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Reading:

Jeremiah McCall, “Historical Simulations as Problem Spaces: Criticism and Classroom Use,” Journal of Digital Humanities, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring 2012).

  • When you come to class, be ready to discuss what Jeremiah McCall’s argument is.
  • Do you play video games that have historical content?
  • If you were to design a historical game, what might it look like?

Group Blog Post(s)

1. By midnight Saturday, we need to see each group’s working bibliography. We’ve previously called this an inventory of artifacts, but now want a more formal and thorough presentation of your sources. This will be necessary for your final project anyway, so this gives you an opportunity to get started on it now.

2. By midnight Sunday, your group must post to the blog a description of how your final project is fulfilling the distribution requirements. Remember, your projects must combine spatial history, data mining and analysis, textual analysis, and visual and aural artifacts.

  • Be as precise as you can in your description. If you are creating a map, say how it is helping articulate or visualize your argument. If you are using maps created by others, say why you’re doing so and what it adds to your argument. What is the data that you’re using in your mining, analysis, or visualization? Etc.
  • We will respond to these posts Monday morning. Be sure to read our responses prior to class on Monday.
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Assignment due next class

Group Project discussion

Reading on Social Media and History

  • Lauren Martin, “Archiving Tweets,” Cac.ophony.org. (Read post and comments).
    • “Every public tweet, ever, since Twitter’s inception in March 2006, will be archived digitally at the Library of Congress”
    • “… Do you think tweets are something worth archiving? Are there privacy concerns? Will knowledge that your tweets will be archived change the nature of what you write? Any other thoughts or concerns?”
    • “Uncle Fred’s tweet about his failed sandwich won’t be noteworthy in isolation; but, as part part of say, a complex database compiled from millions of tweets about food habits cross-checked against location and date, I could see it being part of a scholarly argument.”
  • Jeff Howe, “The Rise of Crowdsourcing,” Wired, June 2006.
    • Examples: iStockphoto, VH1, InnoCentive (“solvers”) 
    • Factors: Power of the crowd, low barrier of entry
    • Questions: Which problems/questions require full time professionals to solve?  Which are better solved by hobbyists?
  • Bill LeFurgy, “Crowdsourcing the Civil War: Insights Interview with Nicole Saylor,” The Signal: Digital Preservation, December 6, 2011.
    • Crowd sourcing transcription
    • Scripto (CHNM)
    • Modeled on Zooniverse
    • Importance of acknowledgement and rewards for transcribers
    • “I really like how Sharon Leon, a historian at George Mason University, addressed that question in a New York Times article. ‘We’re not looking for perfect,’ she said. ‘We’re looking for progressive improvement, which is a completely different goal from someone who is creating a letter-press edition.’