http://socal2012.thatcamp.org

I mentioned in a prior post that I am organizing THATCamp SoCal (The Humanities and Technology Camp, Southern California) this September at my campus, Cal State Fullerton. Well, yesterday I hit the “no going back” point — we opened up registration. So, if you live in Southern California, or simply want to visit our gorgeous part of the state, go register for THATCamp SoCal 2012!

I’ll share more about the THATCamp planning process, but for now, everything you ever wanted to know about THATCamp and THATCamp So Cal 2012!

What is THATCamp?

THATCamp is an unconference movement that started at the George Mason University Center for History and New Media, but has spread globally over the last few years.  Its motto of “More hack, less yack” pretty much sums up what THATCamp is about: no formal presentations, and no pre-set schedule (read more at http://thatcamp.org/about).

The focus of THATCamp is on innovation, emerging technology, collaboration, active learning, problem solving, and evolving pedagogy.

THATCamp SoCal 2012 Details

The event will be held at the Cal State Fullerton Titan Student Union on Friday and Saturday, September 14-15, 2012.  Registration, breakfast, and lunch are all FREE — thanks to sponsorship from my awesome colleagues and partners:

• CSUF Academic Technology Officer Chris Manriquez
• CSUF Dean Angela Della Volpe, College of Humanities & Social Sciences
• CSUF University Librarian Richard Pollard (my boss at the Pollak Library!)
• Occidental College Center for Digital Learning and Research
• UCLA Center for Digital Humanities.

Who Should Attend?

Anyone with energy and an interest in the humanities and technology!

Specific examples might include: professors, teachers, grad and undergrad students, librarians, archivists, programmers and web developers, public historians, and heritage professionals.

How Do You Register?

Hop on to the THATCamp SoCal 2012 website, at http://socal2012.thatcamp.org, and click on the “Register” link. Register soon, because the event is capped at 100 Campers, and we do expect to have to wait-list some people.

A few months ago, I asked THATCamp alumni to share one or two big takeaways from THATCamps attended, to help me get other humanities-oriented educators and professionals interested in attending THATCamp SoCal this coming September (the THATCamp SoCal site will launch this week).

Abram Fox (@abramfox) — a Ph.D. student in art history — heard my plea on Twitter and promptly sent a detailed account of his first THATCamp, graciously allowing me to publicly share it.

I’m a doctoral student in art history at the University of Maryland, and attended last month’s THATCamp Games in College Park. It was my first THATCamp experience and it was by far the best conference I’ve attended. I was there on my own accord, not supported by my department or any other organization (the free factor made it particularly appealing!).

What impressed me most was the breadth of the attendees, and the camaraderie throughout both days I attended. Everything that people write about the openness of participants, the wide range of interests, the fun of the open sessions, and the relevance of the subject matter is all spot on. THATCamp was the first conference where I actually enjoyed myself from start to finish.

The concept of proposing open sessions rather than reading papers made the biggest difference. I’m sure that most conferences are attended by fascinating individuals, and engaging in discussion with them (rather than sitting in a room with them, listening to a handful of people talk for 20 minutes) made sharing ideas with those fascinating people much easier. Conversations were very fruitful too. Not all the sessions I attended were particularly relevant to my studies, but far more even in those I could tell that the ideas batted around were not only interested, but helpful to many in attendance.

Basically, if I had a paper that was almost ready to publish and just wanted some feedback fine-tuning its argument, I might want to go to a more standard conference. Other than that, the unconference format of THATCamp is unquestionably better. I took away a great deal of ideas applicable to my teaching, my research, and informing projects I’d like to explore in the future. More importantly, THATCamp was by far the best experience I’d had with networking – the informal atmosphere encouraged the exchange of ideas, and I feel like I came away with too many ideas to work on, if I still want to finish my dissertation on time!

The digital humanities aspect of the camp wasn’t very daunting for me, someone who’s aware of DH but isn’t much involved in any projects. I was able to find sessions relevant to me anyway, and there was an awareness throughout the whole THATCamp of varying levels of aptitude and familiarity with technology, and I never found that any conversations got to a point that was inaccessible for newcomers (unless it was specifically for folks with advanced skills).

I could go on about it more about how great THATCamp was, and I hope to be able to at least attend a few more in short time. Definitely one of the best experiences I’ve had in an academic setting throughout my time in academia.

Abram Fox
Ph.D. Student, 18th and Early 19th Century British Art
Department of Art History & Archaeology
University of Maryland, College Park

Groups for Schools, available at: https://www.facebook.com/about/groups/schools

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a “wish list” of functionality and features that I wanted to see in the new Groups for Schools platform from Facebook. This past weekend, Facebook finally opened up this platform to my own campus network, so I’ve been getting my hands dirty this week in the new Groups for Schools Platform.

The Groups for Schools site, with my annotations. (Click on the image to view it in a larger size.)

I pulled together a quick tutorial post for our library blog yesterday after discussing Groups for Schools in a session at the “Teaching and Technology Day” professional development program put on by our Faculty Development Center this Tuesday.  I also note some campus use cases in this post.

My campus' main group, with my annotated remarks. (Click on the image to view it in a larger size.)

Use Case: The new group I created for campus faculty. (Click on the image to view it in a larger size.)

Since Google penalizes web publishers’ SEO rankings for posting duplicate content, I am not cross-publishing the post here. Instead, hop on over to our library blog to read the article.

Have you tried Groups for Schools yet? What are your first impressions?

The Dublin Core "Description" field in Omeka displays a descriptive blurb on all Browse Item views.

I mentioned in my last post that despite working with and teaching Omeka for two and a half years, I just recently began using it for one of my own personal research projects.

Yet, until this past weekend, I failed to understand the value of the Dublin Core “Description” field when adding Items to Omeka. From the common Dublin Core elements, I usually employ the “Title”, “Subject”, and “Contributor” fields.  I have always chosen, instead, to put my descriptive content into the Item Type metadata.

It was while reading up more on the “Display Random Featured Item” function that I noticed the snippet way at the bottom of the codex page about the Contents of this function…which include a reference to an “item-description” <p> class. This instantly made me think of the Dublin Core “Description” field…the one I always ignore.  So, I opened up one of my Items and played around with adding content to the “Description” field, and…viola! This content magically populated key parts of my site:

• The Featured Item boxes displayed on my home page.
• The Featured Item boxes on my Browse Item views.
• The map marker box on my Geolocation map view.

The output from this “Description” field, combined with a thumbnail image attached as a File to an Item, really makes for a much more visually engaging site, especially on those otherwise drab Browse Item views.  Text of any length can be added to the “Description” field, but for aesthetics purposes, I like to use a short tagline like the Description and Excerpt fields in WordPress.

Note the difference, on the Browse Item view, when both a photo and the Description excerpt are displayed.

What I don’t know is if the “Description” field also feeds the”description” attribute on web pages, which is what gets displayed on search engine listings. I’ll have to wait for Google to crawl my Omeka site again, then search for some of the Item Titles, and see what is displayed in the Google search snippet.

For now on though, when I teach Omeka workshops, I will definitely stress the value of using the Dublin Core “Description” field.

The Featured Item Box with a Description.

The Featured Item Box without a Description.

The Geolocation Map Marker with a Description.

The Geolocation Map Marker without a Description.

www.ocfallenheroes.com

I have been working with Omeka — both the original self-hosted .org version and the newer hosted .net version – for about two and a half years. Mostly for teaching purposes, providing instruction to public history students and heritage professionals. But, until recently, I hadn’t gotten around to using it to actually publish one of my own research projects.

For almost seven years, I have been researching, on-again-off-again, the almost 1,000 Orange County men and women who have died in our nation’s wars since the county was formed in 1889.  I took an interest in this topic while working as a news research librarian at the Orange County Register, then dabbled periodically for the next handful of years compiling names and biographical details, while also trying to identify the right solution to publish my research online —  both custom “home grown” solutions and existing products.

From the first moment that I learned about and saw a demo of Omeka, I knew it would serve as an excellent web-based platform to share my research. But, since I am more familiar developing on WordPress, I kept waffling between Omeka and WordPress — even building out sample sites on each platform.  But, a few months ago, Omeka finally won.  I’ll blog later about my WordPress vs. Omeka trial, and why I chose Omeka.

Since it’s taking me a really long time to do the actual research outside of full-time work and family obligations — again, I’m trying to pull together biographical profiles of approximately 1,000 casualties — I opted to go with a free existing theme for now, Emiglio, instead of spending time designing my own theme from scratch. Fortunately, because I am self-hosting my Omeka project, I am able to tweak and customize Emiglio as much as I want, to start learning how to really work with Omeka themes and functions, so that I can eventually build my own themes.

www.ocfallenheroes.com

I will share more in future blog posts about what plugins I am using, what functions and metadata elements I have been playing with, what’s worked and what hasn’t worked, and what I would like to see in future Omeka releases.

For now, you can expect to see the look and feel of my Omeka project change pretty frequently. And, you can expect to see a bit more research make its way online each week!

The new Groups for Schools: http://www.facebook.com/about/groups/schools

Yesterday, Facebook announced the introduction of a new platform — Groups for Schools. As Wired Campus points out, this harkens back to the early days of Facebook, when it used to be limited to just college students and alumni who had university-issued email addresses. According to the Groups for Schools Help Center, the new Groups for Schools platform is not yet available for all higher ed institutions and will be accessible only to Facebook users with an active college-issued email address.

Only students and faculty of a college or university can join groups for schools. When you join a group within the school community, you can share files, create events, message other members and stay up-to-date on what’s happening around campus.

So, despite the “Schools” name, it does not look like Facebook plans to make these new groups available to even high school users.

I blog about and teach classes on using Facebook for instruction and other educational purposes, but based on the limited amount of information Facebook has shared thus far, I have mixed feelings about this new platform, and I will share specific likes and dislikes once I can actually get my hands on the new Groups for Schools platform (my university is not included in the initial roll-out).

For now though, based on what I have read, these are features that I think are key to getting faculty and other higher ed Group administrators to embrace and champion the new Groups for Schools.

• Bring back the ability for Group administrators to invite members via email address: I have harped on this issue before. Instructors, and other Group administrators, need to be able to import from existing class and team contact lists.
• Allow existing Groups to be converted into Groups for Schools: I use the existing Groups platform heavily as online discussion spaces for several campus committees and teams on which I serve. These teams could highly benefit from the Groups for Schools platform, yet according to the Facebook Help Center, it will not be possible to convert existing Groups to the Schools format.
• Allow Facebook Pages to be added as a Group member: Another I have raised this issue before as well. Think of the possibilities! Class Groups could benefit tremendously by allowing our Library page to be a member, allowing our librarians to answer research questions or suggest resources related to an assignment. Without this functionality, individual librarians would have to be added to each Group — not an efficient or ideal solution.
• Bring back threaded discussion forums: Harped on this one before. Threaded discussion forums are much more useful than wall posts and comments for managing classroom discussions.
• Expand video chat to Groups: Another plea I have made in prior posts. Unlike Google+ Hangouts, Facebook’s newish video chat service is still only available for one-on-one conversations. This would be so valuable for instructors to hold virtual office hours, and for students to be able to conduct video interviews with outside experts.

What other features or changes would you like to see come out of the new Groups for Schools?

There has been much chatter on Twitter this week due to it being the 100th anniversary of the Titanic and its ill-fated maiden voyage. And this reminded me of a post that I have been meaning to write for a good year or so, showcasing some of the innovative ways that historians and future historians are using Twitter for historical reenactment.

Yes, I am a big time public and digital history nerd, but I see several key learning outcomes from this type of activity:

• It helps promote digital literacy by teaching participants how to effectively use Twitter.
• It allows students and historians to delve deeper into discovering and analyzing primary source materials.
• It’s a fun, free, engaging way to introduce others to one’s historical research and/or special collections.

Following is a look at two very current examples, as well as a look at the big granddaddy of historical Twitter reenactments.

Titanic Voyage (@TitanicRealTime)

This Twitter handle is managed by the History Press, a UK-based history publisher, that posts minute-by-minute accounts of the voyage from various (so far, unidentified) eyewitnesses — passengers, crew, reporters, etc. Titanic Voyage posts from a single Twitter account/channel, and uses hashtags to distinguish each particular eyewitness.

A  sample Tweet, from a fictitious reporter who is an eyewitness to the voyage launch.

#reporter Watching Titanic depart Ocean Dock berth 44 is truly a sight to behold, a magnificent moment for British shipbuilding.

—
TitanicVoyage (@TitanicRealTime) April 10, 2012

Some additional screenshots of how they’re incorporating historical interpretation into Tweets.

Note the different characters providing eyewitness accounts.

Mixing in historical photos.

Civil War Reporter (@CivilWarReporter)

The federal government doesn’t exactly come to mind when I think of social media or digital history innovation, but I had to give the National Park Service big time credit last year when it launched the Civil War Reporter, on Twitter, as part of its sesquicentennial commemoration of the Civil War. The Civil War Reporter is Beglan O’Brien, a fictional Civil War newspaper reporter, whose Twitter channel is managed by the National Park Service (NPS) to reenact reports from daily events that took place in the war 150 years ago.

Apr 10 - Reports of a Union victory along the Tennessee River. Deaths in the thousands not hundreds. Can this be true? go.usa.gov/QuN

—
Civil War Reporter (@CivilWarReportr) April 10, 2012

February 21, 1862 - No one is immune from loss. President Lincoln’s son Willie has died of typhoid fever.

—
Civil War Reporter (@CivilWarReportr) February 21, 2012

The Civil War Reporter does an excellent job of mixing in events, linking to content and historical documentation on the NPS website, and showcasing historical photos from special collections.

Using Twitter to showcase historical photos from special collections.

TwHistory (@TwHistory)

TwHistory is indeed what I call the big granddaddy of Twitter historical reenactments.  It is the beneficiary of an open education grant that organizes, promotes, and provides technical support to groups who want to use Twitter for virtual historical reenactments.

Students or volunteers pick a well-documented historical event. They pick real historical figures who were at that event, and create tweets based on original source documentation. These tweets are then scheduled to be broadcast in real time. The end result is a virtual reenactment of a historical event, broadcast in real time.

What makes TWHistory’s virtual reenactments so different is that, unlike Titanic, they don’t use just a single Twitter channel to tell their story. Instead, Each TwHistory reenactment consists of a separate Twitter channel for each historical character, aggregated into a project Twitter List and stream, with characters frequently citing each other and conversing with each other…just like a normal Twitter dialogue.  I have been a big fan of their work for a couple of years.

This Cuban missile Crisis 1622 project is a good example of how TwHistory uses Twitter for historical reenactment.

A 2009 Tweet from @RobMcNamara64 the fictious handle for Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, on the final date of the crisis.

Once again the power of American democracy has been demonstrated to the world. AMERICA, THE LAND OF THE FREE AND THE HOME OF THE BRAVE

—
Robert McNamara (@RobMcNamara64) October 28, 2009

A Tweet from “Fidel Castro” (@FidelCastro62) also on the final date of the crisis.

Cuban Soviet relations will never be the same again. What trust Cuba once had for the USSR and me for Krushchev has now disintegrated.

—
Fidel Castro (@FidelCastro62) October 28, 2009

“Secretary of Defense McNamara” citing and congratulating “President John. F. Kennedy”.

We're very fortunate peaceful resolution brought about. I commend @JFK_1962 for staying cool with all those trigger-happy hawks around...

—
Robert McNamara (@RobMcNamara64) October 28, 2009

Screenshots demonstrating how TwHistory utilizes Twitter Lists to aggregate its Twitter reenactments.

TwHistory uses a public Twitter list to aggregate all of the historical figures participating in a particular reenactment project.

The reverse chronological aggregated post stream from TwHistory's project public Twitter list.

What About Sources?

We librarians and educators constantly stress the need to cite sources. And that’s the big piece I see missing from these Twitter-based historical reenactments. The librarian in me would like to see a source cited in every single Tweet. But, I fully realize that would take up too much of that 140 character real estate, and it might also break the flow of conversation. So, I think it’s important that these reenactment projects list their sources on the project pages of their websites, and that their Twitter channel description or Twitter List description reference the URL to that list of sources.

If you’re an instructor who is contemplating making this sort of reenactment assignment available to your students, ask that your students compile their bibliography in Google Docs, and then have them reference that URL as noted above.

Have you been considering teaching an Omeka workshop at a conference or for a public or digital history class?  Do you conduct professional development for heritage institutions? Are you a history (or humanities) librarian that would like to offer a hands-on Omeka workshop at your library? Are you considering leading an Omeka session or workshop at an upcoming THATCamp?

In going through my files from last semester for my annual faculty portfolio, I came across the assignment I created and taught for two hands-on Omeka sessions during the Fall 2011 semester, and thought sharing this assignment might be of use to others who, like me, provide digital literacy instruction to students and faculty, or to heritage professionals.

I first used this assignment at the California Council for the Promotion of History’s 2011 conference, as part of a 4-hour session I was asked to teach, titled “Social Media and Mashups: New Technology for Historians”, to a group that mostly consisted of heritage professionals from throughout the state. I next taught it to a group of undergraduate and graduate history students in a Digital History Tools class, when my campus colleague Dr. Ray Rast, Assistant Professor of History, asked me to guest lecture for his Introduction to Public History seminar. Both times, I was only able to devote one hour to this assignment, since I had to cover multiple tools. But, one hour of hands-on instruction seemed to leave the students with enough understanding and experience to continue exploring Omeka on their own — either on behalf of their institution, or for personal research projects. Ideally, I would have liked to have spent two hours on the assignment, with students getting time to show their own progress.

Feel free to borrow and build upon this assignment.

It’s been two years since my library’s Social Media Team defined our social media objectives, and I have a new team makeup this year, so we met last month to reassess our goals — whether or not they still support our organizational mission, and should continue driving our social media focus.

I gave the team several weeks to review and mull over these objectives, and every single member applauded the initial work of their predecessors and voted to not change a thing.  So, the Pollak Library at Cal State Fullerton continues to apply this criteria to the selection of social media channels and our social media campaigns.

Wordle illustrating the Pollak Library's social media goals

The Pollak Library’s Social Media Goals

I. Engage

1. Interact with library patrons using communication tools they already embrace.
2. Provide interactive or appealing content that has an immediate use or starts a conversation.
3. Encourage the campus community to use these tools in a way that promotes academic goals and student involvement.

II. Educate

1. Provide useful credible content and emphasize new resources or services, in addition to reminding patrons of existing library materials and services (I/M, phone text, 24/7 chat, e-books, etc.).
2. Cross-link between services and sources (i.e., Tweeting a subject guide link) to provide different avenues to library material and services.

III. Empower

1. Share information and services by making these easily and readily accessible via a variety of communication tools.
2. Encourage feedback to determine if we are meeting user needs, and if not, how we can effectively improve.
3. Provide patrons with a public feedback and response channel.

IV. Exemplify

1. Demonstrate potential academic uses of social media for the campus, instructors, and students.
2. Demonstrate to the campus our innovative use of social media and demographic reach.
3. Demonstrate responsible and appropriate uses of social media to students.

V. Explore

1. Keep abreast of, review, and evaluate new social media tools and uses.
2. Recommend those that meet our other Social Media Goals and that might be of value to our patrons.

Drafted February 3, 2010.

Goals photo courtesy of Flickr user Tom Haymes.

The Pollak Library's new Timeline look.

I just started playing around a bit with the new Facebook Pages design that became available to all Pages this morning (March 30th is the forced deadline to migrate to the new design). The redesign incorporates the still controversial Timeline as well as some new additional features. I will continue to test out the new design and features all week, but here are my initial observations.

NOTE: Post updated at 2:00pm.

How the new Page design looks

Public view of the new Pages design

The new layout looks identical to Timeline for personal Facebook Profiles, except for two immediately noticeable differences:

• New “Message” Button:Pages can now receive private Messages from other Facebook users, just like Facebook users have been able to do for years with their personal Profiles.
  • Unlike Messaging for personal Profiles and for Groups, no type of notification or alert is sent to your Page administrators or displayed in their personal Alerts menu. My fellow team of Page administrators had to go to that particular Page, and then toggle on the “Use Facebook as [Page Name]” option — now listed under the new “Manage” menu. This needs to be fixed; Like personal Profiles and Groups, admins do receive an email message when someone sends a Message to their Page, assuming each admin opts in to the Email Notifications accessible in Edit Page/Your Settings Mode (when I first tested this functionality out this morning, Facebook must have been experiencing a delay in sending notifications.  Admins can also check for new Messages by two different means:
    • While Using Facebook as Yourself: Go to your Page. Any new and old (if not deleted) Messages will appear along the right side of your new Admin Panel. You will also see a red Notification alert button there if you have received new Messages.
    • While Using Facebook as Your Page: You can see Message activity via the above method, but you will also see a red Message Notification alert along the site-wide persistent Facebook navigation menu at the very top of your screen — where you normally see new Notification alerts for your personal Profile.
  • Both Fans and Non-Fans can use the new Message feature, however the Message button is not visible to non-authenticated users (i.e., the general Public), which makes sense.
  • Page admins can opt out of allowing Facebook users to privately Message their Page by deselecting this option in the Edit Page/Manage Permissions setting now accessible  via the “Manage” menu in the new Activity Panel.
• New Top 4 “Tab Apps” Menu:Like Timeline for personal Profiles, the familiar menu Tabs (which are actually all apps) that run down the left sidebar of your Page are now gone.  Instead this menu is now displayed under your Cover photo.
  • However, only your top 4 Tabs (apps) are immediately visible; users need to click the drop-down arrow next to this menu to expand the full menu and see all available Tabs.
  • Page admins can drag and drop these Tabs to reorder and hand-select which “top 4″ to display in that initial menu view.
  • Just like with the old Pages format, any Tabs that you choose to make visible and accessible to Non-Fans remain visible to both Non-Fans and non-authenticated Public users. This continued functionality is super important to my library since we want all of our students, faculty and staff to be able to use our custom “Research Tools” tab app — even if they don’t use Facebook.

Admin view of the new Pages design.

For Page administrators, the biggest difference is the new mini Admin Panel at the top of the Page.  This new Panel allows admins to quickly view Notifications, New Likes, and recent Insights.  Note the new admin menus located in the top right corner of the Admin Panel — the biggest change here is the ability to “Invite Email Contacts” to your Page using the new “Build Audience” menu.  Page admins can also toggle on and off this new Panel.

Public (non-authenticated) view of the new Pages design. Note that the Message button is not visible. And even though it looks like non-authenticated users should be able to Post to our Timeline wall, attempting to do so promptly directs users to log in to Facebook.

New moderation feature in the Pages redesign

Pages now support the ability for admins to moderate posts by other Pages and other Facebook users. While the old design only allowed admins to choose between allowing or disallowing posts, comments, links, etc. from other users on their Facebook Page, admins now have the third option of hiding all non-admin activity until an admin personally chooses to make that activity publicly visible on the new Page Timeline. This can be toggled on and off from the Edit Page/Manage Permissions setting, in “Post Visibility”, now accessible via the “Manage” menu in the new Activity Panel.

This does not appear to moderate Comments to your own Posts.

The new moderation and review feature can be enabled or disabled (it's disabled by default) from the Permissions settings.

Although I would not recommend this feature to most Page admins, I have consulted with organizations that work under very restrictive social media policies, or that don’t yet have adequate buy-in from leadership. Often times, these organizations refrain from allowing a Facebook Page altogether, or simply don’t allow any posting from fans. In these cases, using this new moderation and review process might make Facebook a more palatable option.

How to make the switch to the new Pages design

To access the new Pages design, simply read the “helpful” instructions that Facebook now plasters across the top of your Page. You can test out the new design by selecting the Preview button, but your new look won’t go live until you choose to Publish it — at least, that’s an option until March 30th when Facebook makes the redesign mandatory for all pages.

Note the Preview option in the banner at the top of your Page.

If you want to move forward with the new design prior to March 30th, click on the Publish button while still in Preview mode.

Learn More

To learn more about all the new features, quirks and options with the Facebook Pages redesign, I recommend you check out the following sources (alphabetically listed):

• All Facebook: TOUR: Facebook’s Timeline For Pages Is Here, With Pinning
• Facebook Help Center: Introducing New Facebook Pages
• Inside Facebook: Timeline for Facebook pages: a complete overview of new features
• Mashable: Facebook Timeline Brand Pages Are Here [PICS]
• Mashable: Timeline for Brands: How to Prepare for Your Company’s New Facebook Page