Category Archives: Digital Humanities

Apples for the Teacher, Teacher is an Apple

Why does AltSchool, as described in this article, as well as similar kinds of tech-industry attempts to “disrupt” education, bug me so much? I’d like to be more welcoming and enthusiastic. It’s just that I don’t think there’s enough experimentation … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy | 4 Comments

History 82 Fall 2014 Syllabus

Here’s the current version of the syllabus for my upcoming fall class on the history of digital media. Really excited to be teaching this. ——————— History 82 Histories of Digital Media Fall 2014 Professor Burke This course is an overly … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Humanities, Games and Gaming, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property, Popular Culture, Swarthmore | 4 Comments

The Listicle as Course Design

I’ve been convinced for a while that one of the best defenses of small classes and face-to-face pedagogy within a liberal arts education would be to make the process of that kind of teaching and coursework more visible to anyone … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Defining "Liberal Arts", Digital Humanities, Production of History, Swarthmore | 3 Comments

Fighting Words

Days pass, and issues go by, and increasingly by the time I’ve thought something through for myself, the online conversation, if that’s the right word for it, has moved on. One exchange that keeps sticking with me is about the … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Generalist's Work | 4 Comments

Yesterday, All Our MOOC Troubles Seemed So Far Away

Everybody remember the expectation that a smart, professorial President would hire an equally smart, skilled staff who would prove that a well-run government can be quickly responsive to the needs of the society, efficient in the execution of its duties, … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Politics | 5 Comments

Mind It Is Blown

Me reading suggestions from Twitter about how to do some data visualizations of co-citations out of my Honors seminar on colonial Africa. Some days the difference between a dilettante who just likes to read about cool stuff (me) and people … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Humanities | Comments Off on Mind It Is Blown

Historians Don’t Have to Live in the Past

In what way is the American Historical Association’s notion of a six-year embargo on digital open-access distribution of dissertations even remotely sustainable in the current publishing and media environment surrounding academia? On one side, you have disciplinary associations like the … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property, Production of History | 19 Comments

The Humane Digital

As a way of tackling both the question “whither the humanities” and the thorny issue of defining “digital humanities” in relationship to that question, I’ll offer this: maybe one strategy is to talk about what can make intellectual work humane. … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Defining "Liberal Arts", Digital Humanities, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System | 3 Comments

Digital Learning Is Like a Snow Leopard (Real, Beautiful, Rare and Maybe To Be Outdated by a New Operating System)

Maybe it’s just because it’s my obsession of the moment, but the digital camera strikes me as the single greatest example of a new “disruptive” technology that permits a fundamentally new kind of learning experience. However, precisely because digital photography … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy | 1 Comment

Getting to Wrong

About a month ago, I started writing an entry about Gawker Media as a model for the “new journalism”. When I started writing that, I mostly meant it as a compliment. I was thinking about Deadspin’s Manti Te’o expose (by … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy | 1 Comment