view, very essential goals. Its just that, thinking of Walter Benjamin’s library and my record collection, I think its also important to remember the central importance of the process of acquisition, not simply the content acquired.

Why We Blog? Time. Community. Hubris.

E. Bell — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:48:08 +0000

Recently, I had a conversation about blogging with my partner, who is a Montessori teacher. Often times as we share a ride home from work, she will discuss some aspect of her work day that leaves me impressed with her knowledge and insight about teaching and child development. More than once, I have suggested to her that she start a blog to share that knowledge and more than once she has shot down the idea, citing a number of reasons, my favorite of which goes something like “the thought of writing about work when I’m not at work literally makes me sick to my stomach! Really sick!” This got me to thinking about why I blog, often about things related to my work, and led me to come up with a typically offhanded formulation about why others do the same.

So what it is that distinguishes myself and others from the non-blogging majority? I propose three basic prerequisites to blogging: time, community, and hubris.

Time

The first is pretty obvious so I will assume that time does not need much explanation. Unless you are a professional blogger, you do it in your free time, and most of us don’t have enough of it to spend addressing a largely imaginary audience.

Community

Assuming one has time, I think you still need to feel like you are addressing or contributing to a community, broadly defined. When I blog, I usually imagine it will be of some use or interest to someone. Sometimes I know exactly who I am speaking to. If I write a tutorial about WordPress or Omeka hacks, for example, I know I am speaking to others who, like me, are hacking their way through a particular project, often piecing together information from forums, Google searches, colleagues and friends. I feel like that is a community (intermediate-level web developers?) of which I am part and whose needs I understand. I cannot emphasize how important that community has been to my ability to work, and in writing a tutorial I am attempting to carry my weight and give something back. In some ways, this is a reflection of my own belief in DIY and the punk rock spirit, two other topics (or is that just one topic?) that I’m likely to write about based largely on the idea that they are communities I value and to which I try to contribute.

Hubris

Okay, I know hubris is maybe a strange choice of words, but it got you reading this, right? And I think it suggests a broad set of characteristics or personality traits that contribute to the “blogging state of mind.” Twitter and other micro-blogging services typify this impetus in the extreme. Look at any group of seasoned twitter users and you will see links, links, links, along with a smattering of reviews, smarmy comments, mini-editorials, and self-promotional status updates. That’s what makes the form annoying/overwhelming for some people, but it’s also the essence of its greatness. Blogs leave a bit more wiggle room for complexity and nuance, but suggest the same motivation.

Further, it may be no coincidence that librarians and developers love (micro-) blogging. The fact that I am nominally both, I think, has much to do with why I blog (here, on Twitter, and elsewhere). As a librarian, I value information and seek to share it with others. It’s a big part of who I am and if I’m honest with myself I have to admit it’s because I’m kind of a know-it-all. Most librarians are to varying degrees, though it doesn’t always show because we tend to be a mild bunch. I like knowing I can find the answers to a wide array of questions and can synthesize them into something vaguely coherent. It’s very much a desire to be helpful, but it also takes some hubris to assume the position of oracle.

There’s an interesting post over at Full Stop Interactive that describes the Myers-Briggs personality type of hackers and developers in much the same way many have described librarians: an apparently paradoxical mix of utopian ideology and sensible shoes practicality that brings forth the opinionated, the didactic, and the resourceful. Despite what you think of Jungian psychology, it seems safe to assume that, while MBTI cannot fully classify the wholeness of personality, it seems to be onto something when you look at aggregate career-specific data. Again, these two groups that often overlap and interact share personality type indicators and common interests that might contribute to their general blogginess. I would never suggest these are the only two groups that blog, nor the only groupings of personality to succumb to the siren call of the know-it-all culture. What my blog post presupposes is that those of us who blog share something in common with one another and maybe with one of these groups. With my partner, the non-blogging Montessori teacher, I share many things in common but apparently not the traits that lead to blogging, whatever they may be.

There you have it. My cockamamy theory about blogging, complete with bloggerific abruptly non-conclusive ending. What do you think? Am I onto something? Have you read or heard anything similar elsewhere? Or is it total baloney?

Image Credit: made using Big Huge Labs’ Motivator

A Sililoquy on the Cassette Tape and other Analog Wonders

E. Bell — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 04:16:24 +0000

Yes, I know it’s 2010 (pronounced “twenty-ten”), and I know that nostalgia for the analog age is a 30-something cliche, and I know the cassette has become a sickening node of ironic culture. But for just a few minutes, I ask you to set aside your pernicious Family Guy-inspired liking for hackneyed 80s references to consider the cassette as it should be understood: as a lost assertion of our basic rights, a technological and social artifact, and a symbol of friendship, grassroots culture and low-fi audiophilia.
I’m not really going to get deep into the history of the cassette but I think it’s worth noting that tapes “changed everything” as they say. Music became smaller, more portable, cheaper (actually, freer), more contentious, more ubiquitous, and both more and less intimate.

When considering cassette media, we need to ponder the hardware that was used to play it. The cassette gave us The Walkman and the “boombox” – two devices that couldn’t be more different. One, the Walkman, was meant to shut out the world, to bring the music closer, to retire into the imagination and the inner world of musical sensation. The other, the boombox, or “ghetto blaster”, was meant to bring imagination and musical sensation into the outer world. The Walkman is an extension of the teenage bedroom, domain of the vinyl LP. The boombox is an extension of the club, the car, the party, and perhaps the penis – a manifestation of action, performance, and bravado. Think Radio Raheem when you think boombox. Whatever you do, do NOT think Lloyd Dobbler, that sappy new romantic who reappropriated his boombox as a two-way Walkman. The boombox was urban, evolving into the “system” – the window-rattling audio menaces one might encounter when stopping your car next to a ’91 Civic with gold spinner rims. The Walkman was suburban, evolving into the iPod – a tiny, consumer-fetishized personal technological wonder. Culturally, I think these two very conflicting devices actually worked in tandem to create an atmosphere in which divisions of youth (and sub/counter) culture became more distinct, more visible, more confrontational and also more accessible – a commodity-identity that could be easily recognized and digested and therefore easily bought and sold.

Still, the cassette was a continuation, as were its followers. Like a vinyl album, it retained the “flipside.” This was an essential component of musical media that was not removed until the birth of the CD, a small (i.e. cassette-like?) disc (i.e. album-like?) media which was capable of high fidelity sound (i.e. album-like?). The displacement of the CD by the mp3 removed the physicality of all prior formats but combined the reproducibility, portability, and low-fi impermanence of the cassette with the single serving goodness of the 7″ vinyl single/EP. It was not until fairly recently that mp3 recordings began to match the high fidelity of CDs and vinyl LPs, and even still the mp3 is most often consumed one song at a time (rather than by the album). The introduction of both the cassette and the mp3 format launched the recording industry into a hissyfit panic that some people might copy content instead of buying it, and both technologies came along right at a time when mainstream record labels were putting out the kind of banal garbage that helped make that true.

But even though the early mp3 resembled earlier formats in some senses, in others it was music/youth culture’s waterloo – the end of an era in which music was an all-powerful, awe-inspiring, cultural force; a refuge that was both in plain sight and deeply underground; equally technical and nebulous. It signaled the beginning of a new era where music became a capitalist accessory, a component of yet more shallow spectacle, an economic asset used primarily to sell physical and sensory widgets. Sure, we can look back to the late 1960s and see similarities in the commodification of hippy/beat culture, but nobody was using The Velvet Underground to sell car tires, mainly because ad execs (not to mention the general public) didn’t know who the VU were. (Yes, that linked ad is from 1993 – roughly “the year punk broke” to name another watershed moment – yet it still illustrates the music as advertising appliance approach that has become even more common since the late nineties/early aughts.) Now, anyone with an internet connection can find, read about, and download that Moss Icon EP I searched for across several months within a matter of seconds. When a thing becomes too easily accessible, it loses its value. If diamonds grew on trees, nobody would be interested, except for their industrial value.

Which brings me back to the point of this little rant. I am deeply sad, forlorn even, that music is meaning less to me these days. Perhaps it is age, but I think it has even more to do with the ritual, culture, and physicality of the cassette, as contrasted with modern equivalents, which are far more casual, and it is on that theme that I shall continue to opine without further asides.

The mixtape, an icon of 80s and 90s culture, was (and is for some purists still) a deep symbol of friendship and even love, representing a ridiculously large commitment of time and energy. I have given and received mixtapes that went through so may edits and overdubs that in the quiet between songs you could hear layer upon layer of other songs, some that didn’t fit the mix, some that made the cut but were moved elsewhere in the order, and others that were simply taped over for lack of a new and truly blank cassette. Labels and covers were almost always handmade, with evidence of their own revision and improvisation. I once received a mixtape recorded over a factory-issue Best of Chicago album that belonged to my friend’s father. She just popped the overwrite-protection tab and taped right over “Saturday in the Park”, confirming that all was well in the world. Unlike the burned CD, a sterile object of disinvestment only Stanley Kubrick could love, a great mixtape was a palimpsest of aural, cultural and emotional information.

Although the dubbed cassette was not as personalized as the mixtape, it could still be deeply personal. The dubbed cassette was the lo-fi copy you got from your friend who had an album you didn’t own yet, or maybe had never even heard of before. My first dub was Appetite for Destruction (side A) and Eazy Duz It (side B). The height of my dubbing excess came about a decade later, when I spent roughly a week digging through a new friend’s collection of obscure oi!, streetpunk, and viking rock, dubbing each album and transcribing the songs onto little pieces of notebook paper that I folded into the tape cases to serve as makeshift liner notes. I honestly cannot imagine listening to any of that music on any other physical format and even though I would have loved to find my own original copies of some of that stuff (for bragging rights), part of me was always okay with just having the scammed copy. A few years ago, my tape deck (a wood paneled top loader with 4 level sliders on the top) broke for the last time. I put those tapes, and dozens more, out on the street in my densely populated urban neighborhood, hoping someone would find and cherish them. Without my noticing, it rained heavily that day, soaking the box, the labels, and the covers. Nobody, save for the garbage man, ever came for them. A shameful moment indeed, but instructive. The dubbed cassette was both a second class citizen and an object of desire and affection, the Sally Hemmings of your record collection. It represented the inferior but also the exotic. It was special and prized but also kept to the side, segregated from your more conventionally desirable items, except for those moments when you were alone, when you traveled, or when you wanted to impress your savvier friends with your more obscure tastes. In the end, unceremoniously abandoned.

I could go on some more about the importance of the cassette to DIY and punk culture, but I’ll leave that alone. I could also talk about taping crappy pop songs off the radio so I could lip sync to them in my childhood living room, or how I once faced two single-deck boomboxes at each other in order to make a copy of Licensed to Ill, but I don’t want to spread the schlock too thick here. Instead of grasping at the sky in agony over my lost passion for music, I’ve decided to reinvest myself in vinyl and try to set aside times to just listen to music – not on my phone, not while I’m walking down the street or in the elevator, but listening to music while I’m… listening to music (okay, I might read a magazine, but an analog one for sure).

As Steve Albini put it back in the day, “The future belongs to the analog loyalists. Fuck digital.”

Note: I “dubbed” the above image from the Internet and photoshopped in what may well be the real title of a real tape I may or may not have made for or received from a friend circa 1989.

Adding an Image Lightbox in Omeka

E. Bell — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:03:21 +0000

Maybe it’s just me, but I had a heckuva time trying to figure out how to implement Lightbox 2 in Omeka. After piecing together info and code from here and there, then adding my own little improvements, I’ve constructed a simple little 4-step guide to document the process and, hopefully, help make this process a little less vexing for others out there who aren’t PHP and Java Script pros.

Step One: Get the Lightbox Package

The first step is to get the latest LightBox 2 package here, where you will find a quick explanation of how it works and how to get started.

Step Two: Modify and Upload the LightBox Package

Once you have the package, make sure it’s in a folder called “lightbox” and upload it to your Omeka theme directory inside the “common” directory where your header and footer files are located. Take the image files and copy them to your theme’s “images” directory.

Inside common/lightbox/js directory, find the file called “lightbox.js” and set your configurations. This is where you set your lightbox behaviors (overlayOpacity, animate, resizeSpeed, borderSize, etc.) and also where you tell LightBox how to find the images and labels to display Close and Loading. When setting the former, you can fiddle with the defaults to get the style you need, it’s pretty easy to understand. For the latter (image locations), you can use either a relative or a direct URL. If a relative location (e.g. ‘../images/loading.gif’) does not work for you, try using the direct URL (e.g. ‘http://www.yoursite.com/omeka/themes/themename/images/loading.gif’). My impression is that Omeka requires the direct URL for some reason. You could probably leave the images in the “lightbox” directory and point to them there as well.

Step Three: Modify your Omeka Theme Header

Add the script to your theme header (be sure to modify with your actual theme name):

Pretty basic.

Also, you’ll want to either copy the LightBox CSS styles into your theme’s stylesheet or move it to the theme styles directory and link to it in your header. Either way, be sure to double check that your images are properly linked. I find that having the LightBox styles included in a single stylesheet is preferable, but if you want, you can use something like this after moving lightbox.css to your theme directory:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/lightbox.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />

Step Four: Modify Your Omeka Items-Show Page

This is where I got hung up. The site I was working on has multiple file types — not just images, but also audio and video. I was lucky enough to find a starting point on the Omeka Dev Google Group as well as on the Omeka Forums, but the code was written for item pages with a single image file. Since I’m not great with arrays, it took me a while to come up with the imperfect code below.

	
	<div id="itemfiles" class="element">
	    <h3>Filesh3>
		<div class="element-text">
		    < ?php 
		    if (item_has_thumbnail()) 
					{
					echo 'Click the Image for Full Size';
					echo display_files_for_item(array('linkAttributes'=>array('rel'=>'lightbox[group]'))); 
										}
			else
				{
				echo display_files_for_item();
				}
			?>
 
		div>
 
	div>

This script will test if the item has a thumbnail (i.e. “is it an image?”). If it does, it will display the files as square thumbnails and give them ‘rel=”lightbox[group]“‘ – clicking on images with the “lightbox” relation in the URL will prompt the light box; if there are two or more images associated with the file, the ‘[group]‘ part will kick in to add the Next and Previous buttons. If the item file is not an image, the script calls the generic Omeka function display_files_for_item(), which will automatically call the media player (for audio and video) if needed.

A pretty easy process when you have it all right in front of you. Hope this will be helpful to someone out there.

NOTE: I’ll continue to update this post with any improvements. If you have a problem, fix, or improvement to share, please add it in the comments or catch me on Twitter (@ebellempire). I’ve also cross-posted this tutorial in the documentation wiki at Omeka.org, so feel free to contribute there as well.

Creating a Blog Topics Directory in WPMU 2.8 + BuddyPress 1.1

E. Bell — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 03:28:12 +0000

I recently set up an installation of WordPress MultiUser (WPmu) + BuddyPress for the History Department where I work. We have a number of different user groups on the site, including Courses, Workshops, and Projects. Eventually we will also have Personal sites (for students, staff, and faculty in the dept.) and perhaps some small organizations and campus groups. Right now the site is small, so it would be reasonable to manually create and maintain a topical directory. As the site grows, however, this could become a burden to say the least. Nobody likes to do that kind of crap – not even graduate assistants. So with the help of an outdated plug-in and a couple of tiny hacks, I easily created a directory of Blogs by Topic so I never need to hand code the directory. Read on to find out how.

To begin with, I’m using Deanna Schneider’s very handy Blog Topics For WPMU. Basically, Blog Topics creates a field in the relevant Settings, Registration and BuddyPress areas in which your users choose from a drop-down of admin-defined topics. They cannot create new topics, they must use the ones you set, so keep that in mind. The Site Admin can manually set the Topic for any blog at any time; this might be necessary if you already have a handful of blogs on your site (or you could demand that your users do it themselves because this is all about being lazy). Some users might misfile their site in the wrong category, but you can always go in and edit any blog’s Topic; they probably won’t even notice.

You might be wondering why I would write a tutorial for installing a plug-in. Well, I’m not sure if the plug-in code has some deprecated elements or if it just doesn’t play nice with the new BuddyPress theme structure, but it’s actually a bit more complicated than just installing the plug-in. For whatever reason, the documentation for this plug-in is pretty weak and some of it just doesn’t seem to work without some tweaks. That’s where I come in to sum up my hours of frustration with what now seems like an obvious process.

Here’s the drill…

Install the plug-in in your wp-content/plugins folder and activate it on your parent site. The plug-in comes with a nice little widget for your MU child sites, but it won’t help you here so consider it optional.
Inside the wp-content/plugins/blog-topics directory, you will find the file cets_blog_topics_page.php (a WordPress page template). Copy this file to the root of your site’s parent theme file. If you are using BuddyPress 1.1, that means themes/bp-sn-parent.
Now, take that file and mess it all up according to the instructions below. Unfortunately, in the plug-in’s current state (v. 0.3.2), the default file just doesn’t work, but after digging around in the code, I found some functions that work quite nicely and can be easily integrated into your BuddyPress directories. Again, you will need to save this to the root of your theme.
Create a page called Blog Topics Directory (or whatever) and apply the Blog Topics Page template you just created.

< ?php
/*
Template Name: Blog Topics Page
*/
?>
< ?php get_header(); ?>
 
	<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">
 
		< ?php do_action( 'bp_before_directory_blogs_content' ) ?>
 
		<div class="page" id="blog-page">
 
			< ?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
 
				<h2 class="pagetitle">< ?php the_title(); ?>h2>
 
                                
 
					<ul id="topic-list">
					<li><a href="#topic1">Topic 1a>li>
					<li><a href="#topic2">Topic 2a>li>	
					<li><a href="#topic3">Topic 3a>li>	
					<li><a href="#topic4">Topic 4a>li>	
					<li><a href="#topic5">Topic 5a>li>	
					ul>					
 
	
 

<a name="topic1">a>
<h2 class="pagetitle">< ?php echo cets_get_topic_name('1') ?> Blogsh2>  
< ?php echo cets_get_blogs_from_topic_id_html('1'); ?>
 

<a name="topic2">a>
<h2 class="pagetitle">< ?php echo cets_get_topic_name('2') ?> Blogsh2>  
< ?php echo cets_get_blogs_from_topic_id_html('2'); ?>
 

<a name="topic3">a>
<h2 class="pagetitle">< ?php echo cets_get_topic_name('3') ?> Blogsh2>  
< ?php echo cets_get_blogs_from_topic_id_html('3'); ?>
 

<a name="topic4">a>
<h2 class="pagetitle">< ?php echo cets_get_topic_name('4') ?> Blogsh2>  
< ?php echo cets_get_blogs_from_topic_id_html('4'); ?>
 

<a name="topic5">a>
<h2 class="pagetitle">< ?php echo cets_get_topic_name('5') ?> Blogsh2>  
< ?php echo cets_get_blogs_from_topic_id_html('5'); ?>
 
 
 
 
			< ?php endwhile; endif; ?>
 
		div>
 
		< ?php do_action( 'bp_after_directory_blogs_content' ) ?>
 
	div>
 
< ?php get_sidebar(); ?>
 
< ?php get_footer(); ?>

You could probably find any number of ways to integrate this into your theme’s Blog Directory. Although I might eventually change it, right now, I’ve just added a link to the Blog Directory sidebar which users can… use… to Browse Blogs by Topic. If it helps, here’s a link to the site where this code is being used. Again, it needs some tweaking but this should get you started. Hope this quick fix has helped.

If you’re wondering why this post has a giant image of Brak (among other notable “buddies”) at the top, or if you just need a break from all this BuddyPress nonsense, you might need to listen to this…

Brak sings Yeah Buddy (via brakbuddy.ytmnd.com)

The Spectacle, the Social Web and You

E. Bell — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 21:15:31 +0000

“The only historically justified tactic is extremist innovation” – Debord & Wolman, A User’s Guide to Détournement (1956)

I’ve been thinking about the Situationists for about a decade now, after learning of Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle in some Propagandhi liner notes (I think) about a decade ago. Sadly, after all that time, I’ve developed no great insights as to what the hell they were talking about. I mean, I get the gist if that counts for anything, but I think to really grasp what they’re really getting at, one needs a graduate seminar and plenty of contextual knowledge. Nevertheless, the shit is damn brilliant and informs my worldview in many ways (most of which are surely based on misreading). Since presently, I do what one might call information work, and as a result have become heavily invested in the web and social networking, I’ll use this post to share some cool films by the Situationist International (SI), and briefly look at how the SI’s ideas of spectacle, détournement, and separation apply to the social web.

Social networks as commodified existence…

I’ve always felt a certain ambivalence toward the Internet, particularly as it has become the prime mediator of social and professional interaction. Obviously, we have experienced some real and perceived benefits due to our increasingly rapid adoption of technology (defining “technology” is problematic in many of the same ways as “information,” but let’s put that aside and assume I mean computers and electronics and stuff). We have increased economic opportunities (for some), more free time (theoretically), greater safety and efficiency, instant production and communication without regard to geography, and access to unbelievable amounts of information. But we can just as easily indict technology for it’s less benign social, political, and economic effects. A short list of technology’s less celebrated effects might include: modern global warfare, loss of personal privacy, environmental devastation, and political (as well as social, economic, and cultural) hegemony — all brought to new heights by liberatory (at first glance) technology such as industrial automation; steam, electrical, and combustion power; the telephone; modern media; and any number of innovations in digital computing. Of course, what we currently colloquially refer to as “technology” — the Internet — is equally hailed in alternation as a force for democracy and a catalyst for democracy’s demise. Obviously, both are true in their own argumentation, but miss the larger point altogether.

With the relatively recent explosion of Web 2-point-oh!, social networks, etc., we see something notably different than what was experienced with earlier technologies. Machines, electricity, cars, televisions, and the like, were all transformative and initially liberated in some sense; addressing (and inventing) needs, and conferring legitimacy and status to their early consumers. In those regards, the Web is not different. Where it departs from previous innovations is that it goes beyond creating, serving, and reinforcing consumer identity and consumer culture into actually displacing and disappearing the consumer as he exists in reality. Debord identified this tendency in …the Spectacle as it relates to earlier (1960s) cultural conditions, but it is ripe for application to the 21st century, with it’s ravenous tech fetishism and fascination with identity construction and maintenence through social networks.

As you may have guessed, I recently picked up Society of the Spectacle for some rereading and found that basically the entirety of the first chapter is as effective a deconstruction of 21st c. new media culture as it was of television, films, and advertising in 1967. Here’s a sample…

1

In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.

2

The images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudoworld that can only be looked at. The specialization of images of the world evolves into a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived. The spectacle is a concrete inversion of life, an autonomous movement of the nonliving.

3

The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as society itself, as a part of society, and as a means of unification. As a part of society, it is the focal point of all vision and all consciousness. But due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is in reality the domain of delusion and false consciousness: the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of universal separation.

4

The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.

5

The spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual excess produced by mass-media technologies. It is a worldview that has actually been materialized, a view of a world that has become objective.

6

Understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the result and the project of the dominant mode of production. It is not a mere decoration added to the real world. It is the very heart of this real society’s unreality. In all of its particular manifestations — news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment — the spectacle represents the dominant model of life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choices that have already been made in the sphere of production and in the consumption implied by that production. In both form and content the spectacle serves as a total justification of the conditions and goals of the existing system. The spectacle also represents the constant presence of this justification since it monopolizes the majority of the time spent outside the production process.

I could continue quoting ad nauseum (actually, you may already be throwing up), but I’ll leave it to the reader to read more if they choose. In the end, I’m still not sure where I stand on this. I like the internet. It’s amusing and often useful. And as a worker in information and technology, I am actually not alienated from my own work. More than ever, I have a high degree of control over the products of my labor. While I see the potential harm of these evolving conditions, I mostly see them in the bizarrely onanistic tweets/status updates of others. I, naturally, am able to rise above the unreality of mediated life — so much so that I’m thinking about purchasing an island timeshare in Second Life to serve as respite for my World of Warcraft guild. This, of course, would be done as an act of serious-parodic détournement (not to be confused with shallow irony), and thus would not be lame.

Détournement…

So, what is détournement? A quick but insufficient answer might be found reference to hip hop, web mashups, Marcel Duchamp, or Adbusters. “In détournement, an artist reuses elements of well-known media to create a new work with a different message, often one opposed to the original” (Wikipedia). A common example (though I’m not sure it was ever actually produced) would be to take the footage of The Birth of a Nation, and replace the text panels of that technical masterpiece with new music or text which would change (or détourne) the original meaning, from an egregiously racist historical lie, to something that crafts from the film’s intellectual content and technical strength an effective (and modern/correct/relevant) moral-political statement. As Debord & Wolman point out (1956), if such a project merely attempts to negate the meaning through irony, counter-argument or comedic juxtaposition, it misses the opportunity and the point. The best example I’ve seen, which serves as a better instruction than I can write, is René Viénet’s Can Dialectics Break Bricks?.

Film: Can Dialectics Break Bricks?: René Viénet, 1973: via U B U W E B

I’m not a great fan of the Debord films, though they do nicely illustrate, literally, the idea of the spectacular as it permeates our collective media life. As with social networks, academia and high culture, the images Debord détournes in Society of the Spectacle are, individually and collectively, simultaneously useful, beautiful, and inspiring, as well as banal, authoritarian and vacuous. Like all cultural products, their meanings are contextual and constructed and can serve many masters at once. The same is true of new media products, services, and cultural tendencies.

Film: Society of the Spectacle, parts 1 & 2: Guy Debord, 1973: via U B U W E B

Although new media culture has some very deep differences from traditional media culture working in its favor (openness, decentralization, interactivity), it’s yet to be seen how that will change over time. Likewise, will the ubiquity of web-mediated social interaction continue on its current trajectory (whatever that might be is actually unclear), or will it evolve into new and unexpected forms? I’ve got this idea that the (social) web is the perfect vehicle for détournement, though I’m less convinced it’s a worthy venue for cultural resistance. Any thoughts?

Building a WordPress Static Homepage with Dynamic Elements

E. Bell — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:07:30 +0000

One of the nice features of WordPress is the ability to create static homepages. While most blogs use the standard configuration, where users scroll vertically from the most recent to older blog posts, it often makes sense to use a static homepage instead — especially if you are looking to create a more professional looking site, or are using WordPress as a Content Management System. I recently tackled a project where we needed to create a static homepage with the following features

The homepage needed to look “homepagey” (i.e. not “bloggy”)
Client needed room for a short introductory text, which could be edited/updated on the fly without disrupting the homepage layout
The homepage needed to highlight the many features on the site, so that users could quickly scan the page, see what the site had to offer, and quickly find the latest update in each area.

This quick tutorial will share some code for reproducing something that meets all or some of those criteria. You don’t need to know much code to complete this tutorial, but a little helps. Once you create and implement your homepage template, you will need to use CSS to add styles and adjust the layout.

The Basics of Creating a Homepage Template

This is pretty well-documented elsewhere, but here’s what you need to know on the most basic level. If you are using a prefab theme, find that theme’s page.php file. Now take that file and make a copy called homepage.php (or really, whatever you like). Next, add the five lines below to the very top of the page (before the header and sidebar calls):

< ?php
/*
Template Name: Home Page
*/
?>

Now, when you edit or create the page you want to use as Home, you can choose the Home Page template and set it as the static homepage for your site in Settings >> Reading. But this won’t get you far. As is, this template just replicates the behavior of any page on your site. That’s not very exciting. Instead, let’s try adding some dynamic content to the template.

Note on custom theme_excerpt() function used below

Before you get all crazy and just copy-paste from the homepage code below, note that I am using a custom function to generate post excerpts. To use that function you must first create a file called functions.php and add the following code:

< ?php
function theme_excerpt($num) {
	global $more;
	$more = 1;
	$link = get_permalink();
	$limit = $num+1;
	$excerpt = explode(' ', strip_tags(get_the_content()), $limit);
	array_pop($excerpt);
	$excerpt = implode(" ",$excerpt).'...';
	$excerpt = preg_replace('`\[[^\]]*\]`','',$excerpt);
	echo ''.$excerpt.'';
	$more = 0;
}
?>

This will get you a more flexible excerpt function than the default WordPress one, the_excerpt(). I think I stole this from the Feed Me Seymour theme. You can call the function with theme_excerpt(n) where n is the number of words in the excerpt.

I’m going to break this up into sections, so if you are copy-pasting, you will need to copy all the sections below or pick and choose carefully, otherwise you might end up with some unclosed tags.

Preserving the Page text
Most of the text in a dynamic homepage is generated from feeds, posts, and database queries (i.e. not by adding it manually to the page called Home in your WordPress page list). In some cases, your Home page could be totally blank when accessed from the default page editor. However, you may want to give yourself the option of manually adding and updating text somewhere on your homepage. In the example below, we keep the WordPress page text intact by calling The Loop.

< ?php
/*
Template Name: Home Page
*/
?>
 
< ?php get_header(); ?>
< ?php get_sidebar(); ?>
 

 

         < ?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
		
 
			
				< ?php the_content(); ?>
			
				  < ?php endwhile; endif; ?>

An Internal Category Feed
Below we have the latest one post from the ‘News’ category. You can repeat this with other categories as needed. This is especially useful if you use the Category Visibility plug-in or some other means to hide/show certain category posts in certain areas of your site. In a recent project, for example, we created additional page templates for displaying posts in certain categories (Calendar Events, Timeline Events, Lesson Plans), but excluded them from the blog loop.




 
 

News
         < ?php $my_query = new WP_Query('category_name=news&showposts=1'); while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); $do_not_duplicate = $post->ID; ?>
 
                
    		
    		
                 echo get_bloginfo('url'); ?>/news">All News »  
                
 
    		Latest News
 
                
		 the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to < ?php the_title(); ?>">< ?php the_title(); ?>
			
                		
				< ?php echo theme_excerpt(30); ?> 
			
		
  < ?php endwhile; ?>

An External Feed
This code uses the WordPress core functionality that brings feeds into your Dashboard. I’m just pulling the title and link here, but you can do more. This is especially useful if your site incorporates another platform besides WordPress. In the example below, I use a feed from the Omeka platform (omeka.org), which I had tucked into my root directory, masquerading as a native section of the site.



 

Collections & Exhibits 
    		
    		 echo get_bloginfo('url'); ?>/omeka">View the Archive »
			
             
             
			< ?php  
			require_once (ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss.php');  
			$rss = @fetch_rss('http://www.myurl.org/omeka/items/browse?output=rss2');  
			if ( isset($rss->items) && 0 != count($rss->items) ) {  
			?>  
			Latest Additions
			  
			< ?php  
			$rss->items = array_slice($rss->items, 0,7);  
			foreach ($rss->items as $item ) {  
 			?>  
			 
			 echo wp_filter_kses($item['link']);?>">
			< ?php echo wp_specialchars($item['title']); ?>  
			  
			  
			< ?php } ?>  
			  
			< ?php } ?>  
			
 
		
  < ?php endwhile; ?>

A Special Plugin Feed (Simple:Press)
Lots of plugins generate their own feed. Here we have an internal feed from the Simple:Press forum plugin (simplepressforum.com). Such plug-ins generally use custom functions, such as the one below, the rules for which are defined in the plug-in documentation.



Discussions
    		
    		 echo get_bloginfo('url'); ?>/forum">View Forums »
			
			Latest Topics
				
				< ?php sf_recent_posts_tag(3, false, true, true, true, 0, false); ?>

Listing all Pages
Normally, you should list all your pages in the header navigation, but in this case I had too many pages to list there, some of which didn’t belong in the navigation. I listed only the pages that were not part of the header navigation or the footer (About, Contact) in this section. You can find more info about wp_list_pages() here.


<li>
<h2>Moreh2>
 
    	<div class="post" id="more-list">
			<ul>
			<h3>< ?php wp_list_pages('title_li=&depth=2exclude=1,2,3,4,5,6') ;?>h3>
			ul>
	div>
li>

If you are copy-pasting, don’t forget to add the footer to end your page

< ?php get_footer(); ?>

Of course, there are plenty more tricks out there. Frankly, these aren’t that special, but they seem fundamental. If this helps you, let us know in the comments.

Liberal Guerillas to Fling Terror Poo at G-20 Summit!

E. Bell — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:07:35 +0000

I will rarely address current events on this site, but a friend of mine in PA sent me a link to a completely ridiculous story from KDKA TV News Pittsburgh, a CBS affiliate. Hit the break for the video and the full story, annotated with my first hand clarifications. If you think Fox News is the only one towing the right wing agenda, think again. Luckily, these dupes are so roundly unconcerned with journalistic standards that their absurd inferences and tabloid commentary actually (almost) come across as satire.

Let me clarify a few understandable journalistic mistakes here, since I frequent the liberal terror underground (also known as Ikea).

1. “Sources indicate that graffiti left under a downtown bridge was put there by G-20 protestors… [video shows graffiti reading "We the People..."]“

That was me. It actually said “G-20 is a total dick, dude” before we changed our minds and went with an obscure quote from noted Anti-American radical, the US Constitutional Convention.

2. “A fire at a local park was reportedly started by protestors staying in a tent… [video shows extinguished campfire hole]“

I’m not sure how they figured it out, since I left no apparent evidence, but that was also me. Camping is one of the most extreme of all seditious acts, and provides a great ambience for toasting vegan s’mores and planning future acts of librul terror.

3. “A young man, who did not want to be identified, says he’s been told protestors are renting South Side homes…. [video shows a conspicuously disguised hippy-surfer type listlessly exclaiming 'people are gonna die.']”

That was actually me, incognito of course, dressed as “a total duder from Portland.” I will just say it now, I am an agent provocateur for the Securities and Exchange Commision. The disguise was chosen by my case agent, who has been watching a lot of John From Cincinnati.

4. “Sources indicate protestor advance teams have been spotted by police taking video and photographs of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Omni William Penn Hotel, City Hall, County Courthouse, Fort Pitt and Liberty Tunnels… [video shows rapid fire montage of these and other buildings]“

After some extensive investigation, it appears this one was just Japanese tourists.

5. “Sources indicate highly-organized protestor advance teams are mapping out possible attack points…”

The sources actually differ here, which was not disclosed by the crack team of KDKA investigative journalists. While some observers report that the Anarchist Black Cross was behind this nefarious “mapping,” key detainees have claimed innocence, insisting they are geocaching enthusiasts caught up in the haze of espionage. Others still insist that it was actually a roving band of GIS hacks building a geolocation iPod app for the PA Board of Tourism.

6. The part about “stockpiling human waste.”

That’s totally true, but unrelated.

In all seriousness, our media continues to plumb the depths in pursuit of the ever-growing simpleton demographic. My special lady fired off a nice letter to KDKA that sums it up nicely. If you are so inclined, you might do the same.

Dear Marty Griffin,

A friend of mine sent me link to your report about protesters at the G20 summit. I must say that you made your channel and it’s staff look foolish and anti-American. The tone of the entire piece treated protesters like terrorists. Peaceful protest is LEGAL and it is a truly American act. I am very curious as to how rigorous the source and fact checking was on your “feces throwing” accusations. The graffiti you showed was a quote from the preamble of our constitution yet you treated it as if it came from some terrorist manifesto. You gave no evidence that what was obviously the remains of a basic camp fire came from radical, pyromaniac agitators. I am sick and tired of the scare tactics used by so many local news channels both in my hometown of Cleveland and in Pittsburgh. You show little respect for your audience and appear to take for granted the freedom of speech that keeps you and other more serious journalists in business.

Experimenting with Historical Thinking and Web 2.0: The Little Rock Nine

Justin Hons — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:26:08 +0000

Somewhat self-righteously, I consider myself a pretty good teacher. I teach high school modern American History on the west side of Cleveland where some consider making it to the end of the day a victory. I’ve been slowly pushing myself and my students to aim for goals much higher however. Call me audacious. The recent explosion amongst the ranks of historians, history teachers, and digi-gurus in promoting both historical thinking skills (See Wineburg and the site) and web 2.0 technologies demands serious attention with this goal in mind. The two can be intimately tied together to achieve a mastery of both.

My experimentation with these concepts and methodologies has been occasional up until this year. I’ve used primary source documents in class before and typically in a constructivist fashion. Combining web 2.0 would allow students to publish their final products on a public medium. I decided to start a Myspace page to serve this purpose. I know, I know, Rupert Murdoch has already purchased my soul and sold it to Bernard Madoff who in turn sold it to some Mormons in a bizarre pyramid scandal. I’d estimate that about 60-70% of my students have Myspace pages and about half of those use Myspace seem to use Myspace as their primary internet activity. In fact, about two years ago, a community center up the street from the high school had a computer lab where Myspace use was so rampant the center had to make certain times “Myspace free.” In other words, the site seems extremely popular amongst my student population. Regardless, I figured Myspace would be an easy way to trick kids into thinking I was playing in their world in hopes of greater participation. And it worked…. kind of.

We had been studying the Civil Rights movement, and I really wanted students to figure out, using primary sources, how de-centralized the movement was. I wanted them to grasp how normal folks, including students in high school like them, were moved to courageous action. Young people are increasingly aware of leaders beyond Martin Luther King Jr. but knowledge of groups like SNCC is sparse. I wanted to encourage my students to see beyond the master narrative of “I have a dream” speeches to understand just how involved folks their age were in this push for freedom.

Students were divided up into groups of three to four and given six front pages from 1957 editions of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. They had to use articles from these newspaper front pages to write a three paragraph blog entry on the Little Rock Nine and post it alongside their peers’ on my Myspace page. The results were an interesting mix from fairly terrible to pretty interesting. None were shockingly brilliant, however. This is not surprising though. My guess is that few, if any, history teachers in these students’ classrooms have encouraged them to look at primary documents, decode them, and then “publish” a written recreation of their contents. Take a look at your old college essay on the Vietnam before you’re too critical of these kids.

Nonetheless, there were some apparent obstacles that need to be considered for future activities of a similar nature. First, the use of the articles as not just primary sources but the only sources they could use proved difficult and problematic at times. Some groups really struggled to put together a coherent narrative beyond essentially cutting and pasting interesting facts from the newspaper. Some failed to even do this chronologically. One group stated, “After 8 Africans [sic] entered the school across the street. They tried to call other students to join them but they were pushed back by guards.” This was after they already mentioned the students entering the building and members of the 101^st helping them. While this might be intellectual Viagra for a few choice grad students looking to deconstruct the Western obsession with chronology as history, any educator would see it for what it is: an inability to properly read the articles together rather than as separate documents.

Additionally, several groups included sentences like, “As six negros tried to enter NLR high white students pushed them back because they did not want them at there school.” Frustrating grammar and spelling errors aside, I’m hoping you noticed the antiquated term “negro” in that depiction of the Little Rock Nine. Seeing as how the kids in this group are all Puerto Rican and not rednecks, they were clearly just adopting the language of the 1957 Arkansas Gazette journalists. While most groups did not make this mistake, it’s clear that more work needs to be done on the interpretation side of using primary sources. Thinking historically does not necessitate using outdated language.

Another component that troubled me was the discussion of violence within the narratives. Clearly, anyone with even a basic understanding of the Little Rock Nine case is aware of the intense mob violence that accompanied the desegregation of Central High School in 1957. Some students failed to grasp the level of violence through these primary sources though. “That caused a big chaos because at lest 100 parents of the students and other adults lined up on the side walk in front of the high school an hour before classes recessed for the noon hours.” [sic] There is no mention as to what these students and parents did once they lined up in front of the school and this is where the blog entry abruptly ends. Lacking detail is to be expected, to a degree, in an assignment like this, but this clearly lacked understanding. Did this group really go away thinking this racist family picnic mob was there to simply “be heard?”

The issue of responsibility also arose in the blog entries. One group placed the white riots squarely on the Little Rock Nine’s boldness. “Due to court orders Faubus removed the National guard. After they were removed, the African Americans tried to enter the school causing the white young students to form a riot.” [sic] Perhaps this is splitting hairs, but there is no discussion of white racism being the source of these riots in this entry. I doubt the group of students, a racial mixture of whites, Puerto Ricans, and Arabs, meant for it to read this way. The difficulty comes into getting students to grasp that how they phrase things is perhaps more important than what their intentions are. This is an integral part of thinking and being able to write historically. When others read your interpretation of the past they do so with their own understanding, not yours. Getting students to convey their analysis of something as complex as the Little Rock Nine case is difficult but they should be encouraged to do so as clearly and thoroughly as possible.

One group attempted to retell the tale through the modern civil rights narrative which goes something like: “Black Americans worked hard to be recognized for their contributions and are now allowed the same opportunities as whites today.” It’d be interesting to see if this was sparked by group members comparing their experiences today to that of the Little Rock Nine but alas, this was not the assignment. The group concluded that “the students were allowed to go to the school with problems but at the same time they wre getting an oportuinty in life because some people dream of an opportunity while orthers wake up and work hard for it,” [sic]. I read this as an attempt to fit African-Americans into the American ethos of “hard work = success”, which is essentially what many watered down versions of the Civil Rights movement have become. This view lacks a historical understanding of the barriers of white supremacy and the struggles of grassroots organizing.

Clearly there is much work to be done here. Students need to engage and investigate primary sources much earlier on in order to be more comfortable and familiar with interpreting them. Perhaps they also need a little more scaffolding to get to the point where they can take on similarly styled projects. Nonetheless, the students did work with primary sources and did produce a piece of historical work on the topic. Like getting President Obama to publicly condemn Cambridge police officers for acting “stupidly,” it’s a relatively small victory but an important one. In doing so the participating students gained a greater understanding of the importance of historical interpretation, grassroots organizing during the Civil Rights movement, and their role in deciding what matters from the past.

Podcasts for History Teachers and Students

E. Bell — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:41:05 +0000

I’m one of those people who listens to NPR all day. In the shower, in the car, while cooking, as a Sunday morning activity with my partner. I almost never watch television, but I love passively listening to smart people talk, which is not really substantially different than watching dumb people swap wives when you get down to it. Though I suppose it’s also not unlike sitting in an undergrad history lecture. The point is, I like to be entertained and I also like to learn. And I like doing it with my ears, so I can use my eyes and hands for other things. What follows is an incomplete list of high-quality podcasts dealing with various topics in history.

BackStory: BackStory is one of my favorite podcasts in any genre. “On each show, renowned U.S. historians Ed Ayers, Peter Onuf, and Brian Balogh tear a topic from the headlines and plumb its historical depths.” In addition to the hosts’ impressive knowledge, the show has NPR quality production values and a great sense of humor and relevance. The show is a product of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, who produce a couple other shows (which I’ve yet to hear) through their VFH Radio project.

StuffYouMissedInHistoryClass: This one is produced by HowStuffWorks.com, which initially made me a bit skeptical. I was quickly won over though. Historians Candace Gibson and Jane McGrath investigate “the stories behind the lines of your textbooks.” The topics range from esoteric (e.g. the history of happiness) to topical (“Historically inaccurate movies”) to explanations (“How the Marshall Plan worked”) and conversations appropriate for younger students (“Did Betsy Ross really make the first American Flag?”).

BingeThinkingHistory: While the previous two podcasts are conversational and focus on American history, this project – a one man show by Tony Cocks - is oriented toward British and European history. Since I know very little about European history, I am both intrigued and confounded by the subject matter. Luckily the host has a dignified English voice and a knack for telling history in a narrative, documentary style that makes good use of music and background audio (e.g. the sounds of battlefield artillery). So I like it, even though I don’t really know what he’s talking about.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has a wide selection of “eminent historians discussing major topics in American history”, which they release as audio podcasts. My first impression of the project site was that this would be a stuffy, old-school academic series wherein pokey old coots discussed their own greatness by way of displaying their mad lecture skillz. I also thought it would cater primarily to college students and other academics. In fact, there are some really interesting and informative lectures here, and it serves as a really great resource for pretty much any group above maybe middle school. I noticed a handful of high school teacher comments on the project site, reminding me that some teachers actually challenge their students to do real historical thinking. Imagine that.

HistoryPodcast/HistoryOnAir … “Jason Watts is the host of History Podcast and an amateur historian. It should be noted that he is not a professional.” That’s what it says on the site, but ignore that (or sit and quietly appreciate it). Jason does a good job of documenting his sources and telling historical stories, and has been doing it since 2005. This is actually a nice little operation, and it looks like Jason is beginning to use video and visualization tools so this is one to watch. Users can submit topics, ideas, and even scripts for new episodes. Also of note is the provision of transcripts and citations for each episode, which is handy for students who might want to explore a topic in more detail. There’s also a big list of additional podcasts you might want to check out.

So there’s a brief list. I actually have a backlog of additional podcasts in my iTunes library that I haven’t had time to review, so I may add more to this post or continue the topic in a new post as I find more quality podcasts. Please use the comments section to suggest some others you like.

Overheard in the Learning Management System

E. Bell — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:07:11 +0000

Like any zealot, I spend weekends, evenings, social engagements, and holidays ranting about the things that really get on my nerves. Today, July 4th, a day commemorating the birth of our glorious nation, I spent the early afternoon orating on the relative merits of the LMS in hopes of fomenting revolution. I am currently taking an Information Architecture course, ironically offered only through BlackBoard, the arch-nemesis of all that is righteous and enlightened in higher education, a blithely tyrannical George III to Web 2.0′s promise of digital democracy, a naval blockade on usability and information seeking behavior, an unjust tax levied on the collective sanity of the student body.

Maybe I’m taking this too seriously, you say? Well, what did you do to celebrate America today? Eat some hotdogs? Listen to some Lee Greenwood tunes? I think it’s clear who the real patriot is. Hit the break for the full thread. Names have been changed to protect the innocent, the neutral, and the obsequiously monarchical.

Click on the image for the full size view or scroll down for the transcript…

Click image for full size view

ME: Can we discuss the IA of Blackboard? I’m not trying to complain. I understand why it is useful for instructors, but it is pretty rough on student users (poor organization, poor labeling, poor navigation, seemingly no interest in student information needs/behaviors, etc.). I think it might actually be an interesting case study. Then again, I’ve been reading a lot of Jim Groom lately
STUDENT:I couldn’t agree with you more. Clunky and awkward at best isn’t it?
STUDENT:I agree, it could use a little better organization. Sometimes there are 2 left-hand navigation menus, that’s unusual.
STUDENT: Very good observation, because I was thinking about that when I first used the site. So context is covered, and content is covered, but it could be more USER friendly. This site is built for knot-item seeking. Once you learn the system, you can get to where you need to be and use the system.
INSTRUCTOR: It’s interesting to see what both student and faculty users have to say about Blackboard. I’ve yet to meet anyone who is thrilled with it. Here are a couple of items that might shed some light on why Blackboard is designed and arranged the way it is:1) The students don’t get to see this, but there are actually three sets of users who can interface with Blackboard: Course Designers, Instructors and Students. Depending upon roles to which you’ve been designated, there are three different “tabs” one could access: Build, Teach, and Student. Students don’t see these tabs because they only have one role — Student. All three roles/tabs have access to the same “Course Tools” (the first set of left-hand navigational choices). However, the next set of tools change depending upon the roles to which you have access. If you access the class as a designer, the bottom navigation is labeled “Designer Tools” and has a set of links unique to that role, if as an instructor, then “Instructor Tools”, if as a student then I believe it’s “My Tools.” Without knowing about the different roles, I can see how two, separate sets of global navigation would make no sense.2) Another part of Blackboard I think most users struggle with is the idea that the Course Tools don’t offer much other than a *completely* different way to access the content than offered through the Course Content home page. In building a class, the designer chooses the tools on the left, builds the assets, and then sets links to these assets in other places. Learning modules are sets of topical, sequential links to assets created using the other tools. Sound counter-intuitive? It is if you approach the course design and layout with a web/hyperlink mentality. And there’s the problem. This is elearning. We use the internet to access the training and we, as users, expect it to follow modicums similar to that of sites on the World Wide Web. And this is a fair expectation. However, Blackboard is instead arranged to give users access to the same material in a number of different ways, which is a good idea but read on.So based upon what we’ve been reading, why might users get frustrated with Blackboard. The first one is that even though it is a good idea to offer multiple roads to the same content, there is *no predominate organizational scheme*. Should I primarily use the global tools on the left because they never change? Should I navigate the course like a web site simply from the Course Content page? What is the main road? What if I’m serendipitous? How lost and confused could I become? Also the labels, while familiar, English words, may not be self-evident in their meaning. What is a “Learning module?” Where will that take me? I imagine that assignments will be part of the course content, but I’ve got this other button labeled “Course Content”, why should I choose one over the other?The good news is that the next iteration of Blackboard is seeking to address a number of these issues. Which is a good thing considering over 70% of all universities in the United States use Blackboard as their learning management system.
ME: There are many reasons why BlackBoard works for instructors and those listed are all relevant. I have designed courses, modules, and quizzes, and tracked student submissions, etc. in BlackBoard during my time as a graduate assistant for a professor who taught some “elearning” type courses.Aside from automating some administrative tasks (gradebooks, adding/tracking users, etc), I don’t see anything in BBs repertoire that justifies it’s poor usabiity and it’s high subscription cost to universities. For something so costly, you would think they would have invested in some user studies and maybe a post-1998 design upgrade. As far as I can tell, 95% of BBs functionality could be duplicated in WordPress (with a few plug-ins and maybe some creative use of GoogleDocs) or some other free/open source system. Of course, the university would have to support this with staff (maybe one guy and a server) and some minimal training for admins (probably less than what it takes to learn BB) and they would come out ahead over time (if not monetarily, then in staff development). Likewise, I’m not sure any LMS can devise a “learning environment” that suits real learning needs when they necessarily design around the generic admin/user. Plus, anecdotal evidence suggests that students are actually more engaged and interactive when they know they are working in the “open web” and not inside the BlackBoard blackbox.So I clearly have issues with BB that go beyond IA, but considering that I’m typing right now in a very tiny text box (maybe 80px high) with a broken editor (at least, using Firefox) inside a pop-up window, dreading the occasional BB-induced browser crash, etc.; the poor design just amplifies all the other issues I have with this system.I work in part as an educational technologist for the History Dept. (or at least for a few courses and workshops), so I know how hard it is to support unique projects and design around technological deficits (in software, user/admin ability, etc.), but I think we can do better than this.And again, I am not directing this at CSU (where I happily work) or the professor (who has limited, if any, choices when it comes to online course platforms). For anyone who is interested in exploring this topic, you can find some good debates online, many of which center around this guy:Jim Groom, Ed-Tech at Univ of Mary Washington, and inventor of “edupunk” movement. See his blog (http://bavatuesdays.com/) as well as interviews and stories in NYT and Chronicle of Higher Ed, among others. He of course is not the only person to voice dissatisfaction with BB, but he is by far the most visible.Sorry if I got carried away on this little side-topic, but I have seen many bright young minds crack under the weight of BlackBoard Happy 4th!

I Studied Medieval History Because I Thought it was the Metal Thing to Do

James Calder — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:18:09 +0000

Yes, that’s true. I even got a Master’s Degree. Now, I like history and other humanities for lots of reasons, not just because they’re sometimes kind of metal, but I figured that with my first post on this site I’d return to my roots and original reasons for liking history.

Strangely enough, this post will sort of fit in thematically with some of my others that are in the works in that one of my goals for this site is to highlight artists that I find interesting, under appreciated or just plain awesome. So, get ready for some awesome medieval and Renaissance artworks.

Also, just to be clear, by metal I mean like fucking metal man. Like with guitars and stuff. Got me?

Gustave Dore is really metal (he’s also from the 19th century, so, not medieval at all really. still super metal though)

I can appreciate the intricacies of Gustave Dore’s etchings on a purely artistic level. However, I can appreciate them much more on a purely metal level. I’d say his interpretation of Dante’s Divine Comedy is my favorite. For instance, Dore’s depiction for Canto XXVII shows the “Sowers of Dischord”, poor damned souls that they are, ripping themselves apart as their innards spew out.

Even his work on the Bible is pretty metal. This really brings the up the question, unanswered by many except for maybe Zao, as to why is it that the Bible and Christian imagery in general so metal?

I guess my first answer would be that both share a strange preoccupation with the Devil. In fact, looking at Dore’s work on the Diving Comedy its interesting to note that the majority of his etchings deal with the Inferno, as opposed to Purgatory or Paradise. I think this has much to do with the fact that hell, being what it is, would be the easiest to represent visually. Theologically speaking (if I were a medieval Catholic, or I guess the 19th century Dore too), evil/hell/satan could all be represented visually because evil/hell/satan were all tied to a notion of physicality, just like the human body (which was also treated with mistrust). The mind or spirit (like Paradise or God), on the other hand, were more ephemeral and, specifically, they were decidedly non-physical. This is all do to some big theological debates that led to a body/spirit = evil/good stance by the Catholic church. In any event, this theology would make it easier to picture or create an image of a monstrous horned demon than something of the “divine realm”. Before I get on some crazy tangent about dualism (boy could tell you some tales about the Cathar heresy)or even iconography, lets see what all this has to do with metal.

First off, I honestly have no real idea, but lets just muse for a second. I guess I’d say that metal, being really serious rock music, is concerned, as all great rock n roll is, with the human body and all of its more natural yet frowned upon needs and wants. By this I guess I mean drugs, sex, moving around a lot in an aggressive yet not necessarily coordinated manner, and loud noise. Given this, metal’s choice of Christian imagery is actually a pretty appropriate way, in my opinion, to enter such a debate. If satan=body, that makes him a pretty obvious rock n roll choice. I mean, why attack the 70s, 80s or 90s establishment when you can attack the historical root- the ancient and medieval church. I mean, they’re the one’s that started all this anti-body (like, not medicine), anti-sex, anti-cheap fun riff raff to begin with right?

As a side note, isn’t it kind of weird that a society would set itself up where its easy to visualize pure evil, but pure good is, by definition, not visually accessible? Just sayin’.

Hieronymus Bosch

Hieronymus Bosch (yes, I had to copy and paste his name) is probably the most metal of all medieval artists. Yes, he is in fact from the medieval period, albeit kind of late. Again, I’ll just flat out admit that I have no idea what his paintings are supposed to mean exactly. You would really think he was on drugs, although I’m guessing that he actually wasn’t, being the good Catholic that he was. But man, there’s all sorts of flying fishes, flowers coming out of people’s asses, a demon that’s literally shitting people into a hole. Its very intense and very metal.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, similar to Bosch in many ways, should also be mentioned here, although many of his most metal works are both very similar and of lesser quality than Bosch’s. The Triumph of Death is an exception to the last statement. I will also say that his depiction of the Tower of Babel (a copy hangs in my study) is quite epic, which is another aspect of metal. Epicness (?) is really important to metal, as it was to people during the medieval period. Its important to lots of people though, but it seems to me the further back in time you go, the more epic the stories are. Maybe that’s another reason for the Christian imagery. I mean, depending on who you talk to, the Bible is and is not many things. I would say, however, that few could deny that the Bible is quite epic.

Caravaggio

Caravaggio was also pretty metal, although he’s more Renaissance than medieval. Also, a lot of his paintings aren’t that metal, to tell you the truth. I’ll give him credit for the Medusa head (Greek mythology is also kind of metal) and that its possible he murdered someone. I don’t know, I’m not in love with the guy, but I’d feel bad leaving him off the list.

The Black Death

One of the most metal topics in medieval art was the Black Death, Bubonic Plague, the Plague (all great metal band names btw). Its just a metal topic, I don’t know. Its so metal its even kind of hard to explain. Hope you enjoy a few examples.

The Point?

Obviously, there’s really no point to this article, just thought it would be fun. If anything, I hope to turn people on to some great artists, especially Dore, Bosch and Bruegel because while each is totally famous, sometimes I think that they don’t get enough exposure, especially to certain audiences. Also, its an interesting historiographical framework. I mean, we’ve(historians) have imposed plenty of other subjectively constructed frameworks on the past (nation state, progress narrative, anything really- just read Hayden White, you’ll see what I mean), why not do something more fun. If not metal, how about Radical History as in like surfer radical, not politically radical. Think about it, it could be kind of postmodern or at the very least historical events would be connected only in the most nontraditional fashion. For example:

1965- Snowboards are invented- way radical.

1993- Bill Clinton, who loved weed and saxophones became president- totally radical.

1994- My friend Doug ate 6 burritos in one sitting- most radical.

See?

Also, just to be clear, by metal I mean like fucking metal man. Like with guitars and stuff. Got me?

Gustave Dore

Gustave Dore is really metal (he’s also from the 19th century, so, not medieval at all really. still super metal though). I can appreciate the intricacies of Gustave Dore‘s etchings on a purely artistic level. However, I can appreciate them much more on a purely metal level. I’d say his interpretation of Dante’s Divine Comedy is my favorite. For instance, Dore’s depiction for Canto XXVII shows the “Sowers of Dischord”, poor damned souls that they are, ripping themselves apart as their innards spew out.

Even his work on the Bible is pretty metal. This really brings the up the question, unanswered by many except for maybe Zao, as to why is it that the Bible and Christian imagery in general is so metal?

I guess my first answer would be that both share a strange preoccupation with the Devil. In fact, looking at Dore’s work on the Divine Comedy its interesting to note that the majority of his etchings deal with the Inferno, as opposed to Purgatory or Paradise. I think this has much to do with the fact that hell, being what it is, would be the easiest to represent visually. Theologically speaking (if I were a medieval Catholic, or I guess the 19th century Dore too), evil/hell/satan could all be represented visually because evil/hell/satan were all tied to a notion of physicality, just like the human body (which was also treated with mistrust). The mind or spirit (like Paradise or God), on the other hand, were more ephemeral and, specifically, they were decidedly non-physical. This is all due to some big theological debates that led to a body/spirit = evil/good stance by the Catholic church. In any event, this theology would make it easier to picture or create an image of a monstrous horned demon than something of the “divine realm”. Before I get on some crazy tangent about dualism (boy could tell you some tales about the Cathar heresy) or even iconography, lets see what all this has to do with metal.

First off, I honestly have no real idea, but lets just muse for a second. I guess I’d say that metal, being really serious rock music, is concerned, as all great rock n roll is, with the human body and all of its more natural yet frowned upon needs and wants. By this I guess I mean drugs, sex, moving around a lot in an aggressive yet not necessarily coordinated manner, and loud noise. Given this, metal’s choice of Christian imagery is actually a pretty appropriate way, in my opinion, to enter such a debate. If satan=body, that makes him a pretty obvious rock n roll choice. I mean, why attack the 70s, 80s or 90s establishment when you can attack the historical root- the ancient and medieval church. I mean, they’re the one’s that started all this anti-body, anti-sex, anti-cheap fun riff raff to begin with right?

As a side note, isn’t it kind of weird that a society would set itself up where its easy to visualize pure evil, but pure good is, by definition, not visually accessible? Just sayin’.

Hieronymus Bosch

Bruegel the Elder

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, similar to Bosch in many ways, should also be mentioned here, although many of his most metal works are both very similar and of lesser quality than Bosch’s. The Triumph of Death is an exception to the last statement. I will also say that his depiction of the Tower of Babel (a copy hangs in my study) is quite epic, which is another aspect of metal. Epicness (?) is really important to metal, as it was to people during the medieval period. It’s important to lots of people though, but it seems to me the further back in time you go, the more epic the stories are. Maybe that’s another reason for the Christian imagery. I mean, depending on who you talk to, the Bible is and is not many things. I would say, however, that few could deny that the Bible is quite epic.

Caravaggio

Caravaggio was also pretty metal, although he’s more Renaissance than medieval. Also, a lot of his paintings aren’t that metal, to tell you the truth. I’ll give him credit for the Medusa head (Greek mythology is also kind of metal), as well as the possibility that he murdered someone. I don’t know, I’m not in love with the guy, but I’d feel bad leaving him off the list.

The Black Death

One of the most metal topics in medieval art was the Black Death, Bubonic Plague, the Plague (all great metal band names btw). Its just a metal topic, I don’t know. It’s so metal its even kind of hard to explain. Hope you’ll enjoy a few examples.

The Point?

Obviously, there’s really no point to this article, I just thought it would be fun. If anything, I hope to turn people on to some great artists, especially Dore, Bosch and Bruegel because while each is totally famous, sometimes I think that they don’t get enough exposure, especially to certain audiences. Also, its an interesting historiographical framework. I mean, we (historians) have imposed plenty of other subjectively constructed frameworks on the past (nation state, progress narrative, anything really- just read Hayden White, you’ll see what I mean), why not do something more fun. If not metal, how about Radical History as in like surfer radical, not politically radical. Think about it, it could be kind of postmodern or at the very least historical events would be connected only in the most nontraditional fashion. For example:

1965- Snowboards are invented- way radical.

1993- Bill Clinton, who loved weed and saxophones became president- totally radical.

1994- My friend Doug ate 6 burritos in one sitting- most radical.

See what I mean?

I must also admit that this article had absolutely nothing to do with Digital anything, and for that I’m sorry. I have no problem if anyone wants to make a mash-up of Gustave Dore’s artwork to metal music. Maybe his interpretation of Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner with Iron Maiden’s Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner? Just a thought.

Next time: I much more serious article on d.a.levy and new media.

Related Reading: Wikipedia: Dualism (sorry for all the wikipedia links by the way, i promise better research next time)

Punk Rock and the Digital Humanities, part 1

E. Bell — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 01:59:03 +0000

As the dialogue on the emergent (yet increasingly passe?) edupunk movement has begun to penetrate the mainstream press, I’ve been thinking a lot about what the term might mean to my present occupation, and also about what punk rock has meant to me historically (both in terms of my personal history and also my views on History with a capital H). I’ll spare you the many cliched “life experiences” I’ve enjoyed as a result of my involvement in punk culture, and focus here on how it has impacted my views on art, literature, politics, society, technology and education (i.e. the (digital) humanities).

My friend Joe, a newspaper editor, once said something to the effect of “It’s kind of crazy how all the punks end up doing such interesting and serious work outside of punk when they ‘grow up.’” Okay, he probably said something a lot better and more impactful than that because I remember the gist of it years later. For some reason this brief conversation has stuck with me. As I moved through undergrad and grad school and into the professional world, I have consistently noticed the phenomenon in action. The best students, the best teachers, the best writers, and the best researchers all seem to have this common background. I have seen it and confirmed it in many of my (more interesting) colleagues and it shows in the work of many others whom I’ve never met. It’s a certain flair for innovation, improvisation, and investigation; a proclivity for self-education and DIY solutions; a disdain for convention and privilege; and an eye for finding humor and absurdity in unexpected places.

3 Chords is All You Need (… at Least to Start)

Yep. The Ramones first album proved among other things that you only need to know three guitar chords to make great music. But like many other punk bands, the music matured over time, becoming more complex as the artists began to hone their skills and increase their repertoire. Sometimes the music got better, sometimes it got worse as a result. Even though I never was able to master even the requisite three chords to start my own band, the “anyone can do this” attitude that punk embodied has carried over into everything I do. Most everything one might pursue has those metaphorical three chords — the trick, as with the guitar, is figuring out what they are.

In digital humanities, those three chords might be HTML, CSS, and PHP. (Maybe others have a different idea. I’m focusing here on the digital part because the humanities part – the content – is understood. Afterall, if you don’t have something to say, you shouldn’t be starting a “band.”) The degree to which you need these “chords” will vary depending on what you are trying to accomplish, as well as on the tools you use and the people you work with. But generally speaking, these three will set you up to start web publishing, and also give you a solid base for understanding other more complex programming languages and projects.

So you find the chords, you master them. Then on to the next challenge… and the next. Before you know it, you’ll be soloing on your hand-built keytar as your self-produced album rockets to the top of the prog rock charts. Or not. Maybe you’ll just keep pounding away at those same chords and finding new ways to use them. But the point is that it’s alright to start small (and/or stay small).

DIY or Die!

It’s not just that you can do it yourself but that you should. To me, there is no such thing as a major label punk rock band (at least not after about 1980). Being punk has always been about doing it yourself – sometimes out of necessity, sometimes by preference, and occasionally as an anti-capitalist or anti-authoritarian gesture. If you do it yourself, you are free to do it however you want.

Thus far, a lot of the digital humanities projects I’ve seen are tied to institutional funding and labor, proprietary content and technology, and bound by copyright and contractual obligations. It’s not that these projects are bad. Many are great. And they often benefit especially from connections gained through these affiliations. They also employ people, which is good. It’s just that they can also become organizationally bloated, unwieldy, and tenuous as a result. This doesn’t mean you have to run your semantic search think tank from your mom’s garage (though, hell, why not?), it just means keeping hierarchies in check and making sure you don’t lose control of your project, or lose sight of your goals. It also means learning as you go; tinkering, experimenting, and failing are all important.

No Rights Reserved

DIY is not about individualism, it can also be about leaning on (and contributing to) like-minded communities. Open source technologies and Creative Commons licenses are totally punk rock. Open platforms (like WordPress, Drupal, Omeka, etc.) and software packages (Gimp, OpenOffice, FireFox) share their code, encourage non-proprietary standards, and are often developed and maintained by a community of users/contributors. If you want to use them, you can do so for free. If you want to study them, make them better or bend them to your own needs, you can usually do that too. Most open source projects operate under some kind of Creative Commons license.

But open content is also important. Humanities research requires the use of all kinds of content. Running up against unnecessary copyright restrictions can be not only frustrating but can actually bring projects to a halt – especially digital archival projects operating under the aegis of larger institutions; institutions that are understandably (though sometimes paranoically) wary of litigation. There are two (or maybe three) significant archival repositories in my neighborhood. One opens its content to all comers because they have defined themselves as an institution committed to education and community. They allow hands-on access, digitization, and non-profit use of nearly everything in their collections. At the other end of the spectrum is the more hallowed institution. They believe that their collections are sacrosanct and that their artifacts exist to be preserved. They do not make anything available online and they forbid reproduction of any type (unless you pay a ridiculous fee) for fear that everyone is out to steal their content. They really believe that if they increase access, they will lose their standing. Direct quote: “These items are all we have! We can’t just let people download them! Then how will we make money or get funding?” As if they are bringing in a lot of money in their current state: offline, behind lock and key, and crippled by the analog DRM called fear of obsolecense. The people who will pay (i.e. commercial projects like documentaries), will pay anyway. If they can find your content. Overprotection creates a situation where the “wondrous” artifacts they preserve may as well have burned in Alexandria. It’s pretty annoying to know that the perfect set of historic image sits just across town, waiting to help you complete your groundbreaking, non-profit, community-based public history project, but it will cost you $1000 (or the equivalent in months of grovelling) to use it.

So why add to this problem with your own unnecessary copyright barriers? Open it up, and let people benefit from and build on your work. They’ll do it anyway, so what do you have to lose? (see also Stuart Geiger’s post on the topic). The point of your work is to make an impact (on communities, people, scholarship, your reputation, etc.). While nothing is more punk rock than throwing the ole’ “No Rights Reserved” on your blood, sweat and tears creation, CreativeCommons allows you to choose the degree of openness that suits your project, so no pressure… you poser.

Death to Posers and EduJocks

Punks hate nothing more than posers and jocks (and maybe Ronald Reagan). They are antithetical to all the punk believes in. Posers are an affront to the punk rocker’s unending need to measure and display authenticity. In edupunk and in the digital humanities (interesting how these seem to be tied together), there are also what might be called posers. We will call them EduJocks (I sure hope you heard it here first, but I doubt it). EduJocks adopt the outward persona of the digital humanist/edupunk, but lack the internalized commitment and understanding of the bigger picture. If you hear someone saying, “Well, BlackBoard is good for some things…” or “Too bad there’s no alternative to Microsoft Office/ContentDM/Adobe…”, cut them off and walk away immediately. You are in the presence of an EduJock. This could be like a Jeff Foxworthy bit. You know you’re an EduJock if… [ahem - this is what blog comments are for].

That’s it for Part 1. I’m getting tired of this right now, but I have plenty more to say. Stay tuned for Part 2, wherein I will blow your mind with another ludicrous application of the time-honored punk rock tradition of making everything you like be about punk rock.

Yes, this post ends abruptly. That’s because it’s punk rock. I’m exploring the form.

Here are some teaser topics for the next installation:

Framing: The Decline of Western Civilization

Liner Notes: The Original People’s University or Citation City

Lies My Teacher Professor Told Me

Judging an Album by it’s Cover (and/or the Record Label) or Style is Substance (the Medium is the Message)

Nihilism as a Valid Academic Perspective

Technology of Resistance?

The Brief Etymology of a Gay Bash

E. Bell — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:55:19 +0000

I went to library school because I am what some people call “intellectually restless” – constantly moving from one interest to the next. Honest people call this phenomenon by other names, such as “uncommitted,” “easily distracted” or “lazy,” but I prefer the more aristocratic “intellectually restless.” In any case, given my training and varied interests, I will occasionally pose imaginary questions on this site to give myself micro-research and reference problems. Please feel free to submit a real question and I’ll do my best to answer, and provide citations to any relevant digital sources (sorry, I will not read or find books in your library).

The inaugural Jefferson’s Newspaper Reference question was submitted by the curious 13 year old Latino boy that lives in my subconscious. His name is Martin. Martin asks, “What’s the deal with the word maricón? Why does it mean gay?”

Martin, let me tell you right now, I will be using Wiktionary. Deal with it.

Maricón is derived from marica, the Spanish language word for magpie – an Australian bird. The base of the word is Maria or Mary (the English word magpie is derived from another variation of Mary, Margaret), with the addition of the suffix -ica, which is diminutive and often derogotory. In other words, maricón translates into both “littly Mary” and “little bird.”

If you’re into gay bashing and/or Spanish language insults, this may come as no surprise. Mary is another slang word used to describe gay men — most often used by gay men. Gay men are also often referred to in terms that suggest aviation — fairy, for example, or another Spanish language word, pajarito, which has a couple connotations. Pajarito is a diminutive form of pájaro, meaning bird or sometimes parrot. In Spain, Guatemala, Mexico, and Venezuela, pájaro also means penis. Thus, pajarito means both little bird and little penis. Another double whammy.

Now, why are homosexuals so often equated to tiny virginal flying peckers? I have no idea. It’s very uncool and someone should get to the bottom of it.

But back to the question. I promised a solid source to Martin, and my Wiktionary-gleamed musings are not going to cut it.

In Marginalization of alternative gender and sexual identities: The role of normative discursive practices in Chilean society (2005), linguist Sara Balder describes use of the term as such:

A diachronic approach shows that maricón is derived from the proper name Maria. Accordingly, this female origin qualifies the term to connotatively recall feminine gender attributes such as weakness and submissiveness. Another parallel is that the term indicates submission not only in the social sense, but also in the sense of sexual passivity. In practice, this term is polysemous, and is primarily used to denote an effeminate and/or homosexual male, making it roughly synonymous with ‘effeminate sodomite’. I will refer to this primary meaning as (maricón 1).

Additionally, this term can also be used secondarily in reference to a bad, wretched, or harmful person (maricón 2). The relationship between these two senses can be best explained by the chaining approach (see Lakoff 1987), whereby maricón2 developed as a derivative of some of the characteristics of maricón 1. The characteristics, specifically, are those that give maricón 1 its negative connotation: maricón 1, which denotes an effeminate homosexual male, is connotatively negative in that homosexuals are considered bad, wrong, weak, deviant, and contemptible by dominant society. The chaining involved in the relationship of maricón 1 to
maricón 2 can be conceptualized as such:

maricón 1: effeminate passive
homosexual male
↓
effeminacy, passivity, and homosexuality
are bad, deviant, and wrong
↓
a maricón is a bad, deviant person
who commits wrongful acts
↓
maricón 2: a bad, wretched,
or harmful person

The resultant polysemous outcome is that a term used for homosexuals can also be used for other people who are disreputable, odious wrongdoers (maricón 2), even if they have normative gender and sexual orientation.

Read the full text here [PDF]. No mention of magpies, though.

Maricón In the News: Bill Richardson uses the term on the Don Imus Show, hampering his presidential bid and dampening his reputation as a strong supporter of gay and lesbian rights (2007): link

Maricón In the History: Fidel Castro, preeminent among gay-bashing jerks, allegedley sent his pal, writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to leaders of both Panama and Spain with one brief spoken message: “Dice Fidel que usted es un maricón” (“Fidel says you are a faggot”): link (hover for citation)

Barriers to Institutional Digital History

E. Bell — Sun, 17 May 2009 07:19:57 +0000

So, I really like the looks of this nifty little flowchart, though I’m not sure it’s logically consistent. In fact, it kind of reminds me of the inscrutable maintenance manual that came with my Taiwanese scooter. I’m feeling compelled to take it down and make some revisions, but I think it best to just move on to writing my little article about the challenges inherent in digital history at the institutional level. So here it is…

Introduction

After reading through the latest issue of Perspectives on History (May 2009), I’m thinking a lot about what exactly is meant by terms like “digital history” and “digital humanities.” On the surface these seem like pretty intuitive ideas. You can slap a “digital” in front of just about anything and the meaning conveyed is more or less “on the web.” In general, the actual practice of digital history bears this out. Every history professor has a blog, every city has its own digital archive (in Ohio, they seem to all be named “[yourCityOrState] Memory”), and every modern historical event has a commemorative website or two. Increasingly, discreet areas of historical inquiry are also well-represented online. Each of these has a value. Some are well executed and well used. Others are well meaning and… well… ignored. The best projects engage both teachers and learners, as well as the general public, with tightly focused, organized and comprehensive research and presentations. Many others struggle in ways that are predictable (notably aesthetic design, usability and information architecture, and an apparent failure to comprehend the strengths, weaknesses, and demands of the media they are working in).

Nevertheless, we want and need more of whatever digital history is or is going to be. My impression is that many would-be digital historians jump into new and exciting projects without fully understanding what they are getting into and what it takes to realize their vision. Most projects seem simple at the outset, but, as you can see from my totally mad flowchart, even projects with modest goals can be jarringly complicated.

Before I get into the nitty gritty I should point out here that I am not an educator — though I do plenty of staff training and instructional sessions. Nor am I an academic in the conventional sense. I have an undergraduate degree in History and a graduate degree in Library and Information Science, as well as a few years under my belt managing various oral, public and digital history projects, including some on-the-job training in website development. My professional expertise in not in content creation, nor in technology, but rather in conceptualizing practical ways to bring the two together in an educational context. With these qualifications and caveats in mind, I will attempt to describe what I see as the barriers to operationalizing digital history at the institutional level.

Note: I am operating on a university model in which professors set project goals, providing direction and instruction, and using class time, staff and/or student labor resources, as well as university or grant funding to achieve completion. The end result being an online resource of some type.

Core Competencies for Teaching, Learning, and Doing Digital History

Content: You need to know your stuff. If you are creating a digital history exhibit about Content X, then all participants (those who conceptualize the project and those who populate it with content) must have a reasonably advanced understanding of Content X as well as an ability to communicate that knowledge. The final content must be of publishable quality since it is more or less being published.

Technology: Although it is often assumed that the current generation of students is more technically competent than their instructors, this is often not the case. Just because a student brings a laptop to class and uses email and social networking sites does not mean he or she understand how to use complex software and publishing platforms. Assuming that students will “pick it up as they go” misses the reality that technical learning requires the building of experience through use and training, along with ample time to explore, experiment and fail.

In most scenarios, students are the technological proletarians of the project, contributing the bulk of the content and spending the most time using the technology. Thus, they need to know how to use the tools at their disposal. Professors and other supervisors have the luxury of guiding outcomes and watching content amass, but also bear the burden of bigger picture and behind the scenes technological matters such as data security, workflow management, server and site administration, and perhaps even a healthy dose of coding, designing, and debugging.

Law and Ethics: Digital history, like “regular” history, often involves collecting and analyzing primary and secondary sources. Traditional history is typically filtered through rounds of vetting and editing before it reaches the public. Digital history can be “published” without such constraints. Professors and other supervisors are not always able to comb through all the content that students collect in the course of their research. As a result, there is often a risk of unwittingly publishing someone else’s work. Leaving the issue of blatant plagiarism aside, what students deem fair use and what actually is fair use can differ greatly.

In my experience I have seen many images taken from commercial websites (some with giant watermarks and embedded logos!) and embedded or reposted without attribution or permission. Students must understand that they have a responsibility to not only respect relevant laws, but also to not do things that make the primary investigator look like a total jerk. There are appropriate and inappropriate sources, and there are sources for which appropriate use depends entirely on the way and the context in which they are being used. These issues are not self-evident and must be explored and codified at the outset.

Likewise, there are often ethical questions that should be fully addressed. Consider the use of digital oral history files. Due to their length, file size, and meandering nature; we often edit them down to excerpts or reframe them in new contexts such as film or video. We do this for any number of reasons: to tell stories, to increase use and access, to accommodate bandwidth restrictions, etc. But with each modification and recontextualization, we run the risk of betraying not only the historical integrity of the item, but also the trust of our subjects. The mere act of cataloging an oral history in the library takes a new meaning in the digital age, when recorded political beliefs and entire life stories (sometimes in full text or streaming audio) are only a name search away. The potential for harm cannot be ignored.

Organization of Information: Surely one of the least discussed aspects of digital history. Supposing your team has a strong understanding of content, is attentive to legal and ethical responsibilities, and is reasonably skilled at using technology; a final gauntlet awaits. Yes, I speak of the soul crushing demands of metadata and information architecture.

Historians, like others in the Humanities, pride themselves on weaving complex and idiosyncratic narratives, employing deep analysis and rich vocabularies in the process. Librarians in contrast use plain and objective language to create clean, accessible resources that are predictably organized and easy to understand. This famously boring approach to information is actually one of the most useful tools that libraries employ to create usable collections and resources. Digital history projects are likely to involve any number of cataloging and metadata standards, which must be implemented consistently with the help of considerable documentation and training.

Information architecture is also important. Just as metadata needs to be consistent, so too does the organization of websites and other interactive resources. Navigation must be clear and intuitive, but defined according to project-specific needs and amenable to many different use scenarios. Most of this is laid out in the planning and design stages, but must be continually monitored lest the system break down. As a resource loses organization, it also loses value.

The Primary Challenges

Training: Each of these core competencies requires some degree of training. A common critique of digital humanities education has been its rotation between conventional history training (content mastery, research, writing, et al.) and “digital” training (technology, metadata, information theory, etc.). This will be a necessary reality into the foreseeable future. Thus, digital historians should expect pushback at the institutional level from those concerned with maintaining tradition in history education. Furthermore, some history students will ruffle at the idea of being graded on such non-history competencies as the use of software, HTML, and Dublin Core.

Time: Training takes time, as does the required planning and management. Instructors need time to teach all that needs to be taught and have limited classroom time to do so. Personal time is likely to become a consideration as well; as projects evolve, they can become unwieldy and demanding. Other professional expectations (i.e. traditional publication activities) are often set aside, to the chagrin of tenure review boards. Students also have limited time in their day. Most students today work at least part-time and also have family and social lives to maintain. At my place of employment, the majority of students commute to and from full-time commitments at both work and school. Unless a project has a regular paid support staff, time is certainly a major barrier.

Money: Costs can add up. Server space, domain names, web design, hardware and software, as well as administrative and other staff all cost money. Though it is often possible to find alternate sources of finance (grants, fellowships, etc.), most funding is likely to originate at the institution.

Of course, it need not be this way. At the risk of devaluing my own position as a facilitator, I suggest that most digital history projects could be accomplished cheaply and effectively by a small team of informed and devoted volunteers working outside of the institution. Students often devise ambitious projects, but never follow through for lack of financial or intellectual support, time, and know-how. A recent post by Dave Lester suggests the possible emergence of “digital history street teams.” I really like this idea, which reflects a rising interest in DIY approaches to education and scholarship (the kids are calling it “edupunk” these days, and I heartily approve). So while the barriers I outlined above are very real and require some serious thought, there are also alternatives for creative and motivated individuals and groups – both inside and outside the Ivory Tower.

On Crowdsourcing and History

E. Bell — Sun, 10 May 2009 16:55:44 +0000

Recently, I’m noticing a lot of chatter about “crowdsourcing history.” The discussion about leveraging crowds in history-making has been going for quite some time, but only now seems to be reaching a point of acceptance. In case you’ve been living under a very Amish rock, here’s how Wikipedia – the king of the crowds – defines the term.

Crowdsourcing is a neologism for the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call. For example, the public may be invited to develop a new technology, carry out a design task, refine or carry out the steps of an algorithm, or help capture, systematize or analyze large amounts of data… The term has become popular with business authors and journalists as shorthand for the trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies to achieve business goals.

If you didn’t pick up on that right away, then maybe you should head over to wikipedia.org and tweak the punctuation, add some citations, or re-write the entire definition. That is the essence of crowdsourcing and it’s nothing new. The term has been around for at least a few years, serving as nom d’guerr for the so-called Web 2.0 revolution. The general idea is that many people will collectively do for free (or cheap) what one or a few people would do for money (i.e. a salary). In the case of Wikipedia, we all watched (some in glee, others in terror) as free user-generated content dethroned and then beheaded maligned publishing giants Encyclopedia Brittanica and Microsoft Encarta (Guardian, 2009).

Could a similar coup unseat scholars, teachers, and publishers in the humanities? Well, no. In fact, that’s a really stupid question. But you might want to pay attention anyway. Because for one thing, we can see from such events that students (and the public in general) are learning in different ways. They are consuming information, which one might argue is very different from learning, at a rate unimagined even by futurists such as H.G. Wells, who envisioned an integrated World Brain (Wells, 1938) capable of storing, indexing, and retrieving from the global knowledge base.

Even if one agrees that the Internet fullfills Wells’ prophecy – I don’t by the way – then a distinction must be made between knowledge and information. Without getting into the vast LIS literature the topic, we can generally agree that information is factual and verifiable, whereas knowledge is something more esoteric. It involves understanding that is not easily transmitted or received. It is an end result. The point being that you or your students may easily find and recite a list of every faction in the Spanish Civil War, but that doesn’t mean anyone truly understands what is going on (as case in point, I have been pondering why the Spanish anarchists refused tips for at least a decade… but then, I identified as an anarchist and worked for tips for nearly a decade). Lists, including names, timelines, and inventories (I’m talking to you, military history buff) are information at best (as opposed to data at worst). They are generally meaningless without contextual knowledge. So the teacher and the scholar (especially in the humanities one might argue) still have a central role in the creation, maintenance and transmission of knowledge. Until Google unleashes its sentient robot army, this will not change.

As learners and consumers of information, we will nonetheless continue down paths shaped by the Internet. If not in school, then everywhere else. Educators ignore real changes in our society at their own peril and to the disservice of their students. Just as the social and labor historians were both a culmination and a component of social and cultural change in the last century, so too will be digital historians and digital humanists. (This is not to suggest any comparably meaningful moral or ethical imperative). Classroom hardware has evolved from chalkboard to Powerpoint to whiteboard in the past decade, but the teacher is, as ever, at the front of the room projecting information. It can be interactive, surely. The best educators craft stories, start discussions, stoke debates, and facilitate hands-on experience. But they retain control over the parameters and content of the learning. They choose the text-books, design the syllabi, prepare the lectures, and grade the results. Crowdsourcing projects involve giving up some of this control – to students and also to strangers. As always, the specter of misinformation hangs over all information not controlled by authority (as if authority didn’t propagate its fair share of BS). Indeed, discussion of crowd sourcing content-creation and review, particularly in libraries, often hangs on the notion of “radical trust” – can online communities be trusted to create a quality product that is free from major errors and willful or accidental misinformation? It is an important question and, in the context of educational projects, one that can be addressed, like any other assignment, by applying appropriate degrees of control and setting clear parameters. Of course, there will still be issues with the end product.

Below is a very brief survey of some digital history and humanities projects that apply the crowdsourcing idea to various degrees. It is by no means comprehensive, or even very good. It’s just some things that come to mind in no particular order.

History Engine
http://historyengine.richmond.edu/pages/home
Description: A wiki-based “educational tool that gives students the opportunity to learn history by doing the work—researching, writing, and publishing—of a historian. The result is an ever-growing collection of historical articles or “episodes” that paints a wide-ranging portrait of life in the United States throughout its history and that is available to scholars, teachers, and the general public in our online database.” Students do all the work as part of course assignments and take part in the creation of an actual usable resource. Basically, a focused and controllable Wikipedia. Quality and completeness varies. Limited documentation and supervision required.

WhereYouThere?
http://www.wereyouthere.com/
Description: Social networking site collects firsthand accounts of historic moments (JFK assasination, 9/11/2001, First Lunar Landing, etc.) to create a resource for historical, journalistic and literary research on one hand, and schamltzy nostalgia and incoherent ramblings on the other. More noise than signal, but as someone who spends a lot of time with oral histories, I can say that this is a really interesting idea. Perhaps something like this could work on a smaller scale with some administrative control and narrower parameters. Speaking of which…

Hurricane Digital Memory Bank
http://hurricanearchive.org
Description: Uses Omeka “to collect, preserve, and present the stories and digital record of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. It contributes to the ongoing effort by historians and archivists to preserve the record of these storms by collecting first-hand accounts, on-scene images, blog postings, and podcasts.” No real way to verify information or control quality, but that’s not really the point. Succeeds in creating a focused archive of first-hand accounts on a topic that is emotionally and politically charged, and will be for years to come.

Australian Newspapers Digitisation Project
http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp
Description: “The National Library of Australia, in collaboration the Australian State and Territory libraries, has commenced a program to digitise out of copyright newspapers. We are creating a free online service that will enable full-text searching of newspaper articles… published in each state and territory from the 1800s to the mid-1950s, when copyright applies.” Users can add tags and comments, as well as correct the automatically-generated text transcriptions

The Commons on Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/commons
Description: “The key goals of The Commons on Flickr are to firstly show you hidden treasures in the world’s public photography archives, and secondly to show how your input and knowledge can help make these collections even richer.” Users are “invited to help describe the photographs you discover in The Commons on Flickr, either by adding tags or leaving comments.” Participants include the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institute, and the George Eastman House.

Dan Cohen’s Twitter Experiment
http://www.dancohen.org/2009/04/29/the-spider-and-the-web-results
Description: “…using Twitter to replicate digitally the traditional ‘author’s query,’ where a scholar asks readers of a journal for assistance with a research project. I believe the results of this experiment are instructive about the significant advantages—and some disadvantages—for academia of what has come to be known as crowdsourcing.” Go read the blog post for more. This is my favorite example, because it is so easy. It’s not a website, it’s not an educational resource; it’s more akin to performance art (performance history? or as Cohen says “stunt lecturing”?). Assuming you have a good handful of Twitter followers, you can organize and carry out little events like this on short notice and without any technological “overhead.”