Gwen’s Proposals

Proposal 1: Visualizing the Invisible: Artists’ social networks and connections

Introduction

This project attempts to examine and work through two problems, one topical, the other disciplinary. Question 1: As a primarily visual, and multimedia discipline, how can digital tools transform, rather than simply transcribe or digitize, art historical inquiry? Question 2: How can we better account for personal and social influences, confluences, and intellectual history in art history? How can we make manifest these important and existing social and geo-political relations? This project intends to create a visualization framework (and maybe reusable tool) that can assist in visualizing artists’ social networks in order to better chart relationships, studio visits, correspondence, and more–things that can be crucial to social or intellectual art history but can be unwieldy or made into some other obtuse chart in the wrong hands. 

For my research and edification, I will be working with artists and activists of the 1950s and 1960s in New York City, with an emphasis on Minimalism and the Civil Rights Movement.

2. Personas

Nerdy Nosepants is a student studying art history and is working on Minimalism, Pop Art, American art, New York City, or a person/artist living or working in New York in the mid-twentieth century.

Rebecca Rabbit-hole-inquirer is someone who is interested in following the interconnections between different types of knowledges and links, such as those on Wikipedia, but wants a different venue to peruse the degrees of separation between politics, urban studies, or art.

Anna Arthistorian is an art historian looking for ways to integrate technology into her art historical work or pedagogy.

3. Use case scenario

Someone could find this tool on the web and would be able to access it publicly (when it is finished).

4. Full Fledged Version

Working on the model of Linked Jazz I will create a visualization of art and artists based on archival research of Minimalist art gallery exhibitions. Connections would be made between artists who were shown together, between galleries and artists, etc.  An expanded, and more comprehensive version could be assembled using correspondence histories, and could be especially interesting when applied to other art projects, including the New York Correspondence School.

In order to complete this I would need to access the Linked Jazz API, as well as familiarize myself with Gephi and D3.Js (which I have no idea about). This would take considerable time and effort. I would also need to conduct archival research, which is in my wheelhouse but is also time intensive (at least 2 full days archival research).

5. How much time? 80 hours (the bulk of which would be spent on learning the technology).

6. Stripped down version

For a stripped down or streamlined version I am loath to abandon the technology, since it seems SO useful. So instead I would scale down content, and do a sample of a single artist as a model on which to base a larger version. This would require less archival resources, research, and probably less knowledge of the technology.

7. How much time? 30 hours? (again, most of this would be spent on learning the technology).

(optional): Really really stripped down version: list/database of connections that could be implemented when time and technology allows.

Proposal 2: Map of artist activity

1. Introduction

Similar to the above project, since art history already has a significant visual component, I would like to engage with technological tools in a way that helps us understand something about art history that we can’t do otherwise. For this project, I would like to map out an artist’s (or several artists’) relationships to New York City.  Alternatively, it would be interesting to stake out a single place, like Max’s Kansas City, and chart the physical relationship to regulars to the bar and each other. Again, spatial and social relationships are ones that remain invisible in art history, both for rhetorical and disciplinary reasons (consider that few talk about artists/intellectuals that murder their wives/partners).

2. Personas

Nosey Nerdpants is a student studying art history and is working on  American art, New York City, or a person/artist living or working in New York in the mid-twentieth century.

Amy Arthistorian is an art historian looking for ways to integrate technology into her art historical work or pedagogy. This tool could be modified into a course project, or include crowdsourced information (provided it has been vetted or comes from an authorized source).

3. Use case scenario

Someone could find this tool on the web and would be able to access it publicly (when it is finished).

4. Full Fledged Version

A full version of this project could either be a stand-alone visualization on a website. Not sure what the right mapping tool would be; it is tempting to consider GIS, but it might just be too powerful for what I need. Aesthetics is also important, so it might be nice to use something that everyone is familiar with, i.e. for New York to use the Subway Map, or a floor plan (in the case of Max’s or the Warhol Factory or something). The use of a floor plan or schematic/map would also be opportune for historical studio buildings. For crowdsourcing, an ideal tool might be a collaborative sticky-note app with a map background, like NoteApp.

5. Time it takes? approx. 80 hours, with a large part of this researching artists and cultural producers who frequent a particular space, gallery, club, etc.

6. Stripped Version

A pared down version of this would include a single site, and might even just be an image or floor plan with links/shadowboxed information that pops up when one hovers over each individual (using wordpress?)

7. Time it takes? 40 hours, mostly research.

NB–I am really not committed to this project anymore

Rachel’s Proposals: Mobile Healthy and Budget-Friendly Recipes and Technology Classes for Entrepreneurs

Proposal #1: Web-based and Mobile Healthy Recipes and Cooking Tips for Low-Income and SNAP Communities in NYC

Introduction

While working with low-income communities, I’ve discovered that residents, who may or may not be receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, often struggle with learning how to eat (and cook) healthy. Various factors may complicate their attempts to incorporate healthy foods into their and their families’ daily lives: time, transportation, food costs, accessibility to healthy foods, “ethnic” or cultural palates and knowledge of how to cook healthy foods.

One of the biggest issues residents shared with me is “How can I cook healthy on a budget or fixed income?” While they know where they can shop for healthier foods, such as fruits, vegetables, soy-based foods and low-fat dairy products, residents are often unsure of two things: how to use these ingredients to create healthier meals and how to substitute ingredients to make their favorite/familiar dishes healthier.

In order to address these problems I will build a WordPress site and a complementary mobile (SMS) service that will provide healthier recipes and healthy eating/cooking tips targeted for low-income/SNAP populations living in NYC. Users will be able to sign up for a SMS service that will text recipes and tips weekly. They will also be able to use the website as a recipe portal—and as a space to continue their food education. In addition, the website will house a series of short YouTube videos showcasing cooking skills/tips.

Personas

Two-job TJ feels like she is always working—and seldom has time to prepare a home-cooked meal. She has been working two jobs for the past decade in order to send money to her parents and brothers in Mexico. She is often too tired on her days off to cook—as sleep and other tasks take precedence over healthy meal planning. TJ eats out at a fast food restaurant or bodega in-between her morning shift at a fast food restaurant and her evening shift as the local supermarket. While TJ knows she can make healthier eating choices, she believes that eating healthy is expensive—and time-consuming.

Snappy Sally lives with her partner, their two school-aged children and her mother-in-law. Sally’s partner recently lost her job and the family has been struggling to manage their finances while relying on Sally’s part-time salary. Sally went to the local food pantry and with the help of a case manager her family is now receiving SNAP benefits. But Sally knows that with her family’s limited income, plus their SNAP benefits, she needs to change how she shops for (and cooks) food. SNAP only allocates approximately $4/day for food—so she must figure out how to feed her family on this budget.

Standard American Diet Sam knows he needs to eat healthier. At his most recent physical Sam’s doctor diagnosed him with hypertension. And Sam knows that his parents’ poor eating habits contributed to their Type 2 diabetes diagnoses—and if he doesn’t change his exercise and food habits he will also be at risk for developing the disease. Sam’s doctor suggested that he increase his exercise routine and modify his diet to include more plant-based proteins and fruits and vegetables. But Sam is unsure how to do this—as cooking has never been his forte.

Retired Ro lives on a fixed-income. She loves to cook and often cooks for her grandkids as she watches them a few times a week after school. Ro knows she needs to expose her grandkids to healthier recipes—and that she could stand to add some more fruits and vegetables to her diet herself. She loves visiting the farmer’s market but often doesn’t know what to do with much of the produce she sees.

Mobile Mike had been receiving assistance from the local food pantry for the past few years. Fortunately, Mike has recently found a job and graduated from the food pantry. At the pantry Mike participated in a series of cooking and nutrition classes. He wants to continue this learning outside the classroom and is looking for an online resource that will help him do this.

Use Case Scenario

Sally, Sam, TJ, Mike, Ro and others will be able to find/use this tool at four “places”:

  1. Where they register for SNAP benefits — Snappy Sally is registering at the local food pantry and her case manager gives her an informational flyer and tells her about the tool. She uses it to find recipes she can afford to cook for her family.
  1. At a food pantry or other food/health-focused community organizations — Sam’s doctor recommends he take a class at a local organization to learn how to incorporate more healthy foods into his diet—and he learns about the tool at this organization. He uses it to find healthy recipes he can cook at home.
  1. Virtually via a Google search for something like “healthy recipes when you’re on a budget” or “healthy recipes for SNAP recipients” — Mike is searching online for healthy recipes on a budget and finds the tool. Mike uses it to complement the nutrition classes he took at the food pantry. A budding chef, Mike primarily uses the cooking tips to help him build his kitchen skills.
  1. In the community: at local doctor’s offices, churches, community organizations etc. — TJ sees an informational flyer about the tool at her church. She uses the text message service to get recipe updates and for its healthy eating tips.

They will use this tool as:

  • A recipe toolbox (a virtual cookbook)
  • A companion to cooking, nutrition (or other) classes they are taking at a local organization like a food pantry
  • An educational tool/space to learn how to cook healthy foods on a budget
  • A space that demystifies cooking on a budget
  • Part of a behavior change — that being some type of change in their eating habits  (This is public health speak and I’m not too familiar with how to express this)

The Full-Fledged Version {My pie-in-the-sky version}

A website that houses healthy, budget-conscious recipes designed for low-income/SNAP populations and a complementary SMS service that texts short tips/recipes/links to longer recipes.

The website will include:

  1.  Space to sign up for a SMS and email service where users can get recipes, cooking and healthier eating tips texted or emailed to their mobile phones or other digital devices
  2. A fully-functional SMS healthy recipe service
  3. A recipe database with an option for the user to create his/her own list of favorite recipes
  4. A tool where users can assemble a grocery list of needed items (this will automatically populate when the user selects a recipe)
  5. A Google search bar (to search recipes)
  6. A set of YouTube instructional videos – This will include a welcome video, but I also imagine adding a series of short cooking and healthy eating video tips
  7. Food/shopping/ingredient resources in NYC  and online –I don not want to focus solely on SNAP resources because I don’t want to isolate non-SNAP users for using the tool. For example, I can include a map of farmer’s markets, Health Buck info (this is a program to encourage SNAP users to shop at farmer’s markets), information about seasonal vegetables, a list of online sites that sell discount or bulk ingredients such as spices, etc.
  8. A message board or feedback form where users can comment on recipes and make site suggestions

The success of this tool is based on my ability to partner with at least one established food-based non-profit in NYC and, depending on the non-profits cooking and nutrition expertise, a cooking program (such as the Culinary Arts program at Kingsborough or the Natural Gourmet Institute) or a private chef who is willing to donate his/her time and expertise.

And since this is pie-in-the-sky, I wonder if I would need to offer the site and text messages in language(s) other than English.

Timeline & Skills Needed

Pre-work: [2 – 3 months, though some of this, especially the marketing/branding, will be completed at the same time at the tool development]

  • Conduct at least one focus group to assess community needs — I would ask questions such as: the types of recipes users want to see, the types of available kitchen equipment, the availability of certain products, users’ familiarity with (and access to) technology (smart phones, internet access at home, etc.)
  • Develop relationship with non-profit and cooking school/chef
  • Begin to develop a bank of recipes and healthy eating/cooking tips
  • Develop some type of branding for website – name/logo!
  • Initial development of marketing materials

Tool-development: [5 – 6 months]

  • Pilot tool with SMS service: Use Twilio or SimplyCast. Will need to purchase a phone number and pay for texting services (both sites do have a free trial)
  • Test SMS tool/make adjustments
  • Build website: Use WordPress and pay to self-host. Can use a site such as Bluehost to do this ($3.95/month); Can use plug-ins for food blogs such as: Recipe Card or EasyRecipe
  • Make YouTube videos: Use smartphone (to make them) and iMovie (to edit them)
  • Add email function: can use SimplyCast

Post-work: 1 – 2 months

  • Focus groups to understand what’s working, what is not working and what is missing

The Stripped-Down Version

The stripped-down version is the creation of a SMS service that sends short recipes (5 ingredients or less) and healthy eating/cooking tips to recipients via text messages. It will use hyperlinks (via a URL shortening service like ) to send longer recipes to recipients (for ease of use and aesthetic purposes). These links will direct to an initial WordPress site (or maybe a Google Doc?) that will be developed into a full-scale website at a later date. I imagine adding a survey to the site or a comment plug-in in order to get feedback on how users like the SMS tool.

This initial WordPress site will house one YouTube video that talks about the tool I’m creating and how to use the SMS tool (the first welcome text will direct the user here) and a beginning recipe database. I will use iMovie to create this video.

Timeline & Skills Needed

This is do-able in a semester. I will need to learn how to use Twilio and expand my WordPress skills (which I’m pretty sure I can do using online tutorials). I will also need to learn how to use iMovie to create the welcome video. Ideally I would need at least one person to help me record the movie. For this portion of the project I can create content for short recipes and healthy eating/cooking tips. I will also need to create relationships with NYC food-based/hunger/food insecurity/social service organizations through which I can market the tool (I already have a few, but will need more).

——-

Proposal #2: Web and Mobile Technology and Marketing Classes for Small Business Owners and Emerging Entrepreneurs

Introduction

While working with entrepreneurs who want to build or expand their small businesses, I realized that they often lack technological and marketing skills. Entrepreneurs develop great products, but are struggling with how to use social media and to promote their business and how to establish an online (web) presence for their business. There are a growing number of organizations whose focus is to foster the development of small businesses through micro-lending, business and marketing classes and other types of support.

My plan is to develop a set of classes for small-business owners. I will also develop an instructional portal that will house a set of instructional videos and ‘how-to’ instructions on topics covered in these classes.

Personas                                                                                                                   

Newbie Nelly and her friend Janice are creating a line of organic shea butter-based body care products. This summer they will begin selling their products at local craft shows and farmers’ markets. However, Nelly and Janice do not have a clear idea how to market their business. They see how other small businesses market themselves using Twitter and Facebook—but the pair knows they are not marketing experts, nor are they comfortable using social media. Nelly and Janice understand that in order to create a successful business they will need to acquire these skills—as they don’t have the budget to hire a marketing consultant.

Seasoned Saul has owned a successful cheesecake business for the past five years. Word-of-mouth advertising has generated most of Saul’s business—as his church congregation and past customers have been fervent supporters of his tasty treats. However, recently Sal has realized he is not attracting new business. He wants to continue to grow his business—as he dreams of opening a storefront in his neighborhood. Several of his friends have suggested Saul start an online fundraising site to raise money to expand this business.

Popping Penny is a retired teacher with a passion for food—and started an ice pop business soon after she retired. Penny has a growing business and has been successfully selling her pops at pop-up markets and festivals. Penny has always wanted to sell her pops in retail locations and she recently found a co-packer who will make and package her pops for retail distribution. As Penny begins to approach potential customers she wants to make sure she has a sound online brand presence. Her friend designed a website for her when she started her business, but Penny hasn’t updated the site since.

First-Loan Lenny has just received a micro-loan for his budding laundry service. The organization Lenny is working with offers a set of classes that teach entrepreneurs business acumen. But Lenny wants to further develop his marketing skills—and he is searching for a tool that will meet his needs. Lenny is an adept social media user and is especially interested in leaning how he can use these social tools to market his business.

Use Case Scenario

Nelly, Saul, Penny, Lenny and others would find this tool:

  • At a organization that works with entrepreneurs/does micro-lending — Lenny finds it at the organization that is financing his micro-loan
  • At a local business development organization, Chamber of Commerce, organization that works with women, minorities or immigrants — Penny finds it when she attends a meeting for Latino/a entrepreneurs
  • At a craft’s fair, farmer’s market or pop-up market — Nelly finds it when she and Janice attend one of their first markets
  • At an incubator or shared kitchen space — Saul finds it at a local food incubator where he rents space to bake his cheesecakes
  • At a community college or community school
  • Word-of-mouth advertising (talking to other entrepreneurs)

They will use this tool:

  • To market their businesses
  • To connect with potential and current customers
  • To establish or increase brand awareness

Full-fledged Version

My plan is to build a set of web and mobile technology classes targeted to help small business owners build, market and grow their businesses. I envision partnering with an established micro-lending organization and co-hosting these classes with them. This partnership should be able to provide me with space to host my classes and audience to whom I can market them.

Classes will need to be affordable/free as small business owners often do not have excess capital to pay for expensive trainings. I’ll also have to think about the language these classes are being taught it — and if I’m isolating a population by only offering them in English.

The topics these classes will highlight include:

  • Website development: finding a web-hosting site, choosing and registering a domain name, building the site, blogging
  • Social media skills: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, etc.
  • Email marketing
  • Online fundraising platforms: Kickstarter, GoFundMe
  • How to sell my product online: Etsy
  • How to take great digital pictures
  • How to create YouTube videos
  • How to start a food blog
  • Maybe LinkedIn?

I will also build an online repository that will hold instruction manuals for these skills and short educational YouTube videos that also provide instructions.

Timeline & Skills

I envision my timeline for this project to look something like:

Step #1: Class Development (many of these tasks will be happening simultaneously)

  • Develop training modules for each class
  • Secure space and organizational partnerships for classes
  • Recruit other subject experts as trainers
  • Market events
  • Obtain feedback/evaluate classes
  • Develop additional classes or re-develop existing classes after receiving feedback

While I am familiar with many of these tools, I haven’t formally taught others how to use them. I envision class development as the most time consuming part of the project. I also will need to become more familiar with Facebook as I don’t use it and develop my WordPress skills. I believe I can get a set of five classes up and running in a period of five to six months.

Step #2: Online Portal/Repository Development

I envision this as the second step of my project, after I’ve established a viable technology and marketing class series. I want to develop this portal for two reasons: to reach small business owners who are not located in NYC or cannot take these classes AND as a reference tool for small business owners who have already taken these classes.

I can make this portal using WordPress or maybe with Omeka. I will want to self-host a site on one of the two platforms and will need to consider the cost of doing so. No matter which site I choose, I will need to acquire additional skills. I will use iMovie and YouTube to create instructional videos to post on the site. As I stated in my first proposal, I will need to learn how to use iMovie.

Stripped-down Version

This will be a pilot class. I will run one class (I’m thinking two or three times) and ask for feedback from participants. This class will be a general class that covers how technology can help small business owners market and grow their businesses.

Timeline & Skills

I can do this in approximately 3 — 4 months. The greatest skill I will need is to learn how to best develop a class that teaches people how to use technology–I’ve never done this before. I will also need to find a place to host the classes and market them.

 

Jeff Binder’s Project Proposals: Language Models and Clichés

#1: The Distance Machine

Over the past year, I have been working on a program called the Distance Machine, the primary function of which is to identify words in a text that were uncommon at a given point of time according to a statistical model of Google’s Ngrams data. At present, though, this program doesn’t quite accomplish what I ultimately want to do in this project, which is to look at how the statistical approach to studying the English Language relates to earlier forms such as the dictionary. In the current version, the user is required to select a corpus upon entering a text, and there is no way to change the selection short of re-entering it. As such, although it provides an easy way of finding exceptions to the patterns that appear in one particular corpus, it also makes it far too easy to take a single model as a ground truth about how the language has changed over time. I would like to rework the program so that it is easier to compare different representations.

Personae:

Dr. Casaubon is a scholar of 19th-century American literature. He is working on a critical edition of Charles Brockden Brown’s political writings, for which he is trying to understand the implications of certain political terms at the time when Brown was writing.

Annie Cratylus is an undergraduate English major. She has taken an interest in the ways in which language can uphold hierarchical systems. She is currently working on a paper about how the language of radical feminist writings from the 20th century deviates from the ordinary usage of the time.

Prof. Trotsky is a Marxist literary critic doing a project on working-class British poetry from the early 19th century. She is interested in investigating the class aspects of language standardization efforts in that time period, especially in regard to the choices of vocabulary used in the poetry of John Clare.

Use case:

After hearing her project idea, Annie Cratylus’s professor tells her she might want to look into the idea of a corpus. In researching the concept, she comes across the Distance Machine. She pastes a copy of a chapter from Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble into the program and clicks “Go.” The program shows a number of instances where Butler’s language deviates from the expectations set up by the Google Books corpus. Using some of these examples to illustrate her point, Jenny writes a paper arguing that radical writing has to confound the expectations created by attempts to contain language within the bounds of the statistical.

Ideal version:

A full-fledged version would expand the program so that it can work with language models that incorporate information about word order in addition to word frequency. One way of doing this would be to incorporate the full Ngrams data set, rather than just the frequencies for single words. Based on this, the tool could highlight phrases of up to five words. Processing the full data set would require supercomputing resources, and the program would have to be transferred to a server with at least a few terabytes of storage capacity. I would also have to change the interface so that it could highlight overlapping units of the text, rather than discrete words. A somewhat less computationally intensive way of experimenting with more complex language models would be to generate a model based on a smaller corpus, which would present somewhat less of a challenge in terms of data management.

Dealing with a data set this large would require some skills that I don’t have at present. The scripts that I wrote to process the data would have to be changed so that they could run in parallel. There is also a chance that MySQL wouldn’t be up to the task of storing that much data, so I might have to learn another database system; and I might also have to change my PHP code to be more efficient so that the program is not excessively slow. This is a project that I would be unable to do without getting a major grant.

Simple version:

In this version, I would stick with simple word-frequency models, but add a number of different corpora, covering various time periods and genres of literature. One corpus that would be particularly useful is Phase I of the EEBO-TCP (Early English Books Online-Text Creation Partnership) corpus, which includes over 25,000 books published between 1500 and 1700. Another one would be the English Fiction version of the Google Ngrams corpus. I am also interested in creating corpora based on the full text of long-running periodicals like the New England Quarterly or The Atlantic. After preparing the corpora, I would have to change the PHP code so that it produces annotations for all corpora rather than just one and add a user interface for switching between them.

I don’t think this will require any major skills that I don’t already have, apart from learning the quirks of the various data sets that I will be using and possibly figuring out how to get the texts I need from a database. It would likely take a few months to get this done, since some of the data processing scripts could take days to run and, being realistic, I will likely have to try them multiple times before I get them to work right.

 

#2: Reading Clichés

Even in its most radical forms, literary criticism has generally centered its analysis on the text, tending to refer back to the original even when its authority is under suspicion. But one of the ways in which literary works can resonate most strongly in a culture is through modes of transmission other than the reproduction of a text. This project will attempt to provide a way of “reading” a very different cultural form from the text: the cliché. It will provide visualizations representing the history of particular clichés, including graphs showing trends in what sorts of books used them over the past few hundred years and markers indicating significant events (prominent usages, relevant historical events, shifts in usage or meaning). It will also include some text explaining the project and providing a theoretical context for the project.

Personae:

Dr. Casaubon is working on a book about the reception history of Herman Melville’s work. He wants to include a section about process by which people adopted the “White Whale” as a general way of referring to an object of obsession.

Prof. Trotsky is investigating the spread of political slogans. She wants to understand the ways in which phrases that originally had a political charge can come to be drained of it through repetition, and she is curious whether the numbing effect that repetition can have is dependent on a particular set of social conditions.

Mr. Shandy is a college-educated administrative assistant with an enthusiasm for language trivia. He is fascinated by the history of phrases, and is interested in finding out how the most famous quotations from his favorite books came to be widely known.

Use case:

Mr. Shandy comes across the site while searching for information about the phrase “time is money.” Looking at the visualization for this phrase, he learns that, although the phrase is often thought to have originated in Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack, it appeared decades earlier in a periodical called The Free-Thinker. He is also able to see some of the other books that used the phrase, such as Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby and get a sense the way in which the phrase came into increasing prominence in the late 20th century.

Ideal version:

A full-fledged version of this project would consist of a large database of clichés, either taken from a curated list or identified automatically, with information about the usage history of each. If the size of the database is to be large, it would be necessary either to produce the data for the timelines automatically or crowdsource it. For each cliché, the user would be able to open a page with a visualization showing the usage over time in a number of broad genres of books (Fiction, Biography, Biology, etc.), along with markers showing prominent and representative usages. I also might be able to include information about which clichés tend to co-occur together in the same books.

If this project is feasible at all, it would probably be doable in about 6 months. The major difficulties would be in procuring the necessary data and defining the bounds of what counts as a cliché. Assuming I could figure out a way of doing that, I should be able to get together what I need using scripting tools I am already familiar with. I could make the visualizations I am envisioning using JavaScript and D3. I would also need some sort of content management system for the site; which one would be best for this project I am not really sure, so I would need to do some research into this and maybe learn a new system.

Simple version:

A simpler way of going about this would be to pick a small number of clichés (about 12) and semi-manually gather the information I need. For each cliché, I would present a graph showing its usage in various types of books, along with some indications of prominent and representative usages. The prominent usages could be identified manually or on the basis of some data about the popularity of books (although this could potentially become problematic, so I would have to think hard about my choices). I could identify representative usages by taking random samples from various time periods and manually going through them.

It should be possible to get this mostly done in a few months. I believe I could get all the data I need using HathiTrust’s Solr API, although I ought to get in touch with them before I run large queries. Once I have access, I could easily write a script that downloads bibliographic data about all books that match a particular phrase. I could build the visualization using tools I already know, and the simple version would not be too demanding on the content management system.

Midterm Project Proposal Sarah&Anke: Teaching Through Technology: a Website and Workshop Series

Introduction

We are two CUNY adjunct instructors who spent a lot of time researching, evaluating and designing WordPress sites for our own classrooms. We are not alone. More than half of all courses at CUNY are taught by adjunct instructors, and many of us want to use technology in our courses. CUNY encourages staff to integrate technology. In fact, its most wide-ranging cross-campus initiatives support teaching with technology: the Academic Commons and the Hybrid Initiative. And yet, we face two pressing problems. First  there is no one source that shows the pedagogical thinking underlying technological choices professors make in designing and developing effective course sites. Second, CUNY’s resources provide hidden nuggets of pedagogical wisdom and helpful tips, but you have to dig deep and few instructors have the time, resources or know-how to do so.

To address these issues, we will create Teaching Through Technology, a website and workshop series that invites CUNY instructors to come together to think through the why, what, and how of building a class site. We won’t just offer a how-to. Rather, we will start with pedagogical best practices to provide guidance, direct instructors to resources, and, doing so, strengthen communities of innovative instructors.

Teaching Through Technology has three components: a training module on the Academic Commons, workshops at CUNY campuses, and a Commons Group for participants.

1. Training Module: Hosted on the CUNY Academic Commons, this evolving site will act as a replicable workshop outline and stand-alone resource. We will collect and curate resources from across the web that explicate the pedagogical thinking behind course site design. To encourage cross-disciplinarity, we will highlight examples from the Humanities, Social, and Natural Sciences.

2. Workshops: We propose to give workshops at Baruch, John Jay, City, and Queens College because each of these colleges already has a Center for Teaching and Learning that can provide infrastructure, support, publicity, and follow-up.

3. Commons Group Site: A group site linked to the online training module will offer a platform for workshop participants to continue the conversation, share experiences, troubleshoot and expand on their practice to help further improve CUNY’s online pedagogy.

Personas

  • Edward: Young adjunct professor in Social Sciences at City College. Wants to start using a WordPress blog for his psychology 101 course but has a lot of questions and does not know where to start. He has done some research online but feels lost in the maze of information and online tutorials. Feels that much of what he finds is not relevant to his specific situation and would like to discuss questions of privacy and assessment but also just find out what themes are useful, and how he can provide access for his students and create an online community.
  • Stacey: Older full time professor in the English Department at Queens College. Does not necessarily want to use a course site for her literature classes and is not sure about the benefits of technology, but senses that times are a’changing and wants to know what’s going on. She wants to talk to younger colleagues and others who are already using sites to find out why they do so, what the pros and cons are, and what role it can possibly play in her teaching.
  • Luke: Director of Center for Teaching and Learning at a CUNY campus. Wants to increase outreach and resources to faculty at his campus to further improve the quantity but most importantly quality of course sites. Is invested in innovation and integration of technology and pedagogy and wants faculty to increase awareness and knowledge of the pedagogy behind the use of technology in teaching.

Use Case Scenario

CUNY instructors can attend the workshops at the specific colleges, access the site online and become members of its online community. The site on the Academic Commons will be public so that, even when you did not attend the workshop, you can still have access to its content and connect with colleagues. It will provide a starting point for instructors designing or already using course sites in their classrooms, offering both an introduction to the pedagogy and the practice. After visiting the workshop and/or the site they can continue their exploration by navigating the other resources we have collected and curated for them.

Full Fledged Version

Our vision for a final product is an evolving web resource for professors interested in creating course sites and an adaptable and replicable workshop available to Centers for Teaching and Learning in August and January at a number of CUNY campuses. While the site will initially host our learning module, workshop participants’ contributions will make it a lively and evolving forum for faculty from a variety of disciplines and campuses to share, discuss, and develop their pedagogical best practices in course site development.

Training Module and Group Site

We will host the training module and group site on the Academic Commons using WordPress. Before deciding exactly how to design the site (what theme, what plug-ins, etc), we need to do research into the pedagogy behind course site development (see below.) Our initial thought is to break the site into five main pages:

  • Pedagogy.  This lays out and offers citations to some of the the pedagogical frameworks grounding the thinking behind the integration and design of course sites. This page will also encourage users to add their own recommendations for resources focusing specifically on the pedagogy behind course structure and site design. (This is the group site element.)
  • Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and Humanities. Each of these three pages offers a few models of course sites from professors who teach in this discipline. Each offers screenshots of the professor’s sites with his/her annotations about the choices this site reflects and why he/she made those choices.
  • Details, Details. This points professors to how-to resources on WordPress as well as logistical FAQ-type elements. For example, “Can I post readings as I would on blackboard?” “Can I use this course again next semester?” “How do I cite the images I use in the banner?”

Workshops

To offer the workshops, we will need buy-in, administrative help, and the use of facilities at four CUNY campuses. We already know Luke at Baruch and he seems excited about our project. Sarah teaches at John Jay and Anke teaches at City College, so we need to start building relationships with the directors of the Centers for Teaching and Learning now in order to start the process of scheduling the first workshops (at Baruch and John Jay) in January, 2016. We will plan to offer the City and Queens College workshops in August, 2016.

Minimally Viable Product

Training Module

We will host the training module on the Academic Commons using WordPress. Before deciding exactly how to design the site (what theme, what plug-ins, etc), we need to do research into the pedagogy behind course site development. The site will have three main components:

  • Pedagogy. See above.
  • Best Practices. This will offer links to a few different model sites as well as audio recordings with the professors who designed them describing their pedagogical thinking and design choices.
  • Details, Details. See above.

Timeline and Skills Acquisition

  1. Study the literature for pedagogy and best practices in course site design. (80 hours each)
  2. Identify and recruit professors who have made thoughtful (and diverse) choices in creating their sites, can articulate/annotate their process, and would be willing to invest time in sharing with us. (20 hours each)
  3. Design and build the Academic Commons site (20 hours each)
  4. Create workshops  (10 hours each)
  5. Admin Work (scheduling workshops, set-up, follow-ups) (30 hours each)

Genevieve’s Project Proposals

Proposal #1:  Comparing Standard, Charter and Progressive Schools

One quarter of the public schools in NYC are failing and educational opportunities that are found in progressive schools are not offered at these schools.  These schools do not situate students for social or collaborative learning and children essentially are not experiencing making or building as part of their course curriculum so that they are unlikely to be interested in careers in technical fields such as robotics or stem technologies.  Also, children who are underperformers or who have behavioral issues are sometimes pushed through school or may become dropouts.

The NYC Dept. of Education’s website has an interactive map that allows parents to locate schools within their zone, but the map does not identify charter, charter-progressive or progressive schools.  Although information is available on the site for how to apply to charter schools, the site does not make plain that charter schools can be strictly traditional or whether they have elements of progressive methodologies.

I am very interested in creating a website that compares information for students from preschool through high school using data visualizations, geospatial mapping, a blog-space and forum to provide useful information to parents to help them make well informed decisions around where and how their children will receive their educations.  Parents will be able to compare various types of methodologies as well as assess school performance and funding.  Parents will also be able to determine what schools have assimilated progressive learning into their curriculum, as well as each school’s mission statement or rules of governance.

Personas: Anthony and Carol are parents to two sons.  Mason, who is 10 years old likes science.  8 years old Justin is a math guru.  Both parents would like their sons to attend schools that will enhance their interests but neither parent understands how charter schools might be different from standard schools.  They are also unaware of how progressive methodologies could positively affect their children’s educational experiences.  Both parents are afraid to send their children to the neighborhood school.

Christian and Jon are concerned there is an academic disadvantage for children who do not achieve higher education and they want their child to have many experiences in his formative years.  Their child will attend pre-school in one year and these parents are very committed to finding a good environment that will allow their child to play and explore.  In terms of methodologies and curriculum, both Christian and Jon believe they would be able to make a more informed choice if they knew how public schools offering standard, charter and progressive educations compare to each other, but they do not know how to access that information.

Use Case Scenario: Parents will be able to explore datasets through data visualizations, discover methodologies and pedagogical practices through the blog and will be able to gather additional information through participation in the websites forum by discussing topics of importance with other concerned and knowledgeable individuals.  A geospatial map will be created so that parents will be able to see the location of all schools which will be differentiated by methodology.

I would propose that a link to the website be available on the CUNY Academic Commons, and that the site would be popularized through social media.  The site would also be easily searchable through taglines that will be used in blogpost to increase the sites visibility and through search engine optimization.

Full Version: Parents will be able to interact with different datasets using data visualizations and geospatial maps to access information to help guide their decisions including:

  • Where different schools are located locally and nationally;
  • Whether the schools are standard, charter, charter-progressive or progressive;
  • Student grades;
  • Types and amounts of funding received including for Title 1, non-Title 1 and private schools;
  • Links to rules of governing and mission statements for each school;
  • Links to digital tools that have been integrated into classwork; and
  • Information around whether blended learning is implemented.
  • Teachers will be invited to write blogpost to share their methodologies and pedagogical practices on the blog-space.

Datasets for public and charter schools are available online, and I will need to contact institutional researchers of progressive schools to request comparable data for this research project.

All of the tools that will be used to build this project except Excel and WordPress are free and open source.  The forum space will be created using phpBB, and I will create data visualizations using Gephi and Excel, and a geospatial maps using ArcGIS.

The only concerns that I have are that the Gephi file will need to be embedded into WordPress and the phpBB and ArcGIS files will require a plugin.

Timeline: Excel is the only tool which I am already using.  There will be a learning curve for each of the other tools.  I will need to spend the most time learning Gephi and ArcGIS and I plan to spend the summer digging deeper into both programs.  There are resources available online to help through that process.

I believe I can complete this project within one semester.  It should only take a month to compile all datasets including those from progressive schools.  I estimate it will take two months to create the geospatial map and data visualizations.  Once a domain name is purchased, I will setup WordPress, and upload phpBB immediately to make sure it is installed correctly.

Short Version: The bare bones minimally viable version of this project will utilize information from traditional and charter schools in one NYC urban area and if a progressive school is not located within that same area, I will compare information from the nearest NYC progressive school to produce a Gephi data visualization.

The stripped down version would show the school’s locations, amounts and types of funding received, links to rules of governance or mission statements and resources if any used for blended learning.  The blog-space will also be created in this version, and I will also upload the forum page.

Short Version Timeline: This short version can be completed within the next two months.

Proposal #Two:  A Space for Student Collaboration

Children who attend failing schools can experience frustration with their school work.  It may be that these students need to engage their work socially rather than traditionally which may help to develop interests in assignments.  Additionally, if they were sharing the same learning experience digitally with their peers, they might look forward to successfully completing assignments.

Personas: Tyler is 13 years old and has not learned how to focus on task.  Tyler would rather doodle and talk in class and sees his teachers as an authority figure which he would rather strike out against.

Sophia who is fifteen years old tries to get her work done but often feels dejected because she really doesn’t understand what she is reading.  Sophia complains bitterly that she tries but her teacher just wants to punish her by giving her more work to do.

Use Case Scenario: I would propose creating a mobile app that can be downloaded onto tablets or phones.  Having posed a question around a reading, students would begin working to find solutions to problems by compiling a list of keywords they have created, and would upload pictures onto one line of a grid as a visual reference to the keyword.  A writing space would be available next to the picture so that students could answer 5W/1H questions relating to the keyword.

After the student has worked through all of the keywords and themes, they will be able to place all of the pictures that were used in the workspace side by side to create a completed visual storyline of the reading.  Having experienced the app, students should be better situated to complete writing assignments about the topic.

A backchannel would also be available for other students to discuss events that are similar to the posed question.  Participants in the backchannel could be challenged to add similar events to the event on the main page, and to explain those similarities.

When the work on the main page is completed and challenge questions in the backchannel have been answered, students in the back channel will be able to join the student on the main page to compare similarities between all topics.  This could help create interest in literature and historical events.

Students would be able to use the app while commuting since it would be available on tablets and phones.

Full Version: I would use Ruby on Rails to develop a grid with space to include sections for keywords, comments and photos.  The open source tools I would use include:

  • Padlet which would sit within the grid and its wall can be populated with photos (via pasting the url of the photo into a template). Although Padlet does offer backchannel technology, I want to keep the backchannel conversation separate from the action that is happening on the Padlet wall.  This would allow the student in the main section to work alone within the environment to clarify their ideas around the topic.
  • TodaysMeet (also an open source tool) would be used to create a private backchannel space where a group conversation can develop.
  • Factlink uses an invisible layer approach to allow users to see the contents of a webpage and write directly on the invisible layer. Factlink can be customized if a website requires it.

Ruby on Rails will support each of these tools.  Padlet, TodaysMeet and Factlink should all have a very small learning curve.

Timeline: It should take 2 -3 months to learn Ruby on Rails.  None of the other tools present a learning curve.

Short Version: There is only one area that would be changed on the short version, and that would be to not use “TodaysMeet” since both it and Padlet offer backchannel discussion capability.  Otherwise, the short version of the app is identical to the longer version.

 

Critical Digital Edition: Memories and Adventures

Memories and Adventures is a 1924 autobiography by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the late-Victorian writer most famous for his creation of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. Doyle was a physician, a Spiritualist, and a prominent public figure. His autobiography describes his adventures whaling in the deep Arctic, his experiences in medical practice, his religious epiphanies, and his efforts as a British apologist during the Boer war. Although Holmes is a figure of central interest to scholars concerned with fin de siècle culture, fan studies, and the literature of detection, Doyle’s autobiography has received relatively little critical scrutiny, and the majority of the scholarly attention it does receive is in introductions to collections of Holmes stories as a source of biographic material. To an extent, this is unsurprising—Doyle’s Spiritualism, for example, seems incongruous, given the empirical tendencies of his most famous creation. However, the book holds some special appeal from a history of science perspective, and an annotated edition, backed up with letters, images, and historical background, would provide an original biographical perspective on the complex figure who conceived the Great Detective.

Memories and Adventures

Memories and Adventures

Minimal Viable Product

 Memories and Adventures is an ideal length for a scholarly edition, and creating such a work would be a worthwhile contribution to Holmes studies. However, the creation of a digital scholarly edition could also be limited to the initial release of a small set of annotated Holmes stories rather than a full critical edition of Doyle’s autobiography, a move that could provide a proof of concept. Thus, my MVP could be a set of critically annotated Holmes stories presented on an existing cross-platform publishing platform, such as iBooks or an open-source alternative.

Larger Scope Project

A more substantial version of the project would be a Holmes digital archive or Doyle omnibus, which would be a much more substantial undertaking. Alternatively, I could focus more on the platform, rather than using preexisting tools to create a larger book-length commentary. This would actually be timely, since as of now there are actually few satisfactory or comprehensive alternatives for publishing critical editions online—most current platforms are focused on textbooks or lack features that make them attractive on tablets. (I’m looking at you, Scalar.)

Whether I go with the short stories or the full edition, an intertextual, archival, and multimedia approach built on a modern distribution platform would enable the digital edition to go beyond critical commentary to include some of the elements of an archive. A digital edition constructed around the capabilities of the modern tablet could incorporate high-resolution images and illustrations, “tours” of prominent locations, interviews with Doyle scholars, facsimiles of original editions, and other materials usually reserved for an archive.

 

 

 

 

Short proposals, Gioia Stevens

Project Proposal #1: Topic modeling project

  1. Introduction

I would like to explore topic modeling for library search and discovery as an initial prototype project for the Graduate Center’s new institutional repository, Academic Works. Academic Works is a digital repository of the scholarly and creative works of CUNY Graduate Center faculty, students, and research centers. The Graduate Center Library administers this open access repository to preserve, showcase, and facilitate access to these works, which currently include articles, dissertations, and theses.

Academic Works allows users to browse across collections and disciplines and to enter key word searches across a particular series of texts or across the full repository. There is no more granular level of structured search and the repository does not offer any traditional subject headings or other classification scheme. This problem of limited search and discovery in digital repositories is not limited to Academic Works. The traditional methods of providing structured searching by topic through the use of hierarchical taxonomies have failed to keep pace with the explosion of digitized print publications and born digital texts. A researcher looking for information by topic in a large digital corpus is often at sea without a compass and cannot be sure that search results offer complete or accurate information. Academic Works needs better metadata!

  1. Set of personas

Andromeda Dissertation is a graduate student at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is planning her dissertation topic and she wants to consult Academic Works to see what other students at GC have done.

Professor Old Hat is not very excited about digital projects, but he thinks Academic Works sounds more convenient than going to the library to look at the print copies of the dissertations.

Faraway Researcher lives in another country and does not know anything about the CUNY Graduate Center. S/he comes to Academic Works after doing a search in Google Scholar.

  1. Use case scenario

Andromeda Dissertation is a graduate student in the English department at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is browsing Academic Works to look for recent dissertations on Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. She looks at the discipline lists but discovers that she can go no further than an undifferentiated list of “Works in American Literature.” Annoyed, she starts typing in “Leaves of Grass” in the keyword search box. This does pull up one dissertation on Whitman, but it also yields several irrelevant results such as “How Important Is Land-Based Foraging to Polar Bears?” Andromeda laughs bitterly and loathes those idiots at the library, but then she notices an attractive visualization displaying a cloud of words representing topics in all of the English department dissertations. She finds not only Whitman, but several other topics related to her research which she had not thought to seek out through a key word search. She clicks on the visualization that takes her directly to the related section of the full text and begins exploring.

  1. How to make the full-fledged version

In the first phase of the project, I plan to focus on a test corpus of GC full text dissertations in Academic Works over a five-year period from 2009 to 2014. The prototype will then be used to launch a longer-term project based in the CUNY Graduate Center Library to implement topic modeling as an access tool for all dissertations in Academic Works. Academic Works will eventually contain the full corpus of past CUNY dissertations from 1965 to the present. It will also become the primary platform for the publication, dissemination, and preservation of all future CUNY dissertations. Creating better subject access to the dissertations through topic modeling will aid researchers and also provide an overview analysis of the history of scholarship at the Graduate Center. Other possible features of the full-fledged version would include building a metadata crosswalk from topic modeling results to standard controlled vocabularies such as Library of Congress Subject Headings or OCLC FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology) Headings.

  1. Time estimate

Uncertain, but probably at least a year for the test phase with dissertations from 2009-2014. The larger project for all dissertations going back to 1965 is a long term project that would take several years.

Skills estimate

Known skills: XML/XSLT, MarcEdit, Excel, general metadata/controlled vocabulary knowledge

Skills I would need to learn: AntConc, Mallet, Gephi or other visualization tools. Also need to clear substantial technical and bureaucratic hurdles for integrating new search tool into Digital Commons repository platform. Building the metadata crosswalk would also require considerable additional exploration, consulting metadata experts at other libraries, and the acquisition of additional skills.

  1. How to make the stripped down version

A stripped down version would focus on a smaller test corpus of 377 dissertations and theses from 2010 and compare topic modeling results against author supplied key words, subject headings assigned in the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database, and traditional Library of Congress Subject Headings assigned by GC librarians in the records in the CUNY catalog. In 2010, the library was still doing manual, original cataloging of each dissertation, but it had also begun the electronic dissertation deposit process which affords both full text searching and additional metadata (author keywords and ProQuest headings). This comparison of old and new methods would be a more systematic and traditional way to test topic modeling as a library classification tool, but the resulting project would take the form of writing an initial evaluation rather than building a functioning tool. This version of the project would be much simpler to do and it would eliminate the need to integrate a new feature into the Digital Commons repository platform.

  1. Time estimate: 6 months

Skills estimate

Known skills: XML/XSLT, MarcEdit, Excel, general metadata/controlled vocabulary knowledge

Skills I would need to learn: AntConc, Mallet, Gephi or other visualization tools 

  

Project Proposal #2: Mapping the History of NYC Islands

  1. Introduction

New York City is the nation’s largest urban archipelago, with dozens of small islands which are now mostly abandoned and off limits to the public. Many of the islands were once part of New York’s maritime and industrial economy or served to house hospitals, jails, military training centers, and graveyards. Abandoned 19th century buildings can be seen on some islands, while most are barren except for flocks of nesting birds. Over thirty small islands no longer exist at all because they were joined to the mainland using construction debris as landfill. Some islands played a more dramatic role in history, such as Big Tom Island which housed a munitions depot destroyed by German saboteurs in 1916.

This project will use maps to tell the history of these islands, uniting information from books, scholarly articles, newspapers, and archives. The project will be suitable for use in New York City history classes as well as appealing to scholars, NYC history buffs, eccentric tourists, and curious kayakers and bird watchers.

  1. Set of personas

Cassidy Commoncore is a social studies teacher in a NYC public middle school. She is always looking for new ways to teach students about the history and environment of NYC.

Horatio History is a native New Yorker and local history enthusiast. He is not an academic, but he devotes a lot of time to reading and research.

Tina Tourista is a visitor to NYC who is interested in the off-beat and forgotten aspects of the city’s history.

Birding Bob & Kayaking Karen are interested in NYC harbor islands as part of the city’s natural environment.

  1. Use case scenario

Cassidy Commoncore is a social studies teacher in a NYC public middle school. She is required to teach about the history and environment of NYC as part of the curriculum, but it is a struggle to find ways to keep students interested in the material. The Mapping the History of NYC Islands project is a free online tool that helps her students learn geography and history as well as exploring environmental issues such as protecting nesting harbor herons. Students can explore the islands through an online map of New York City and click on each one to see images, interesting facts, historical summaries, and links to further information.

  1. How to make the full-fledged version

The project will have an initial research phase to find and assemble information on the history of the islands from a variety of sources (online sources including Wikipedia, NYC history blogs and websites, scholarly and popular journal articles and books, and museum and archive collections). The building of the actual interface would involve using CartoDB or similar platform designed for story telling with maps

  1. Time estimate: 6 months to 1 year.

Skills estimate

Known skills: Research, writing, and presentation skills. Basic HTML, WordPress skills.

Skills I would need to learn: GIS skills/CartoDB, more advanced WordPress

  1. How to make the stripped down version

The stripped down version would limit the initial research phase to more readily available resources and save more labor-intensive research (such as visits to museums and archives) for a later phase. This version would focus on building the basic interface first and then expand and develop with additional content on an ongoing basis.

  1. Time estimate: 6 months.

Skills estimate

Known skills: Research, writing, and presentation skills. Basic HTML, WordPress skills.

Skills I would need to learn: GIS skills/CartoDB, more advanced WordPress

Anke’s Project Proposal #1: WordPress Framework with Commons and Annotation Tool for Literature Courses

Introduction

Effective close reading is a challenge in many literature classrooms. Before students can even start to discuss or write about a text they have to actively engage with it. But the problem is that the majority of students read texts on electronic devices, especially on their smartphones. Active reading and annotating are habits rarely seen anymore. I want to design a WordPress framework for literature courses that brings this practice back into the (online) classroom. It will include an annotation tool and student community function, so that students can annotate and comment on (parts of) class readings in an online community setting. After basic training in WordPress, instructors can fill in the existing framework with their own reading materials. This will save them a lot of time. It can also help the department streamline course design and requirements, and, most importantly, improve student performance.

Personas

  • Willy: a young parttime adjunct instructor in the English Department. Wants to teach with WordPress but does not have the time or expertise to build his own website from scratch. Has been given a mandatory reading list for a literature survey course—a requirement for the Gen Ed Curriculum. Because of this, his students will have a widely varying level of ability and interest in the subject. This framework can help him set up his course site, save him time, and give him an effective tool to work with students with varying skill sets.
  • Beatrice: a fulltime professor in the English Department. Invested in curriculum development and innovation. Currently serving on a committee to rethink the Gen Ed course offerings, reading lists, and course tools. The framework can provide a user-friendly and effective way to integrate technology into the classroom, and streamline the course offerings across the department but still offer each instructor/course the freedom to fill in the course in a way that fits their specific needs/course requirements.
  • Alex: a student. Junior, majoring in English. English is his first language and he generally does well in literature and arts classes. Likes to read. Likes to contribute to class discussions but is shy to speak up. Uses his tablet to read the texts. Online annotation would be a great addition to class participation for him and help him actively engage with the texts, and his peers, on his tablet.
  • Julia: a student. Freshman, majoring in engineering. Has to take literature to meet Gen Ed requirements. English is not her native language. Struggles with reading comprehension. Uses her smartphone to read the texts. Online annotation can help her comprehension of class readings, give her a way to show where she’s struggling with the text, and increase overall engagement in class, even when she’s working on a smartphone.

Use Case Scenario

Language and literature departments can offer this tool to their faculty. In addition, they would offer faculty an introductory workshop on how to use WordPress and this framework specifically. Instructors would then incorporate it in their course design and use it to read (parts of) the assigned readings with the students. Follow-up meetings can address issues of assessment, offer continuing support and function as a platform for new ideas and the sharing of experiences.

Students would access their course websites before class to read texts, annotate and comment on them, and comment on each others’ comments. Passages that many mark as difficult, relevant or otherwise noteworthy will receive special attention in class discussion. It helps student engage with the texts, and faculty align instruction with needs and experiences of students.

Full Version

For the framework to be able to offer a blog, annotation tool and community function to many classrooms, I would need a tablet/smartphone compatible multisite network on WordPress with an annotation tool plug-in and commons function. I have recently changed my course website (courseblogs.org) into a multisite but have not yet made any additional sites. It is already smartphone compatible, and my students already use it on their phones. A large multisite needs a strong multisite network administration. Once the site is up, this administration, plus support for faculty, would take the most time and resources.

Right now the only annotation plug-in that I know is Commentpress, which is not the most user-friendly nor easy to integrate with other functionalities such as a blog. There are other options, such as Social Reader (also from The Institute for the Future of the Book), PRISM (from the Praxis Program at U of Virginia), NowComment, and Annotate.co. I need to evaluate all the options, but in an absolute ideal situation I would be able to design the annotation tool also.

Since undergraduates cannot access the already existing CUNY commons, I want to integrate that function by installing Commons in a Box.

I think the biggest hurdle is to make such a multi-user site run smoothly and to integrate the various functionalities within framework.

Time and Skills

I have intermediate skills with WordPress but would need to learn more about these specific plug-ins. Commons in a Box has a lot of features so it takes some time to learn how to work with it effectively. I would also need to learn how to manage a multi-site and train faculty how to start using it.

As the goal is to offer a framework for various literature courses, I would have to sit down with faculty in charge of curriculum development and discuss the process of building, implementation, and support for faculty. Together we would draw up the design for the framework, so that it reflects the needs and desires of the department and/or the Gen Ed curriculum.

I think it would take 2-3 months to design and create the framework. The faculty workshops, site management and troubleshooting, and user support would be ongoing after implementation.

Minimally Viable Product

The stripped-down version would be a WordPress site with the same functionalities (blog, annotation, commons). Everything would be the same but it would not yet be a multi-site network. I can build out my website to include all the features I would like the framework site to have, and use reading material from a course I am currently teaching to give it content. This could also serve as a showcase for the extended version. I would have to familiarize myself with annotation tools and Commons in a Box and can experiment with it in my own classroom, but would not yet expand beyond my own use.

It would take me 2-3 weeks to build out my site, then a few weeks to test it in the classroom, and another 2-3 weeks to fine-tune it.

(For my other proposal I am working with Sarah so we will post that separately).

Wikipedia Edits Traced to 1 Police Plaza

With all the talk we have been having about Wikipedia editing…A friend tweeted this article about anonymous edits originating from 1 Police Plaza IP addresses, made to Wikipedia pages about stop and frisk, Eric Garner, Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, Alexian Lien (the man who was accosted by motorcyclists—some off duty NYPD while on the West Side Highway with his wife and child in the car). What do you all think? Harmless or trying to rewrite history?

Here is the link to the article. It’s been reposted on other sites as well.

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2015/03/8563947/edits-wikipedia-pages-bell-garner-diallo-traced-1-police-plaza

Midterm Assignment: Short Proposals

As we have discussed, your midterm assignment is to create at least two different project proposals that each have at least two scope variations: one full and a reduced version.

Each of the (at least) two proposals should follow this structure:

  1. An introductory descriptive paragraph, which should include a problem statement, and say *what* your tool/thing will do. This is your abstract, or elevator pitch. This should not have the full theoretical framing of the project. That will come in the final.
  2. A set of personas
  3. A use case scenario (where would someone find your tool/thing and how would they use it). Keep it short.
  4. How you will make the full fledged version. This is your “ideal world” version that fulfills all of your visions and fantasies (what tools you will use, how you will get them, how confident you are that all the moving parts will work together, etc)
  5. Your assessment of how much time this will take, and how much of the skills you currently know and what you would have to learn.
  6. How you will make the stripped down version. The stripped down version is the minimally viable product. It is the most *bare bones* version to prove that what you are trying to get at is viable. (what tools you will use, how you will get them, how confident you are that all the moving parts will work together, etc)
  7. Your assessment of how much time this will take, and how much of the skills you currently know and what you would have to learn.

You are welcome (but not required) to repeat the last two steps with scope variations in-between the full fledged and bare bones version.

We would expect two proposals with two scope variations would be effectively in 4 to 7 page range (though you will be turning in online). We’re less concerned with page count, and more concerned with your process (as with all assignments in this class).

You will hopefully notice that you have done a lot of this work already. We’ve structured it this way. Your job here is to combine and revise the work you have already done, fill the holes, and assess each project’s feasibility

You can find examples of midterm proposals from last year here. I would highlight this one, and this one.

The proposals will be submitted as blog posts prior to class on March 18th.

Class that week will be dedicated to workshopping the proposals. The format we will follow will be that each participant will choose one of their two proposals to present orally. You will have 5 minutes to present, and we will have 4 minutes for feedback. Think of this as a pitch. You will want to lay out the project abstract, present very short versions of your personas, give one use case scenario, and then talk about how you would build it, and how long you think it would take.