The Chronicle of Higher Education features an article this week on literary scholarship that is using technology to investigate new questions with texts that are available online.  New tools, such as Google Earth, are allowing professors to map and sort textual information in new ways and extend the scholarly process into the classroom.

The article takes an in-depth look at an online project, the Map of Early London, edited by Janelle Jenstad, an assistant professor of English at the University of Victoria.  The map, using John Stow’s 1598 work A Survey of London, overlays place information contained in literary works produced during the era.  Users at the site can explore proxmity of authors to places mentioned in works, the cultural life of different parts of the city mentioned in literature, people mentioned in connection with specific places, and many other geographic aspects of the texts.

The Chronicle has assembled an audio slide show tour of the Map as part of the article.

Share This

We’ve posted in the past about Google’s Wikipedia-like tool ‘Knol’ (http://knol.google.com), but until this week, its been in closed beta. Now open for everyone, Knol is both interesting and frustrating to look at. Many of the (early) entries feel like draft versions of university term papers- and that’s not really too far off from the goal of the Knol project in the first place. Pages feel very linear (with hyperlinked subsections) and may include references, graphics, etc. Users can comment on articles in a blog-like fashion, with comments showing up at the end of the page. Users can also choose to revise a section, but those revisions have to be approved by the original author of the piece.

A few first impressions:

-Due to the ‘author-centric’ approach to the Knols, most of the articles I perused really did read more like they came from one individual author (even those with lengthier revisions). Unlike a Wikipedia entry, that attempts to be ‘unbiased’ due to its encyclopedia-like format, the author’s opinion has a bit more weight here.

-Many of the early Knol pages have been written by academics. You’ll find lots of MDs and PhDs as original authors here.

-There are a significantly larger amount of medical articles so far, though there are a few odd/unique ones as well. So while you can read basic articles on asthma and knee surgery, you can also read an article praising homemade buttermilk pancakes or find out what things (you can) do in Singapore.

-To some degree, the Knol pages feel less cluttered than Wikipedia’s, but they also feel like they lack connections to other areas of the site thus far. I’m guessing this is mostly due to the lack of content posted more than anything.

-Knol doesn’t feel like its trying to directly compete with Wikipedia. They’re each really coming from a different direction anyway. There’s much less of the socially collaborated feel within the Knol, and much more a feeling of social cooperation (vs. actual collaboration).

-Faculty have used Wikipedia in the past as a springboard for real-world publishing of student work. For example, its not uncommon for students to be asked to find Wikipedia entries related to their topic of study, and to make significant improvements on them (or start new entries altogether). A similar approach could be taken with the Knol, though it also provides the opportunity to target a much more focused audience. For example, instead of writing another overview piece on something like say, the Bayeux tapestry, a history student might write a Knol about the ‘political ramifications of color choices found in the Bayeux tapestry’.

For more info on getting started, Google has provided a Knol on writing a Knol.

A few other recent blog posts about Google’s Knol:

Ars Technica

CNET

Share This

EZProxy allows you to use your Duke NetID to access library resources, especially online articles and databases, from off-campus without having to download any software. Check out the link below for the general process used to link to library resources directly from Blackboard:

http://blackboard.duke.edu/help/link_library_resources.html.

To explore and discover additional Blackboard features, see the Blackboard support website (http://blackboard.duke.edu/) If you need a tutorial for adding web links in Blackboard, request an office visit (http://blackboard.duke.edu/forms/officevisit_begin.do) and we will come to you.

Share This

On August 4th, 2008, and again on August 6th, Alliance Library System, in cooperation with LearningTimes, will offer a one-day conference exploring the possibilities of using virtual worlds to teach literature. The conference, entitled “Stepping into Literature: Bringing New Life to Books through Virtual Worlds,” will be held entirely in the virtual world of Second Life. Participants will take take part in a virtual book discussion, and take field trips into literature-based locations that have been created in Second Life.

Keynotes:

Beth Ritter-Gluth (Desideria Stockton in Second Life) will be the keynote speaker and her talk is on “A Vision for Making Literature Come Alive in Virtual Worlds.” She is the creator of “Literature Alive in Second Life” and teaches English and Women’s Studies at Lehigh Carbon Community College in Schnecksville, PA.

The keynote author is Kim Rufer-Bach who will speak on “Using Virtual Worlds to Promote Real Life Literature.” Kimberly is co-author of “Creating Your World: The Official Guide to Advanced Content Creation for Second Life” (Sybex, October 2007) and is currently at work on “The Second Life Grid: The Official Guide to Communication Collaboration, and Community Engagement.”

Full conference schedule and registration information is available at the conference website, http://www.steppingintovirtualworlds.org

Or register now at: http://tinyurl.com/6ba6nq

Cost to attend is US $65 per person. For group rates (5 or more) write to john@learningtimes.net

Share This

Rock group Radiohead recently teamed with Google to create a music video using a new technique. The video was created without using cameras; instead, 3d laser scanners, similar to those typically used to input objects into CAD or 3D software, captured the images used in the video.

The resulting data set, consisting of “points” that outline the objects, was used to create the video. Google is making the data available on their website so that fans can create their own visualizations and share them on YouTube.

You can read more about the effort and see a “making of” video or download the data set at http://code.google.com/creative/radiohead/. You can also use an online viewer to manipulate the the data from one “frame” of the video in different ways and make your own visualization.

Share This

The big news today is that Apple’s 3G iPhone is finally available to purchase. What’s the big deal? If you need to know, here’s a handy ‘review matrix’ from Gizmodo that should help bring you up to speed.

While that’s just great, what about folks that have already bought an iPhone, or have an iPod Touch? What do we get? We get version 2.0 of the operating software, which gives us the Apple-sanctioned ability to install ‘apps’.

I’ve been waiting for opportunity to try out some 3rd party applications for a long, long time. At launch (available in the newest version of iTunes), there’s supposedly over 500 new applications available. I’ve downloaded or tried about thirty so far. Instead of provided a play by play on all the ‘apps’, I’m going to just hit on some of the overall themes or apps that I think might end up being useful for higher ed more specifically.

Voice Recording: This one is for the iPhone only (since the iPod Touch doesn’t have a microphone built into it). Given one of the iPhone’s functions (er…its a phone!), it makes sense to have a few applications that take advantage of the its built in microphone and provide us with voice recording capabilities (yes - shockingly missing from the original iPhone software).

Social Networking: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr and others are represented so far. Facebook’s app works pretty much just like their iPhone-specific webpage application. The MySpace app is actually nicer than MySpace itself has ever been. There are also several Twitter apps, though none officially from Twitter itself. Ultimately, I still find using the Twitter iPhone webpage easier than waiting for one of these apps to load up, but they’re definitely a step into a quickly emerging world that finds it less and less necessary to be tied to desktop and laptop computers to maintain connectivity and information.

Language Tools: Aside from standard translation dictionaries, there are already some neat language apps (some free, some costing $10 or more) that include access to libraries of short, spoken phrases in a given langauge. The iPhone finally gets some flashcard apps too.

E-Books: The iPhone can also now load eBooks in a variety of formats. Several ‘classic’ books and general eBook readers were available at launch. While I doubt it will kill sales of the Kindle, it certainly seems promising. Still, some folks might have reservations about paying $0.99 for Anna Karenina, when its been available for free on Project Gutenberg for years.

Location-aware Photos: I’m still exploring this feature, but the iPhone appears to be trying to geotag my photos now. There are already a few apps that try to take advantage of this, either by tagging your location and adding it to a social networking site, or by providing you with links to other photos from the same area. Ex: If I’m standing in front of the Duke chapel and take a picture with a specific app, I can also see pictures of the chapel (or the area around the chapel) on sites like Panaramio. It feels like this is just scratching the surface of what’s possible. Exciting, and worth mentioning.

Blogging and Productivity: A few apps try to provide sets of tools for blogging. Six Apart has already released one that helps the user quickly upload pictures and manage text on their TypePad blog. and it’ll be interesting to see if the other major blogs (Blogger and WordPress) follow suit. For those who don’t blog, but want to capture pictures, text and even audio notes, the productivity app from Evernote may prove to be very, very useful.

Science and Math: Believe it or not, there are already some science and math apps. For $10, users can try ‘Atom in a Box‘, which is supposedly an ‘aid for visualizing the Hydrogenic atomic orbitals’, or users can look at 3D Molecules for free. The math apps are still lacking a bit, but there are some nifty advanced calculators (though the new iPhone update gives us a scientific calculator built-in!) and some flash-card style math training games.

Other things of interest: There are so many of the apps, that its somewhat overwhelming to even think about getting around to trying most of them. Apple even built one - an app that turns your iPhone into a ‘remote control’ for iTunes and/or the Apple TV. Users can then use the iPhone to sort, search and play their iTunes libraries - the only tether is the area of your wireless connection. Still missing: video apps (we know they exist!) and more advanced, Skype-like conferencing apps for starters.

‘Apps’ and Oranges

Something I’ve noticed going through these apps and playing with each: there seems to be several different philosophies just what an ‘app’ should be. Some developers see the iPhone as ‘just another cell phone, but with a big touch screen’, and have basically developed applications that run like old Java-based cell phone applications. You have to wait for the app to ’start up’, and it sluggishly works. Other developers approached the development by just creating iPhone-ish ‘wrappers’ for their webpages. In other words, though it looks sort of like a built-in application, what you’re actually using is a webpage in a slightly glossier container. Somewhere between both of these worlds is the Apple-esque ‘widget’ philosophy - meaning small applications that do one or two very specific tasks well, and that’s that. Anyone who’s spent a few minutes playing with Apple’s built in, very simple, weather or ’stock market’ widgets knows the joys of quickly accessing web data with a snappy little application - yet never going to a ‘webpage’ or feeling like you’re waiting for the web to load up. It’ll be interesting to see how all of this pans out as more and more reviews of the apps become available.

For more summaries and short reviews of the new applications:

-Gizmodo live blog of app reviews
-LifeHacker app reviews: “What’s Good and Free…”

Apps photo from Flickr - user Photocology under a ’share-alike’ CC license.

Share This

Google has just made public Lively, their virtual worlds application that’s similar to Second Life. Although it currently only works with Windows XP/Vista and Firefox/IE, it allows you to create your own rooms that can be embedded in blogs and web pages, similar to YouTube videos. There’s no unified world, like Second Life, so Lively could be used to create “ad hoc” virtual worlds spaces that are limited to particular groups that share an interest or are working on a particular project. Google has posted a video preview of Lively at YouTube.

Share This

William Pannapacker, an associate professor of English at Hope College, recently contributed his thoughts about attending the Digital Humanities Summer Institute at the University of Victoria to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

For the past seven years, the Institute has brought together Humanities faculty from a wide range of universities to learn about new developments for using technology in instruction and scholarship. The workshops range from sessions on how Wikipedia is changing the nature of scholarly authority to a tour of a virtual 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition developed by UCLA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design.

Invited presentations from the Institute are available in video form from the Institute’s blog site; some topics include textual analysis, projects modeling changes in French language and dialect, the virtual Columbian Exposition, and practices for markup of primary sources in XML.

Share This

What are tag/word clouds?

Tag clouds (or ‘word clouds’) are visualizations made up of sets of words from a document, website or set of ‘tags’ (ex: bookmarks from your del.icio.us account). These word collections may use color, word size or even position to better illustrate the frequency of word use. A popular example of word clouds in action would be the recent use of word clouds to analyze presidential speeches. Here’s a screenshot of Chirag Mehta’s tool that creates a word cloud for several presidential speeches:

This cloud reveals the most 50 most frequently used words in Bush’s 2007 State of the Union Address. The standout terms are obvious. The thing that makes Mehta’s tool really interesting, is that he’s included a ’slider’ (look above the word cloud box) that can be moved to cycle through word clouds from other speeches from the past. Here’s one of Harry Truman’s State of the Union Address speeches:

How Can You Use or Create Tag/Word Clouds?

Several great tools for visualizing text and tags exist on the web. For analysing del.icio.us tags, extisp.icio.us or the tag tool at Hub Log work just fine. Another popular tool, Tag Crowd, takes things a step further than just sorting del.ico.us tags, and allows users to copy/paste text from documents or even analyse a webpage. Here’s the CIT Strategic Plan for 2008-2011 copy/pasted into Tag Crowd, then filtered down to the 50 most frequently used terms:

Not surprisingly, ‘teaching’, ‘technology’, and ‘faculty’ come up quite a bit. This works well enough, but what if I want to make this look, er…pretty? That’s where Wordle comes in. Here’s the same text from the Strategic Plan pushed through Wordle:

Now, that’s a ‘pretty’ word cloud. Wordle includes several options for enhancing the visualization: multiple font choices, color palettes, and overall layout of the text (ie: horizontal, random, vertical, etc). Wordle creations can be printed out or posted to a public gallery on the web. Here’s another version of the word cloud above, reduced to a frequency of 50 words, with a color palette applied:

Share This