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.
I’ve never been enthralled by LOL cats. Honestly, I just don’t get it. I’m not going to say I’ve fallen in love with these online felines, but I’ve come to associate them with my own personal technology victory. Last week the CHI field school was working with the Android App inventor. Our first task was […]
As we move forward with the design projects we developed last week and with the introduction of the archaeology check-in tour challenge, I’m starting to see just how important it is to think both granularly and globally about the mechanisms that drive and sustain the use of the mobile/web apps we endeavor to build. Because […]
This week’s project, wherein we collaborated with the MSU Campus Archaeology Fieldschool, was to create a user experience that facilitates an interaction with the heritage of the University’s campus. We were given the choice to work with Foursquare or Gowalla, both mobile check-in services. This project was an interesting experience itself that highlighted how we can […]
Developing a custom application is difficult, but the possibilities are nearly limitless. Choose an easy to use, readymade consumer application and the constraints are uncomfortably visible. That divide was made painfully clear when we collaborated with the Campus Archaeology Fieldschool this week to design a concept for a location based tour to help users interact […]
This week , and a little bit of last week we worked on the different stages of development for a project. At the beginning we were given several concepts to develop, and we ended up designing for the concept: Campus as a Museum. Reflecting now that it has been completed I have come up with […]
As we finish up this week’s joint project with MSU Archaeology, I’ve been contemplating the role of time within geo-locative applications. How does a historian, curator or archaeologist- employing the same technology used for contemporary social networking purposes- represent a physical location as it was in the past without completely differentiating those materials from […]
Concept: Citizen Scholar/Archivist/Historian/Museologist/Archaeologist Name: Citizen’s Voice Concept: This site will be a public dialogue concerning political events or concerns within the community, or in the country. People will sign in with a user name to protect their identities while they are on this forum. Here they can raise issues about what laws are going into […]
Concept: City as museum Name: Tourist Trap **A better name would highlight the temporal & “local flavor” aspects of this tour app while also being super catchy. Project Description Tourist Trap prevents travellers from being trapped in chains. This is a tool for busy travellers who do not want to get trapped wasting their limited […]
Mapping Heritage Name: Narrative Spaces Description: The significance of a certain place in one’s life can be a story in itself. These physical landmarks can come to embody a certain mood or memory, and can become a part of one’s heritage as time progresses. With this in mind, Narrative Spaces hopes to provide a […]
Name: iCampus (just kidding) Campus Showroom (not much better) Project Description: Campus Showroom is a tool that allows users (both prospective and current students, faculty and parents/family members of students) to both experience and share their stories about campus while visiting the landmarks that engendered those stories. The goal is two-fold: first, to give users […]
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