Ancient History Ramblings

Digital History and SL

As part of my Digital History class, I am planning on having my students experiment with Second Life. In fact, I am planning on teaching the class in SL a couple of times. I also wanted to see how well Sloodle worked with SL. During the first week of class, I asked my students to see if they could create an account, choose an avatar, log in to SL, and then make it to IUP's Crimson Island. I have to admit to being disappointed in the results so far - only 4 students have been able to accomplish this and one of those was already very proficient in SL before the class started. The problems facing the students are unfortunately varied in nature so it isn't simply fixing one thing, but several things.

On the bright side, I learned at my SL coordination committee meeting today that several departments/colleges at IUP are in the process of purchasing more SL islands. As IUP expands its presence in SL, this will allow us to do much more than we are currently doing. Our main island is very full and limits faculty who are interested in trying out SL from building or experimenting with scripts. I am meeting with the folks who are working on Archaeology Island tomorrow and will give you an update on how things are progressing.

RSM

Academic YouTube, Part 2

As a followup to my earlier post about academics using YouTube to post lectures and presentations, the Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus had an article today entitled "Dueling Videos: Scholar Creates Remix of Another Academic's YouTube Hit." The article, by Jeffrey Young, describes how one scholar remixed a popular YouTube video of another scholar as a critique of the original. The author muses that "The dueling videos might point to a future in which scholarly arguments take place in visual rather than written form."

This got me to wandering, are we moving in that direction? I often hear colleagues say that our students are visual learners and that we need to bear that in mind as we search for ways to hold their attention and impart information during a 50 minute class. I certainly feel that I need to use visuals when I teach survey courses since I believe that it is very hard for students who have never left the US to really understand ancient civilizations without visual imagery (photos, slides, videos, etc.). I can remember my undergraduate archaeology classes which had dual slide projectors going non-stop every day. The problem was that these classes were right after lunch, in non air-conditioned classrooms, in the sweltering NC heat, and that made staying awake very, very hard. In fact, one of my memories from these classes was a young lady literally falling out of her chair as she dozed off. Humorous at the time, but now I have to worry about causing my students to nod off.

Where am I going with this? Well, I am not really sure. I believe that all methods of teaching can be effective, in the right setting. I am also all for trying new techniques in the classroom, and do appreciate that students today are different from the students of 20 years ago - but do worry about using technology for technology's sake. This point has been really brought home to me by my Digital History class. In talking to one of my sections last week, I somehow got off on a tangent (quite common for me actually) and mentioned that I was interested in trying out a Kindle, Amazon's new wireless portable reader. None of the students were familiar with it and in fact, they all expressed a preference for traditional books, not reading from a screen. They also said that they preferred classes to podcasts and video delivery. So, for my students, technology is coming slowly and I need to remember that.

RSM

SL Theatre

In my Second Life Educators Digest today I ran across a message about historical sims. The author of the message mentioned that he had been disappointed by the historical sites he had visited so far in SL, but that he had visited a site that was recreating the Theatre of Pompey and was impressed by it. After reading the message, I decided to check it out. I first went to the website and was very impressed, it is a very good web site that explains the project in great detail (Theatron 3: Educational Undertakings in Second Life). It is a very well-designed webpage that explains the project and even has some links to SL tutorials. It is certainly worth a visit. I tried to visit the SL site but it was closed for construction at the moment, so I will check back periodically.

On the PKAP front, things are starting to pick up. I have started working on the logistics for the summer and my first step was the creation of a budget. Since we have been working in the same area for the last 5 years, we usually have a very good idea of what things cost (lodging, food, car rental, etc.). This year, however, we do not have as good of an idea as in past years since Cyprus moved from the Cypriot pound to the Euro back on January 1st of this year. My concern was that businesses in Cyprus might use this as an opportunity to reevaluate what they charge for their products/services and increase their prices. This combined with a slipping dollar against foreign currency could really put a crimp in our budget. I sent out emails to our car rental agent and our hotel of choice. After receiving their answers, I visited XE.com and checked out the value of the dollar, which was 1 euro = $1.47 today. Ouch! In looking at car rental prices, our cost this year will be approximately 35% higher and our lodging will be 15-20% higher. I had to stop thinking about this and go lie down.

RSM

Digital History Week 2: Searching online

Today began the second week for my Digital History class, and our first class in the History Department's Computer Lab. This week we are discussing basic searching on the Internet. Unfortunately, we had a few technical glitches at the start of class that slowed us up. One of the lab's computers was not connected to an active port and our departmental laptop could not hold a constant wireless connection. Anyway, once we fixed those problems we were able to start class. We also have to deal with the issue of 7 computers in one room and the 8th one in a small room off to one side - this means that I have to stand in the doorway so everyone can hear me, but since the students are all focused on their computer screens it should be ok. (The joys in working in an old building) Anyway, I began the class by talking briefly about web browsers and was surprised that the students had a lot of trouble defining what a web browser is - it seems to be something that everyone uses but doesn't know how to talk about. The students also had trouble listing different web browsers other than Internet Explorer - Microsoft should be pleased.

We next moved on to searching techniques. At the risk of boring the students to death, I decided to work them through a website I found that walks the reader through various techniques of searching Google, ranging from the basic to the advanced. The site, GoogleGuide.com, is a nifty website - and I have to admit I learned some new things when I visited it. I found it so valuable that I am going to find ways to include it in all of my classes in the future. All of the students said that they learned new searching techniques that they were unfamiliar with, but the real test will be to see if they actually implement them when they conduct research. I gave them a homework assignment that will require them to use these new techniques in an effort to reinforce what they learned, so we will see how it goes.

RSM

Ready to begin a new week

I am appreciative of the people who have offered to take the digital history pre-test. While I asked people to take it, I failed to provide directions on how to do just that. Go to http://www.iup.edu/webct and login using guest as both the id and the password. Then scroll down to HIST 279 and click on it. Then click on exams to take the test - sorry it is so convoluted.

I have gotten some feedback on the test. My students feel that it is too hard, but a few actually said that it made them realize that they had a lot to learn, or that they looked forward to learning about these things. Bill Caraher and Sebastian Heath also took the test and their feeling is that it might be too hard. I might have also tried to do too much with one test. Some of the test is focused on computer knowledge and the rest is focused on digital history and information literacy. I was worried about this problem when I created the test, and now realize that I should have focused on one or the other, but not all.

Tomorrow's topic will be on searching the Internet and will be taught in our departmental computer lab....providing all the computers work.

RSM

End of the Week

At last it is the end of the week. For some reason this week seemed to go on forever and it was only 4 days long, I can't imagine what next week will feel like. The other thing I realized tonite was that I am in the wrong profession - we looked at aluminum baseball bats for my son and I was stunned by the cost, which can run into the hundreds. Things have changed a lot since I was a kid, but that was a long time ago, unfortunately.

My colleagues have been a bit slow to take my Digital History pre-test, so far only 1 has had a chance to complete it. (If any of them actually read this - please take the test). I know that they have been busy, but I will begin pestering them next week about it, and trust me I can be a pest. I was quite pleased to receive an email from Sebastian Heath who offered to take the test to help me out. So, following up on his generosity, I was hoping that there might be others out there who would be willing to take the pre-test. It takes about 10-15 minutes to take and I would be very grateful.

Speaking of Sebastian Heath, he mentioned in his blog (Mediterranean Ceramics) last Saturday that:

• Greek, Roman and Byzantine Pottery from Ilion (Troia) is now clearly marked as being released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported license. Previously, only the PDF version was CC. Now you can download the whole publication and redistribute it if you so please. To make this easier, all the files are compiled into a single TAR ball. FYI, it's about 170 meg. Our hope is that this will make the information more useful and also allow other institutions to archive and redistribute the material themselves.

This got me thinking about our PKAP data and the various issues we have to come to a decision on in the near future, but it is late, so more on this later.

RSM

Minor updates

On the digital history front, not a lot to report. I have finished grading the pre-tests, but have not given the students their scores yet. I am waiting to see how many fellow faculty members I can talk into also taking the test. About 5 have agreed to do so over the next week and it will be very interesting to see how well they do. A couple of them made me promise not to release their scores to anyone else if they don't well and I agreed to that condition. I am also considering who else I can ask to take the test and so far do not have any ideas.

On the PKAP front, I am happy to report that we purchased a domain name for our website - www.pkap.org. One piece of feedback that I constantly received on our website was that the address was too long and too hard to remember (www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/). Over the last 2 years I have been collaborating with colleagues in IUP's anthropology department on several technology and equipment grants, and we recently purchased a new server. Since we now have additional web and storage space, I decided to finally investigate how expensive it would be to purchase domain name for the project and if that was even something we could do at IUP. It turns out that it is incredibly easy and very inexpensive, so I purchased the pkap.org name for the project. It will probably take about 2 weeks to set up the name and server, and migrate our site to its new location. I will let you know when that happens.

RSM

YouTube and Universities

I met with one of my Digital History classes today. We spent some time talking about how the Internet and computers have changed the field of history. I relied heavily on Cohen and Rosenzweig's on-line text Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web, in particular its introduction, for help in guiding today's discussion. The discussion went well, even though the students seemed a bit shell-shocked at times and surprised at things I said. For example, they seemed bemused when I mentioned that universities are using YouTube as a way to distribute educational videos. Several universities, such as USC and Berkeley, have set up YouTube channels for their videos. Some of these educational videos have attracted more than 100,000 viewers. I asked the class if they would want to watch a YouTube video of one of my lectures and the reaction was well....less than flattering. This discussion did encourage me to get back to work on the PKAP website and work on the video clip section. I am hoping to have a big (at least it seems big to me) about the site in about a week.

RSM

Computer Literacy Report

A colleague forwarded me an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education's The Wired Campus entitled "Computer Literacy Doesn't Mean Information Literacy, Report Says." This article briefly summarizes a report from the Joint Information Systems Committee that found that while today's "Google Generation" (people born after 1993) are computer literate, they are not information literate. Three issues identified in the report are:

1) Young people don’t develop good search strategies to find quality information.
2) While young people might find information on the Internet quickly,  they don’t know how to evaluate the quality of what they find.
3) Young people don’t understand what the Internet really is: a vast network with many different content providers.

I actually find nothing shocking in this, since most of my students seem to fall into 2 broad categories: 1) those who know very little about computers and don't know how to use the Internet as a research tool ; and 2) those who can find information on the Internet on any subject, but do not understand how to differentiate between "good" sources and "bad" sources. The digital history pre-test I gave my students over the last week also seems to support this position. When I was going back over the pre-test results today, I wondered if perhaps my test was unrealistic and expected too much from my students and that the only person who could get a good score on it was its creator - me. So I decided to give the test to a control group, my fellow historians at IUP. I have been asking (actually begging) my history department colleagues to take this pre-test so that I can compare their results to my students. I will let you know how it goes.

RSM

A Day Off

Today was a day off from school for the family since it was Martin Luther King Day. We took a quick trip to Chuckie Cheese's (always a fun and exhausting trip) and did some shopping. I then spent some time setting up a new printer on my home network. After a fruitless hour I nearly gave up and was seriously starting to question my ability to deal with a simple home network, much less teach a class on digital history. Anyway, I finally got it working on all 4 computers - my big problem is that I have Vista running on one computer on a XP network and have been having all sorts of issues.

Our PKAP meeting in SL on Friday was great, but it really has signaled the beginning of the PKAP season in earnest. We have a lot of work to coordinate in the next few weeks. It is always amazing how much planning goes into each season. Every year I expect it to get easier, but it actually becomes more complicated as we grow in size and expenses. On the other hand I like to think we are actually learning from our mistakes (and there are many made each season) and getting better at planning and executing our plans for the upcoming fieldseasons. Our first priorities are to create in the next few weeks: 1) a list of personnel and dates of their arrivals/departures in Cyprus; 2) a list of equipment we think we need; 3) a list of grants that we are planning to apply for; 4) information packets for volunteers; 5) a list of publications we need to finish and/or are planning to write; and 6) a budget for the season. We'll have to see how long this actually takes to complete.

RSM