I discovered something very interesting with this assignment: I'm a good writer, but only in the right context.
I tested my last blog post about Wed and Data Mining on the Writer's Diet and was very disappointed when they diagnosed my writing as FLABBY. Flabby? Hardly! And yet, the website had correctly counted my uses of "it," "this," "that," etc. So maybe the Writer's Diet has a point.
After looking over Yahoo's Style Guide, I could come up with reasons that made me feel less awful about my online writing skills. For starters, I know very specifically who my audience is. My audience are my classmates, my peers, my friends. So of course I'm writing my blogs in a very conversational way! On a related note, my "voice" on my blog is my own. My friendly, class voice as opposed to the "voice" I would use in a formal paper.
Hoping to reclaim my sense of having good writing skills, I decided to test the two introductory paragraphs of my thesis on the Writer's Diet. It was a first draft, sure, but I felt confident that my professional writing style would score me more points!
I was right! My thesis draft scored higher on the Writer's Diet. I am now FIT & TRIM! Yeah, I did a little fist pump like the Success Baby meme.
Writing skills can can always be improved upon, but I am proud to report that I am still a good writer when I'm putting my mind to it. The lesson I learned is that blogging to your friends and classmates is a recipe for poor writing! Let's be honest with one another, you don't speak or write to your friends with perfect grammar and polished word choice in mind, do you? No. And neither do I.
If I ever find myself in a situation where I am blogging and tweeting for a wider audience than my friends and peers, then I will kick my professional writing skills into gear. For now, I can make peace with being a flabby online writer.
For the record. This post scored me NEEDS TONING!
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Web and Data Mining
This week's readings reminded me a lot about a discussion that our class had several weeks ago. In fact, I believe we were still in the conference room for this talk! We were discussing the massive amounts of information that we were putting out in internet space, what with Facebook statuses, tweets, blogs, every Google search, and every click of the mouse.
If you remember the conversation, we were talking about how one day historians could write a history about an average person's life based entirely on Facebook statuses, or perhaps write a history about an event using millions of tweets and statuses from people across the globe. We were saying in this discussion that there would be too much information out there, similar to how there is too little information for, say, a Dark Ages Historian looking at a particular poet.
Although all of these discussion alluded to this conversation from weeks ago, none made me more convinced to refresh our memories about this dialogue than William Turkel's Digital History Hacks.
The interesting thing about this article is that it never occurred to me that one could research how people input information into a search engine. When searching for the history of a specific country, for instance, most people type in "American History" as opposed to "the history of America." But, oddly enough, if the search is of a particular subject, such as technology, the same logic does not apply. People will usually type "the history of technology" instead of "technology history." (Note: I got these examples from Turkel's article. Clink the above link to see more of his examples.)
These types of calculations about who types what in search engines seems like it will quickly attract the attention of sociologists (especially those who focus on language!), if it hasn't already!
This article relates very closely to Dan Cohen's From Babel to Knowledge. In this article, Cohen talks about search engines that look for specific items using trusted sites. A great example, and one that Cohen developed, was searching for syllabi. He created a search engine that looks at only syllabi by inputting similar characteristics in the words of the document. In his syllabus search engine, you can type in the subject you want to teach and you will get examples of how similar classes arranged their syllabus.
Before I go on, let me just say: I didn't know such a thing was possible. It astounds me that with a little programming know-how, you can develop your own, useful search engine about anything you want. Another example Cohen uses is H-bot, which only looks at trusted sites when responding to a question/keyword.
Unfortunately, I was unable to find the Syllabus Finder when I did a quick Google search for it. I would have loved to try that out, although it wouldn't be as useful to me now as it would have been last Fall semester! If anyone else was able to locate this website, let me know!
If you remember the conversation, we were talking about how one day historians could write a history about an average person's life based entirely on Facebook statuses, or perhaps write a history about an event using millions of tweets and statuses from people across the globe. We were saying in this discussion that there would be too much information out there, similar to how there is too little information for, say, a Dark Ages Historian looking at a particular poet.
Although all of these discussion alluded to this conversation from weeks ago, none made me more convinced to refresh our memories about this dialogue than William Turkel's Digital History Hacks.
The interesting thing about this article is that it never occurred to me that one could research how people input information into a search engine. When searching for the history of a specific country, for instance, most people type in "American History" as opposed to "the history of America." But, oddly enough, if the search is of a particular subject, such as technology, the same logic does not apply. People will usually type "the history of technology" instead of "technology history." (Note: I got these examples from Turkel's article. Clink the above link to see more of his examples.)
These types of calculations about who types what in search engines seems like it will quickly attract the attention of sociologists (especially those who focus on language!), if it hasn't already!
This article relates very closely to Dan Cohen's From Babel to Knowledge. In this article, Cohen talks about search engines that look for specific items using trusted sites. A great example, and one that Cohen developed, was searching for syllabi. He created a search engine that looks at only syllabi by inputting similar characteristics in the words of the document. In his syllabus search engine, you can type in the subject you want to teach and you will get examples of how similar classes arranged their syllabus.
Before I go on, let me just say: I didn't know such a thing was possible. It astounds me that with a little programming know-how, you can develop your own, useful search engine about anything you want. Another example Cohen uses is H-bot, which only looks at trusted sites when responding to a question/keyword.
Unfortunately, I was unable to find the Syllabus Finder when I did a quick Google search for it. I would have loved to try that out, although it wouldn't be as useful to me now as it would have been last Fall semester! If anyone else was able to locate this website, let me know!
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Twitter in the Classroom
It took me a little while to find an article about Twitter's effect on education that I really enjoyed. The article I chose was a New York Times article about Twitter's use in classrooms, particularly high school, but the article says that Twitter could be useful starting in elementary school through university.
Take a look at Trip Gabriel's Speaking Up in Class, Silently, Using Social Media.
Perhaps Gabriel is making a good point that telling students to put their phones away and not use their laptops is futile. People of all ages today are texting and tweeting and posting even when they're in a room full of their closest friends. So asking a student to stop may be counterproductive. Embracing this technology and putting it to use in the classroom, Gabriel argues, is helping students open up to class discussions and ask questions they might not feel comfortable voicing aloud.
My one concern as I read about Tweeting during class was: how can you be sure that people are staying on task and not doing other things as well?
It turns out that Gabriel also had this thought. He explains that Tweeting in class is only successful if teachers check the conversation after class to catch for non-class-related Tweets. Although, I would still argue that if students are tweeting on their phones, what's to stop them from texting their friends at the same time? Teachers would have no way to moderate those conversations.
Students from an English high school class who tweet for and during class were interviewed for the article. They all agreed that Tweeting allows quiet students to get involved in the discussion and interests the students enough that they are more willing to ask questions and contribute to the conversation.
Although embracing technology is a necessity these days, I'd still argue that we should tread carefully. Not every classroom will benefit from Tweeter as a way to generate conversation. For instance, our LBST courses of 110 students may overwhelm the professor and each other with questions and comments. Not to mention it would be more difficult to catch the inappropriate comments.
On the other hand, we all experienced a successful usage of Twitter in our History in the Digital Age class when Jennifer couldn't come in, but could contribute ideas and thoughts via Twitter. So perhaps with smaller classes, Twitter can become an excellent tool for teachers and professors.
To those of you who want to become a teacher or professor, would you use Twitter as a discussion tool in your classrooms? Why or why not?
Take a look at Trip Gabriel's Speaking Up in Class, Silently, Using Social Media.
Perhaps Gabriel is making a good point that telling students to put their phones away and not use their laptops is futile. People of all ages today are texting and tweeting and posting even when they're in a room full of their closest friends. So asking a student to stop may be counterproductive. Embracing this technology and putting it to use in the classroom, Gabriel argues, is helping students open up to class discussions and ask questions they might not feel comfortable voicing aloud.
My one concern as I read about Tweeting during class was: how can you be sure that people are staying on task and not doing other things as well?
It turns out that Gabriel also had this thought. He explains that Tweeting in class is only successful if teachers check the conversation after class to catch for non-class-related Tweets. Although, I would still argue that if students are tweeting on their phones, what's to stop them from texting their friends at the same time? Teachers would have no way to moderate those conversations.
Students from an English high school class who tweet for and during class were interviewed for the article. They all agreed that Tweeting allows quiet students to get involved in the discussion and interests the students enough that they are more willing to ask questions and contribute to the conversation.
Although embracing technology is a necessity these days, I'd still argue that we should tread carefully. Not every classroom will benefit from Tweeter as a way to generate conversation. For instance, our LBST courses of 110 students may overwhelm the professor and each other with questions and comments. Not to mention it would be more difficult to catch the inappropriate comments.
On the other hand, we all experienced a successful usage of Twitter in our History in the Digital Age class when Jennifer couldn't come in, but could contribute ideas and thoughts via Twitter. So perhaps with smaller classes, Twitter can become an excellent tool for teachers and professors.
To those of you who want to become a teacher or professor, would you use Twitter as a discussion tool in your classrooms? Why or why not?
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Some Articles and Some Thoughts
The two articles I read were very different from one another, so I will talk about them separately.
First, I read The Historical Profession and Archival Education. This article makes the point that archival students can take two educational paths: history or library science. Since the internet boom, library science has become the most popular route to take for archival students due to its technology focus. History, as I think we all know from being in the history department at UNCC, is in many ways still focusing on traditional research and book/article publishing.
What made this article interesting to me was that it reminded me of how museums are also changing. Anymore, if you want to become a museum professional (like me!), you really must embrace technology and incorporating it into your education, the museum, and outreach. Although I am a self-declared luddite, I still embrace the courses that UNCC have offered that would make me a better candidate for museums today. I took a video editing course, and in this course I am learned about twitter, blogging, and online exhibits.
But back to the article, I believe the author, Joseph M. Turrini, makes a good point when he says that "History departments should continue to be part of archival education." Although they must also adapt to the changing market and techniques in order to give their students the best chance at getting a job, I also believe that history offers special insight to archiving. In many case, archiving deals with very old documents, papers, journals. History will help an archivist take their skills to the next level by interpretation and explanation.
Second, I read Enhancing Internet Use for History by Categorizing Online Resources. More brief and less thought provoking than my first choice, I felt that this was a great resource. The author, Edward A. Riedinger, suggests multiple databases for historians. Among them are JSTOR and Project MUSE, both of which I have used and enjoyed using. There are also many various other sites that I have not heard of and links to them. Go check it out!
Riedinger's emphasis is on organization and categorization throughout the article. I can personally comment on the level of difficulty a person can have on creating a list of keywords to attach to a particular object so that researchers looking for the material can find it with ease. As an intern at the Earl Scruggs Center, I was introduced to the Past Perfect cataloging system. Part of making a complete entry for an item in a collection is by creating a list of searchable terms and descriptions. Not only would you include what the item is, but what it looks like, what it represents, who or what it is associated with, and more. This is where research comes into play. In addition, one must think about what type of person or research would want this particular item and what words would they be using in a keyword search.
I agree that "applying techniques of keyword and subject searching" is a vital component in navigating online databases. Historians need to be broad, but still specific enough, with their keyword searches to find what they are looking for. At the same time, those people inputting searchable terms to connect with an item or written document, must think like a researcher. The terms must be broad enough to encompass a lot of terms but narrow enough so that researchers can find what they want easily. It is a very challenging task.
First, I read The Historical Profession and Archival Education. This article makes the point that archival students can take two educational paths: history or library science. Since the internet boom, library science has become the most popular route to take for archival students due to its technology focus. History, as I think we all know from being in the history department at UNCC, is in many ways still focusing on traditional research and book/article publishing.
What made this article interesting to me was that it reminded me of how museums are also changing. Anymore, if you want to become a museum professional (like me!), you really must embrace technology and incorporating it into your education, the museum, and outreach. Although I am a self-declared luddite, I still embrace the courses that UNCC have offered that would make me a better candidate for museums today. I took a video editing course, and in this course I am learned about twitter, blogging, and online exhibits.
But back to the article, I believe the author, Joseph M. Turrini, makes a good point when he says that "History departments should continue to be part of archival education." Although they must also adapt to the changing market and techniques in order to give their students the best chance at getting a job, I also believe that history offers special insight to archiving. In many case, archiving deals with very old documents, papers, journals. History will help an archivist take their skills to the next level by interpretation and explanation.
Second, I read Enhancing Internet Use for History by Categorizing Online Resources. More brief and less thought provoking than my first choice, I felt that this was a great resource. The author, Edward A. Riedinger, suggests multiple databases for historians. Among them are JSTOR and Project MUSE, both of which I have used and enjoyed using. There are also many various other sites that I have not heard of and links to them. Go check it out!
Riedinger's emphasis is on organization and categorization throughout the article. I can personally comment on the level of difficulty a person can have on creating a list of keywords to attach to a particular object so that researchers looking for the material can find it with ease. As an intern at the Earl Scruggs Center, I was introduced to the Past Perfect cataloging system. Part of making a complete entry for an item in a collection is by creating a list of searchable terms and descriptions. Not only would you include what the item is, but what it looks like, what it represents, who or what it is associated with, and more. This is where research comes into play. In addition, one must think about what type of person or research would want this particular item and what words would they be using in a keyword search.
I agree that "applying techniques of keyword and subject searching" is a vital component in navigating online databases. Historians need to be broad, but still specific enough, with their keyword searches to find what they are looking for. At the same time, those people inputting searchable terms to connect with an item or written document, must think like a researcher. The terms must be broad enough to encompass a lot of terms but narrow enough so that researchers can find what they want easily. It is a very challenging task.
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