About

the Cultural Heritage Informatics (CHI) Fieldschool will introduce students to the tools and techniques required to creatively apply information and computing technologies to cultural heritage materials and questions.

The CHI Fieldschool is a unique experience that employs the model of an archaeological fieldschool (in which students come together for a period of 5 or 6 weeks to work on an archaeological site in order to learn how to do archaeology).  Instead of working on an archaeological site, however, students in the CHI Fieldschool come together to collaboratively work on several cultural heritage informatics projects.  In the process they learn a great deal about what it takes to build applications and digital user experiences that serve the domain of cultural heritage – skills such as programming, media design, project management, user centered design, digital storytelling, etc.

BUILDING AS A WAY OF KNOWING

In recent years, the philosophy of “building as a way of knowing” (or “hacking as a way of knowing” as some call it) has taken firm root in the Digital Humanities.  The idea that one can acquire a far deeper understanding of tools, technologies, platforms, and systems (both in terms of applications and broader implications) through development is an important perspective, and one that is embraced by the Cultural Heritage Informatics Fieldschool.

The CHI Fieldschool is built firmly on the principle that students develop a far better understanding of cultural heritage informatics by actually building tools, applications, and digital user experiences than they do with passive analysis and commentary. The added benefit is that by building tools, applications, and digital user experiences, students also have the opportunity to make a tangible and potentially significant contribution to the cultural heritage community.

WHY A FIELDSCHOOL IN CULTURAL HERITAGE INFORMATICS?

Digital media, information technology, and computing technology has become increasingly vital in the various fields that comprise the domain of cultural heritage – for research, scholarly communication & publication, and public outreach and engagement.  The problem is that many professionals come to these skills after they have finished their undergraduate (or graduate) degree.  The Cultural Heritage Informatics Fieldschool is intended to address this problem.  Students will receive an excellent foundation in the skills and strategies necessary to conceive, build, and deploy a cultural heritage informatics project – skills that can be applied as they continue their education or enter into the professional world.  The experience gained in the CHI Fieldschool will also make students far more marketable as they apply for graduate school or enter the job market.

2011 CHI FIELDSCHOOL THEME

Each year, the Cultural Heritage Informatics Fieldschool has a specific theme.  This year’s theme is “mobile & locative.” This means that all of the work and projects undertaken by the CHI Fieldschool students will focus on mobile technologies, experiences, devices, and platforms (broadly defined).

WHAT IS EXPECTED FROM FIELDSCHOOL STUDENTS

  • Play Nice – the CHI Fieldschool (as well as Cultural Heritage Informatics itself) is deeply collaborative and interdisciplinary.  Fieldschool students represent a variety of disciplines and backgrounds.  Students are expected to embrace the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of the fieldschool.  There is an enormous amount to be learned from everyone in the class.  Its also very important to remember that fieldschool students have different levels of technical experience.  Some come with design and development experience, and some come only with domain experience.  Everyone has something important to contribute.  Along these lines, fieldschool students are perfectly welcome to take the reigns and run a mini-workshop on a particular platform/project/framework/language/environment with which they have experience.
  • Work Hard – lets be honest, the CHI Fieldschool is going to be a lot of hard (though rewarding) work.  Students are expected to be highly motivated, and willing to solve problems (both technical and theoretical) independently.  If you are curious about a specific platform, try it out!
  • Experiment & Hack – one of the most important aspects of the CHI Fieldschool is that students are encouraged to experiment and hack.  Dig into and deconstruct projects (platforms, programs, etc.).  Change code, hit go, and see what happens.
  • Learn from Failure – Failure is good.  Frankly, failure is great!  You learn far more from failure than you do from success.  Don’t get worried that something doesn’t work the first time (or the second time or the third time).  Remember, every time something doesn’t work (and you figure out why it didn’t work), you learn something important.
  • Be Thoughtful – its easy to get lost in all the tech.  However, its extremely important to remember that the tech isn’t the important aspect of the CHI Fieldschool.  Instead, the teach is a vehicle.  Its a means to the end.  What is important is how the tech serves the needs, problems, questions, and goals of cultural heritage.  Students should always be asking themselves (and be able to articule the answer to) the following question: “what is the point?”

TWITTER

Twitter is becoming a very important aspect of scholarly communication (especially in the domain of the digital humanities, libraries, archives, museums, and cultural heritage).  The CHI Fieldschool embraces this – and is fully “on Twitter.”  The fieldschool will have an “official” twitter presence using the general Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative In addition, all CHI Fieldschool students are expected to maintain a presence on Twitter (tweeting regularly about fieldschool activities).  For the purposes of fieldschool tweeting, students should use the #msuchi hashtag.

BLOGGING

This website is not just a static syllabus, it is also the class publishing platform – it is an opportunity for students to contribute to the wider cultural heritage informatics discussion.  As such, students are expected to post regularly to the course site (details of what students should be posting, the “voice” they should use to post, etc can be found on the Assignments page).

OPEN ACCESS & LICENSING

The CHI Fieldschool adheres to the philosophy of open courseware and open access.  As such, all fieldschool materials are open and accessible to the public, and available under a Creative Commons license.  This includes all assignments (blog entries, projects).

It is very important to note any student (at any time during the fieldschool) can opt not to have their materials (blog posts) be open access.  Just talk to Ethan, and he’ll make it happen.  Its equally important to note that any student who chooses to do this will not be penalized at all.

GRAVATAR

All students are required to sign up for a Gravatar account (http://en.gravatar.com/). A Gravatar (globally recognized avatar) is a profile image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog.  To get an account, just go to the Gravatar website, and sign up using the email to which your course site login/password info was sent.