I'm working on a project aimed at providing training/info to humanities people (grad students, PhDs, staff, faculty, etc.) who feel daunted by the field/like they know nothing, and don't even know where to begin, so I'm interested in hearing about anything that was instrumental in making people feel autonomous enough that they could start exploring and developing their skills independently.
Thanks in advance!
Wordle is without a doubt the best gateway drug I have come across for anyone wishing to play with a tool. Learning some basic HTML/CSS for web authoring is also beneficial as a tool for teaching the principles of markup languages. What these have in common is that they provide the beginner with instant (or near instant) gratification that they produced something. Once they begin to run up against (and become conscious of) some of the limitations of Wordle and markup for the web, they can start thinking about more powerful tools like MALLET or more complext markup languages like TEI/XML. But they'll have the confidence to push themselves in that direction. Of course, text encoding and analysis are generally cited as the most intimidating aspects of the digital humanities. Perhaps there are other aspects (GIS? Databases?) which should also be considered.
Replying to @paigecm@uw.edu's post:
Paige, you might send the to Peter K. Power's recent blog on this: http://readwritenow.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/literacy-in-the-digital-humanities-or-being-clueless-in-digital-academe/
We had a ravenous Twitter conversation about this over weekend that was Storified by Jesse Stommel and might be helpful: http://storify.com/Jessifer/the-anatomy-of-digital-humanities-and-digital-peda
It might also be worth reading the How do we introduce undergraduates to digital humanities thread.
One of the difficulties is that digital humanities covers such a wide range of knowledge and skills that you'd really need to narrow things down to choose an entry point. For example, I came into DH via educational technology, so my starting point was in tool building and site building. For that, I good entry point was just to install WordPress, Omeka, and Drupal someplace and build a site, maybe hack on the themes and code.
As Scott mentioned, there is also a lot of GIS work being done. Not knowing much about GIS, I'm not sure what a suitable entry point is (though I guess that finding an ArcGIS tutorial or class would be a start).
Same with things like distant reading or text-mining or data visualization.
That's all completely unhelpful, I know. Maybe an alternate step back is to lurk and listen to the online conversations that touch on digital humanities until a topic comes up that sounds interesting, and try to ask about the details in that conversation?
william.j.turkel@gmail.com
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I have found that it is pretty easy to start conversations around simple digital techniques or tools that can make almost anyone's online life better. For example, something as simple as showing someone how to use plus and minus operators in a Google search can be quite empowering. Depending on the user, learning that a browser can have multiple tabs open might be a revelation. Just be non-threatening :) and keep telling people they can do it.
Actually, all this is very useful, both in confirming the use of what my colleagues and I have in mind, and as a reminder of the value of small things (like plus and minus operators, and Ctrl+F).
The introducing undergraduates in DH thread is also relevant. What I'm looking at is a series of 6 workshops over a three-quarter academic year: 1) providing an overview to major fields/subfields/concerns in DH, and examples of what people are doing; 2) managing your professional identity online; and the other four designated towards giving people brief but well-supported intros to tools and approaches.
While we obviously can't teach people everything, all indications from our preliminary research is that DH is so opaque that it's hard for outsiders to know how to even start asking questions or looking to self-educate (as Peter K. Power's blog post seems to indicate).
In short: thanks, all! This is excellent info to work with.
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