The Michigan State University Cultural Heritage Informatics (CHI) Fieldschool introduces 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.
This week, we presented our final project, msu.seum, to our fieldschool counterparts in the Campus Archaeology Program and I have to say that it was the high point of the week for me. Though we have been hard at work this week developing the user interface, coding, and compiling content, this was the first opportunity […]
While the CHI Fieldschool has been working on a series of small projects, the ultimate goal of the fieldschool is to produce a significant cultural heritage informatics project. It is important to note that the goal of the fieldschool was to dictate the scope and nature of this final project, and then have the students […]
While gamification has become quite a buzzword in all areas of our lives (even going so far as to turn speeding tickets into a sort of game), this week’s work with 7Scenes made me wonder about the usefulness of gamification in cultural heritage institutions. Adding the element of game surely does have value as it […]
This week, our collaborative project with the Campus Archaeology field school was to design a trek using 7scenes. Unlike other types of geolocation and check-in applications, 7scenes has a wider range of options on what to do on the trek and a variety of play like elements that can be incorporated into it. We decided […]
This week, one of our challenges was to create a play-based game that was also rooted in location. For this, Rachael and I decided to move away from the narrative we built last week with our GoWalla tour that highlighted how landscape is an important layer in identity-building because we felt it didn’t open up […]
“You study… culture? What are you gonna do with that?” Throughout my pursuit of higher education, my answer to the question, “So, Rachael, what are you studying?” is always countered with, “And what is that? What do you do?” My studies in the humanities – Cultural Studies as an undergrad, now Digital Rhetoric and Professional […]
The most noticeable barrier to entry with location-based applications is that not everyone has a smart phone. However, there is another, arguably more sizable, barrier to entry than the lack of a smart phone: location. Even those with smart phones may not have the resources to go to places required to make use of location-based […]
Challenge: create a Quick Response (QR) code based cultural heritage based project. For information on QR codes, see Whitney’s summary of my lecture here: QR Codes. Each field school student must come up with a basic design document about their concept and project. Deliverable: each design document needs to include: Concept: discuss the general idea […]
Today in class we talked about QR codes. Recently QR Codes have become very popular. Very important was a list of dos and don’ts for making QR Codes. Although there is room for creativity when making QR Codes you have to make sure they are still readable or they are no good. We also learned […]
Today we discussed the fundamentals of digital mapping. This included a brief discussion of the principles of creating good maps, such as maintaining simplicity, hierarchy in information, accuracy in information, designing for an audience, clear communication of concept, and effective labeling. We also discussed projection systems which transform a globe into a flat map, and […]
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