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May 31, 2006
McCarty Humanities Award
Humanities Computing 'Wizard' Honored for Scholarship
The National Humanities Center, a private institute for advanced study in the humanities, awarded Willard McCarty its 2006 Richard W. Lyman Award in recognition of McCarty’s contribution to the field of “digital humanities.” The $25,000 award honors Richard Lyman, who was president of Stanford University from 1970-1980.
McCarty is a reader in humanities computing at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King's College London. He is a theoretician of the area of “digital humanities” and founder of the "Humanist,” a Web site that brings together scholars working on the confluence of computing and the humanities. In his latest book, Humanities Computing, McCarty makes the case for elevating the field as a separate academic discipline. “We tend to construe computing in the humanities in terms we understand – as an efficient helper or mechanical aid to existing fields like history, literature, or philosophy," he said.
James O'Donnell, provost of Georgetown University and chair of the award selection committee, called McArty, “a doer, a thinker, and perhaps a wizard.” O’Donnell added that McArty’s “explorations in the practical and theoretical dimensions of the application of information technology to the problems of humanistic learning have made him a widely recognized international leader."
Posted by hag at 8:44 AM | Comments (0)
May 19, 2006
BSAD/SoE TabletPC Grant Award
External Research & Programs: Tablet PC Technology, Curriculum, and Higher Education 2005 RFP Awards
BSAD and S of Engineering have received a grant from MiscroSoft re: Tablets with which they will, in part "ocus groups will be conducted in BSAD and SoE to ascertain what about the tablets is effective and why. These results will be disseminated within UVM through workshops and nationally through conferences and journals in both disciplines. This work will also develop training seminars on Tablet PCs and associated software. Both schools expect to gather a better understanding of methodologies for using Tablet PC technology."
Posted by hag at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2006
collaborative writing app
Simple software to help you get organized: 37signals
Writeboard: an online collaborative writing app, multiple authors, multiple updates, all stored by date, compare versions, etc. (also see "Writely"). For wiki-like projects on a small scale?
Posted by hag at 2:57 PM | Comments (0)
O'Gorman course: running posthuman
Bodies/Technologies II - Schedule
Author of E-crit (see previous posting), here is the syllabus for O'Gorman's recent course:
"While tech corporations sing the praises of our increasingly "mobile" way of life, America is actually growing more immobile each day. . . Perhaps the single greatest cause of this immobility is the screen interface for TV's and computers. . . This course asks you to explore strategies for re-embodying information. That is, how can the body can be reintegrated into communications technology? We will answer this question by developing experimental projects that draw on the metaphor of "running."
Also fun because he uses "class content time" to teach them several apps (hooray) and offers the opportunity to display good final projects in a "real life" venue.
Posted by hag at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)
book: E-Crit: Digital Media, Critical Theory, and the Humanities
"In E-Crit, Marcel O�Gorman takes an ambitious and provocative look at how university scholarship, pedagogy, and curricula might be transformed to suit a digital culture."
Posted by hag at 12:07 PM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2006
Google Notebook
http://www.google.com/notebook
What does it do?
Allows you to cut/paste or one-click post information from any web site or the site's Google entry, along with notes that you write yourself.
My first reaction was: "Cute, but isn't this just another way to do the same old thing. And given the latest news about the NSA commandeering phone records, not to mention the marketing industry possibilities, do I really want to store my "stuff" at Google's site?"
Well, I have no answer for that question, but the utility itself works as advertised and can be quite handy.
Of particular interest, at least in terms of educational uses...
is the "public" notebook feature. You can set up multiple notebooks (each with multiple sections, if you like) and declare any of those notebooks to be public. You can then publish the (long...) URL for your public notebook. Better yet, the contents of that notebook goes into the Google public notebook search pool.
One of the perrenial complaints from teachers about students using the web for research is that "they don't differntiate between good and bad sources." One of the solutions is to create a webliography of good sources. An even better solution is to have the students create group webliographies. Del.icio.us is one way to do that, but the new Notebook utility seems to be an even better way. Students could create a notebook for a given project, then share it via the public feature.
Another use: culling/collecting images from the web. Several of the student web projects we encounter have students finding and using images from the web. Too often they find the images, copy them, but don't note where the images came from ("...it was the fourth image on the third page that came up when I searched in Google..."). With Notebook, when you drag and drop an image into the notebook it also stores the URL. hooray!!
Like web sites, or even like blogs (albeit, they do have the comment feature), the public notebook is a "this is my thing--I'll share it with you" application. This definitely has an impact on how users will perceive the information gathered therein. For group projects that need a more equitable sharing of responsibilities and ownership, a wiki with its "this is our thing--we build it together" model might be better. However, for what it does, Notebook seems to do it well.
Posted by hag at 12:14 PM | Comments (0)
Google notebook: Humanities Computing Resources
Here's my public Google Notebook of Humanities Computing Resources. A beginning...
Posted by hag at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)
gimme O2
A very strange sign of the times...�|�Reuters.com
TOKYO (Reuters) - Exhausted Japanese workers in need of a pick-me-up will soon be able to get a hit of canned oxygen at their local convenience store....
Seven-Eleven Japan will start marketing the new product, "O2 Supli," at select stores in the Tokyo area later this month and expand sales nationwide in June.
"People are under a lot of stress and can't get much exercise, so they aren't getting enough oxygen," said Minoru Matsumoto, a spokesman for Seven & I Holdings Co Ltd, Seven-Eleven's parent company.
"This is especially true of people who do long hours of desk work in front of a computer. They don't breathe that deeply."
The oxygen will be sold for 600 yen ($5.50) in 3.2-liter spray cans of 95 percent pure oxygen, each of which comes with a small plastic mask attached to the top.
Users place the mask over their mouth and nose, then push a nozzle, which dispenses the oxygen for two to three seconds.
Each can contains enough oxygen for about 35 doses, in either a grapefruit or peppermint fragrance.
"The peppermint should be really good for mornings when you're tired, or when you're driving, or when you really have to concentrate," Matsumoto said.
"The grapefruit should be good before you do sports or while you're working really late."
People involved in product testing gave favorable reports, Matsumoto said, noting that he had tried it himself.
"Everyone found it extremely refreshing," he added.
Posted by hag at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)
May 15, 2006
Article: Scan this Book
Scan This Book! - New York Times
The article discusses the global library, scanning all books, etc., and how search and connections will remake the knowledge of the world.
Kevin Kelly is the "senior maverick" at Wired magazine and author of "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World" and other books.
Posted by hag at 9:42 AM | Comments (1)
May 4, 2006
OpenXMLDeveloper
The place to keep an eye on how developers are integrating XML into Office/Word. Includes code for writing a web app that accepts text and turns it into a Word document. May, in future, contain news of apps to work with Word.
Posted by hag at 11:34 AM | Comments (0)
MS Word and XML
Brian Jones: Open XML Formats
The blog discusses implementing XML in Word, especially how the upcoming version uses XML. Includes tips and developments.
Posted by hag at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)