This semester the Keck Center Student monitors will be using their time at the front desk to contribute to an ongoing digital humanities project. They will all be reading John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces and using digital mapping technology to represent all the places mentioned and visited in the novel, which is set in New Orleans.

Using maps in the humanities has risen in popularity lately. At Stanford University their Spatial History Project has used maps to explore Brazilian literature, Chinese migrant railroad workers, Chilean ecological issues, and many other fascinating topics. Here at Colgate, Carolyn Guile of the Department of Art and Art History has used maps to help her students explore historic architecture.

While these projects have been fruitful, their application within a class structure has can be difficult. The steep learning curve required to produce a map can be challenging for students, and take away from the time normally allotted for studying the primary course topic. Given that most mapping platforms are produced for use in other fields, no concise guide of how to use a map for a humanities class has been developed.

The goal of this project is not only to produce a mapped representation of a novel, but to also work out the possible stumbling blocks that could prevent a similar project to be integrated within the class. The aim is to produce the necessary guides and information for faculty and students to engage in a similar endeavor without having to spend hours of class time learning a new technology. The Keck Center will also have the ability to support similar project and trained staff to give technical support as needed.

We will be exploring different platforms, including Google Maps and ArcGIS Online. The student workers will also write about their experience for the Keck Center Blog and newsletter, to explain their own personal feelings about the positives and negatives of the project. By the end of the semester, we hope to provide a comprehensive guide to a humanities-based digital mapping project on the Keck Center web site.

SHARE

This week I attended one of two sessions of the fifth Digital Witness Symposium sponsored by the Central New York Humanities Corridor in conjunction with Hamilton College and Syracuse University. This year, the symposium brought two fascinating speakers, both experts in new media, who spoke about the way that digital media (especially film) is being used to highlight social issues around the world. Each of the speakers brought up some though-provoking points about how the internet has created the opportunity for interaction beyond the typical film structure. And I think the projects they showcased offer some great opportunities for integrating film into a course in a way that engages students in higher-order thinking.

The first speaker, professor of film and new media at Ithaca College Patricia Zimmerman, focused her message on the way that documentary makers are changing the way they interact with their audience. Rather than produce a linear film that has a singular message mediated by a single director, these new documentaries use methods of crowdsourcing to get more directly to the people affected by  a certain social condition. This type of filmmaking is less about telling a story, and more about engaging people in deeper discussion. There is less a sense of direct confrontation and more of a feeling of open dialogue. The four aspects that characterize this new style, Zimmermann said, are that 1) they deal with very specific people and places, on a small scale (as opposed to documentaries that would take on larger, global issues). 2) they are about designing encounters and promoting discussion about an issue (as opposed to promoting a specific plan or political agenda), 3) they rely heavily on collaboration, and 4) they are inviting of people of all viewpoints.

The second speaker, Sarah Wolozin, runs the Open Doc Lab at MIT and is herself an accomplished film and new media artist. In her talk, she showcased some of the more ambitious documentary projects similar to those described by Zimmermann. She showed how filmmakers are exploring new ways of interacting with films, mixing new techniques with web-based platforms that allow users to explore a film outside of the traditional linear path that would normally be set by a director. These new forms allow for individualized viewing experiences, but also encourage users to continue thinking about and discussing the issues beyond the film by connecting online. I found all of these new approaches to filmmaking fascinating, but also a rich resource for classroom use. Many of the projects came from different countries, and could easily be used to help students learn more about a different culture and engage them in higher-order thinking as they become active users exploring information in a new way and finding ways to contribute. Below are a few projects that caught my eye and that could be useful in various language classrooms.

18 Days in Egypt

18 Days in Egypt is a web site that accompanies a film of the same name in an attempt to gather and tell the stories of experiences during the 2011 uprisings. The site has a variety of user-created streams with photos, videos, audio, and text. Students could explore the site endlessly, learning both about culture and using their Arabic language skills. The site has many resources, both in Arabic and English.

Quipu Project

The Quipu Project is an effort to make the stories of victims of forced sterilization in Peru heard. The project involves mobile storytelling, but bringing mobile technology to remote villages.

From their web site:

Inspired by the Quipu, an Inca communication system made of knotted threads, the project is creating a collective string of oral histories. Contributors can record and listen to themselves and others, through an interactive phone line and local radio stations, while connecting to a wider audience through the web.

Engage Media

Engage Media is one of the most ambitious and perhaps richest of these types of projects. Engage Media is an alternative to YouTube dedicated, allowing uploads related to social justice in the Asian Pacific. Users can browse by country, which is extensive and includes several languages, including Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Arabic, and many, many more. Videos can be easily shared using links, and even downloaded for later use or for showing in areas without internet connections. This video, for example, showd the umbrella protests in Hong Kong.

Patricia Zimmermann has curated a list of these types of projects in several languages, and they can be viewed on her blog. Any of these project offers a great resource for students, and they could be asked to explore and present to the class something they learned from the project. Each also has the potential for collaboration for more advanced students.

SHARE

Prism is a web-interface tool that was produced as part of the University of Virginia’s Scholar Lab graduate intern program. It allows for collaborative reading using highlighters to show which parts of a text have a particular significance for a combined group of readers.

The initial inspiration for the project came not from the digital world, but from an analog in-class assignment used to study short literary texts. Students were asked to place a sheet of transparency paper over the text, then use different colored markers to underline passages. Each color was meant to signify a different element the class was asked to look for. The transparencies were then stacked together and displayed, so students could see how others had approached the same text.

The Prism web site takes the activity and improves upon it using digital visualizations. A text is uploaded and users can choose from up to three different colors to highlight the text. One example on the site is the lyrics from a Taylor Swift song, and users are asked to underline each passage they find to be feminist and each they find to be conformist.

Once users have given their input, they are able to visual the text in two ways. Color-coded text shows the predominant color used by the group of users. Clicking on an individual word reveals the exact percentage breakdown between each color. And a font-size visualization quickly reveals how many users underlined a particular text in relation to others within a single highlighter color.

The actual meaning of each color code is defined by the person who uploads the text. A user can upload a text publicly or privately, meaning that only those to whom a link is sent can access the text. This makes the tool very useful for a classroom setting, where the editing is limited to students in the class.

This tool would be great for a poetry class, allowing students to contribute to the text they are reading before coming to class, alerting the teacher about what passages may have been missed, and what others seemed particularly important to the students. The visualizations can be the impetus for class discussion, and guide the instructor on which points were obvious, which were missed, and what unique insights the class may have.

This tool is also perfect for peer review for two reasons. First, both the student work and annotations can be done anonymously, eliminating at least some of the potential reticence to share work or criticism with a peer. Students can view an aggregate of responses quickly, without having to compare notes from multiple readers (meaning that an instructor can also provide feedback without the student mindlessly making a change without considering why it should be changed). Second, comments are very structured and limited to the color-code scheme, meaning reviewers have a more clear mandate about what they should look for. For example, the person uploading the text may be more concerned about a particular grammar point that content, and could ask that peers find those errors.

Here peer-reviewers are ask to mark any general errors, specific errors about past-tense conjugations, and to say what they thought was good about the text.

You can access Prism here.. It is compatible with Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. You must register a free account to use, but you can browse public texts without an account. The site offers multilingual support.

SHARE

Media type: Short films

Source: Youtube

Language: Brazilian Portuguese

Language Level: Varies from intermediate to advanced, but could be used for beginning level classes

Porta dos Fundos (Backdoor) is unlike the typical films that one might find in a language class. In fact, it’s not a film at all, but a series of humorous videos produced entirely on a YouTube channel. Nevertheless, Porta dos Fundos is a great source for students of Brazilian Portuguese. The excellent production quality and good acting will keep students interested, and the films could easily be adapted for activities ranging from beginning to advanced language study.

Perhaps the aspect of Porta dos Fundos that is most appealing for use in a language classrooms is its production quality. The videos do not resemble the typical humor one might associate with Brazilian television. They are much more similar to Saturday Night Live Digital Shorts. Even more important, the humor of Portas dos Fundos rarely relies on wordplay, meaning that students can more easily understand the situational humor and do not have to struggle with intricate double meanings.

Take, for example, the following video, in which a doctor informs a happy couple of new parents that they will not be having a boy or a girl, but a cat. (Note: this is taken from the group’s English-language Youtube page, which posts a selection of videos with English subtitles).

Here students, even at a beginner or intermediate level, could easily get the joke.

Another benefit of Portas dos Fundos is that it covers a wide variety of topics, making it possible to find a video that would work well with the grammar or vocabulary being used in class. Take this video, for example, of an interesting exchange that occurs when a woman tries to check her baggage before a flight. The video would nicely compliment  a unit on travel.

But Porta dos Fundos offers more than just silly situations with strange people. It covers important cultural and political questions that could be part of larger class discussion in an advanced conversation class. For example, this video take humorous look at the way people view the poor in Brazil, which could help lead to lengthier discussions in a conversation class.

Or this video, which deals with the timely topic of food politics.

In addition to the YouTube videos, Porta dos Fundos has published a book with the scripts of many of their videos, which may help in lower-level classes. They have also produced a DVD, which has Portuguese-language subtitles that may help students needing help with understanding content.

The Portas dos Fundos videos are both entertaining and useful in a classroom setting. The only caveat would be that instructors should be careful about which videos they show, since many of them may not be completely appropriate (although they will give students some vocabulary they wouldn’t normally learn in a classroom setting).

SHARE

App name: Duolingo

Platforms: iOS, Android, and web browser versions

System Requirements: The app is relatively small in file size (17kb or so), but completing lessons requires an internet connection, although lessons can be downloaded for offline use. The web version

Cost: Free!

Languages taught: French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, and English. The app supports users who speak a variety of languages, but their choices for language learning are limited, with English being the most commonly available.

What it says it can do: Unlike many language learning platforms, Duolingo actually makes very few promises beyond their tagline: “Learn Languages Free”

What it does: There are two ways to access Duolingo, some different resources are available on each. Both the web site and the app offer the basic language learning exercises. These are primarily presented in the form of translation and repetition. Below are some examples of the beginning German lessons:

While the general idea is to learn grammar rules implicitly, in the beginning stages small grammar hints are available.

Pronunciation practice is done through a computer-analyzed voice recording. This may not be entirely accurate, however, since in this screenshot I know that I did not give the correct translation but it was marked as correct.

The system notes small typo errors, although they are not always marked as incorrect. If an error persists, however, it is marked as incorrect.

For each lesson, users are given four hearts (reduced to three in the higher level lessons), losing one heart for each wrong answer. If all hearts are lost, the user must begin the lesson again. Users can also earn lingots by completing lessons without losing a heart. The lingots can be used to purchase items, such as lessons on idioms and expressions.

The beginning lessons are fairly simple, using pictures and the recorded voices of native speakers to present vocabulary and exercises that target specific grammar points. In the lesson from the screenshots above, for example, it is the clear that the objective is for users to learn gender with pronouns and articles. While users may be able to grasp the grammatical concept, there is really no attempt made to clearly explain the rule. It seems unlikely that user would be able to explain the grammatical concept to another person, although that student may be able to begin using it correctly in limited contexts. The lessons advance in a fairly logical pattern, building upon what each other and recycling vocabulary. Users are also encouraged the return to previous lessons to strengthen the skills they had learned in the past.

Additionally, the web site offers a few other resources. Users can engage in discussion forums. In fact, after each question using the web version, users can view or add to discussion about particular sentences, allowing them to gain more insight into the particular lesson through information provided by other users. There is also an option for users to give feedback if they believe there is an error in a particular exercise. Through the web site, users can also access a section called “immersion” where others post authentic texts in the target language, and users translate these texts to their native tongue. Users can also proofread the translations of other users.

Use of the app requires registration. The web site can be used without registration, but without saving a user’s progress as they learn the language.

Assessment:

This is an amazing product given that it is absolutely free to users. In many ways it rivals the usefulness of costly language programs and has already gained a large number of users worldwide. The app runs smoothly with no technical errors. And from what I have seen, contains few, if any, language errors. The interface is very user friendly, whether being used on a mobile device or through a web browser.

The drawbacks are similar to those of any computerized language learning software. There is no chance for meaningful interaction with another person. There is no communicative aspect of any of the activities. At some point, users may find that getting correct answers is more about figuring out how the program works and using deduction to find the right response rather than figuring out how to speak a new language. And unlike some software, such as Transparent Language, there is no way to customize the lessons so that they could be used in conjunction with a language course

While the discussion section of the web site seems helpful, the “immersion” section seems like a gross misuse of the term “immersion.” Document translation seems like a very high level task that is beyond the scope of why most people want to learn another language, yet also vastly different that the type of exercises that lead to language fluency. Furthermore, the selection of texts is rather drab, with few topics that would be of interest to many people.

Overall, Duolingo is an amazing product at a price that can’t be beat. While it cannot replace the type of communicative, take-based learning that happens in a language classroom, it could easily reinforce vocabulary and grammar principles for language learners. Lessons are brief and could easily supplement required coursework without placing a burden on a language student. Its low cost and easy accessibility make it a great program for any language learner.

SHARE