Tools

Finding the right combination of tools and platforms is a strategic challenge for developing digital projects, and requires careful research and thought. The best procedure is to consult with others already involved in projects similar to your own. There are also digital humanities outreach centers in the U.S. and Canada that can provide information on best practices and current developments in the field. These include the Center for Digital Humanities (Princeton), Editing Modernism in Canada (Dalhousie), and the Center for Digital Scholarship (Brown).

Conferences and training sessions such as the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (Victoria), Digital Humanities Winter Institute (Maryland), and THATCamp have sessions on various tools, and are a good opportunity to talk with others about them.The ProfHacker blog occasionally publishes essays on particular tools.

Thanks for the following collection of links are due to Jeff McKlurken of the University of Mary Washington.

General resources

Research/bibliographic tools

  • Zotero.org — collect, organize and share research sources

Stanford’s Zotero Quick Start Guide: http://www.stanford.edu/group/cubberley/services/zotero
Zotero’s Quick Start Guide: http://www.zotero.org/support/quick_start_guide
Beginner’s Guide to Zotero: http://www.slideshare.net/giustinid/beginners-guide-to-zotero

Teaching with Zotero

Post on using Zotero in a senior undergraduate history seminar by one of the designers: http://quintessenceofham.org/2009/08/07/teaching-with-zotero-groups-or-eating-my-own-dog-food-part-1/
Brief assignment with Zotero for a digital studies course: http://silverinsf.blogspot.com/2009/04/zotero-project.html

ProfHacker articles on Zotero
Group Library for McKlurken’s History of the Information Age course — https://www.zotero.org/groups/infoage/items

Collaboration tools

ProfHacker has a number of articles on teaching with Google Docs
Michael Wesch’s class uses Google Docs as part of larger project. http://youtu.be/dGCJ46vyR9o

  • Wikis

Dickinson College Wikis (Mediawiki)
wikispaces.com
PBworks.com — https://plans.pbworks.com/signup/basic20 (for free account)
MediaWiki — http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki
McKlurken’s MediaWiki site — mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/
MediaWiki in WordPress installation — umwblogs.org/wiki

  • VoiceThread

Voicethread

Used to analyze photographs — http://voicethread.com/#q.b52468.i273178
Used in online class to build community — http://voicethread.com/about/library/Using_VoiceThread_in_an_online_course_from_Professor_Russ_Meade/

EDUCAUSE resource on VoiceThread– http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7050.pdf

Voicethread list of educational uses — http://voicethread.com/about/library/
UMW’s VoiceThread Tutorial — http://umwblogs.org/wiki/index.php/Voice_Thread_Tutorial

  • Skype

Skype.com
Example of using Skype to teach World Regional Geography — GEOG all over the world

GradHacker column about using Hangouts for teaching

Data Visualization and Analysis tools

Voyant/Voyeur Quick Start Guide: http://hermeneuti.ca/voyeur/users

Example — Rob Nelson’s analysis of Daily Dispatch in Richmond during the Civil War — http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/
Megan R. Brett in Journal of Digital Humanities on “Topic Modeling: A Basic Introduction”

Lincoln Mullen’s ProfHacker piece on it:  https://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/paper-machines-visualizes-your-zotero-library/44056

Social network analysis tools

Timelines

Tutorial: http://briancroxall.net/TimelineTutorial/TimelineTutorial.html
Student created-examples
History of the Information Age: http://infoagetimeline.umwblogs.org/
If you run WordPress, there is actually a plug-in for Simile Timeline

Amy Cavender’s ProfHacker piece on using Timeline JS: http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/easy-timelines-with-timeline-js/46965
Taiping Civil War Timeline (student project) —  http://taipingcivilwar.org/timeline/

Video/audio resources for class (and for posting videos)

Multimedia editing — emphasis on free/cheap

Social Media

Museums are highlighting their collections/building community with Pinterest — http://www.complex.com/art-design/2012/04/the-top-10-museums-on-pinterest#4
Indianapolis Museum of Art. — http://pinterest.com/imamuseum/
Example: Krystyn Moon’s American Consumerism class — http://pinterest.com/stephanietipple/american-consumerism/ & http://pinterest.com/stephanietipple/american-consumerism-end-of-semester/
History Methods class — http://pinterest.com/libbyhenry/history/

Social Media Curation Tools

  • Tumblr — microblogging platform allowing for quick fluid posting of media and short text items.

Sue Fernsebner’s Tumblr on East Asia “Gulou” on list of featured news sites http://www.tumblr.com/spotlight/news

Storify used to describe process of and reaction to student-created Twitter Hate Map — http://storify.com/cbccommunity/twitter-hate-map
Storify collection of tweets for definitions of “the digital” — http://mcclurken.blogspot.com/2012/02/what-do-we-call-that-digital-thing-that.html

Chris Francese 1/13/14

 

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