Intro to Omeka Plugins

Q: Ever wanted to learn how to put together a new plugin for Omeka but wasn’t sure where to start?

A: This workshop!

We’ll look at the basic structure of an Omeka plugin and how the pieces fit together, then I’ll have some exercises ready for you to begin hacking on and expanding some example plugins.

Topics covered include creating a model for new kinds of content, understanding how Zend/Omeka connects URLs to controllers and views, and using best practices in Omeka’s code to make your life easier. The primary audience is people with some experience with PHP, especially Object-Oriented PHP, but the session will also be helpful to people who are beginners to coding in PHP and are curious about typical structures and paradigms for hacking on an Omeka installation.

We’ll be looking at Omeka code and going through activities that involve installing and manipulating example plugins, so you should come with an instance of Omeka 2.0 installed on your laptop.

UPDATE — links added!

We’ll be using the following three plugins as examples to help us learn some of the basic structures in Omeka plugins. Please come to the workshop with them installed in your Omeka site on your laptop — we’ll be directly editing them together and looking at the results on your laptop.

Click the ZIP link to download the plugin, or if you are a git user clone the repositories.

And some exercises for during and/or after the session.

Imagining THATClass: Move over STEM, Make Room for THAT!

Why should STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) have all the fun? It is time for the humanities to embrace the studio model as a pedagogical means to foster intellectual curiosity. MIT has NuVu; let’s create THATClass! Bring your ideas on partnerships, collaboration, technology integration, hands-on projects, uncovering content, and ways to apply knowledge and skills rooted in the humanities to develop the future of secondary (and post-secondary) education. ==> Saturday

Papers of the War Department Transcribathon

Fire destroyed the War Department office in 1800. For decades historians believed that its files, and the window they provide into the early federal government, had been lost forever. The Papers of the War Department project unites copies of over 45,000 documents from the lost files in a digital archive that reconstitutes this invaluable historical resource.

During the transcribathon, participants will sign up to become a Transcription Associate for the Papers of the War Department and will learn to use its installation of Scripto, the transcription plugin for WordPress, Omeka, and Drupal. If you plan to participate, please sign up beforehand to become a Transcription Associate.

QGIS Introduction

The value of GIS in the humanities has been heavily discussed over the last few years, but it remains difficult for most humanists to get started and explore new methodologies, vocabularies, software, and procedures.

This fully introductory session will go over:

  • how to install QGIS (a free, open-source alternative to ArcGIS)
  • basic concepts of GIS software
  • finding and using shapefiles (to generate maps)
  • finding data to map
  • mapping historical data on a modern map (ie linking data to shapefiles)
  • mapping historical data on historic maps (ie map overlays)

We will walk through each of these procedures using an example of mapping civil war battles (because that’s what one does in Virginia).

R for humanists

Text mining (TM) has been one of the most frequently discussed methodologies in the humanities in the last year, along with many tools can help with some basic and some not so basic TM methodologies. Although it may seem like overkill, learning how to use the statistical software package R for TM is a great way to learn more about some fundamental processes and how you can get more control over your own TM explorations.

This introductory workshop will demonstrate how to:

install R
use the R console (like the command line)
create a set of text files to explore
explore the basic TM features
create a visualization of document similarity

 

More about NARA transcribathon and tagathon

Meredith Stewart and colleagues from the National Archives will be running Transcribathon and Tagathon sessions on Friday, June 7. Here’s her description:

Staff from the National Archives will lead participants in tagging and transcribing historical records through the agency’s Citizen Archivist Dashboard. Participants will be able to provide feedback and suggestions on improving tools and ideas for how to further leverage citizen participation.

De-MOOCing the Past — Alternative Approaches to Online History Courses

Looking past MOOC mania, there are many models for online teaching and learning. We’ll start the conversation at this workshop with some lessons learned from designing two asynchronous online history courses: Hidden in Plain Sight and Virginia Studies. Instructors include Kelly Schrum, Celeste Sharpe, Nate Sleeter, and Jeri Wieringa.

View Notes and Resources

Synchronicity 2 (“Looks Like the Internet” — a collaborative writing experiment)

Again on the performance/deformance tip, I’d like to propose a second session: a collaborative writing experiment using Participad. What I’d like to do here is engage a group of people in an attempt to co-author, in real time, a journal article with the title “Looks Like the Internet: The Structure of Digital Humanities.” I’d pick a couple dozen familiar digital humanities references relevant to the title and place footnotes for them at various points in a document. The group would try to write around them to create a coherent piece of new scholarship. We’d start in the morning and see how far we get by bed time.

Synchronicity 1 (PowerPoint Unhinged)

I'd like to bring PowerPoint back to THATCamp. No, not like that. Many THATCampers will know that I'm interested in performance and deformance in digital humanities, something I've written about <a href="http://www.foundhistory.org/2012/02/15/game-change-digital-technology-and-performative-humanities/">here</a> and Mark Sample has written about <a href="http://www.samplereality.com/2012/05/02/notes-towards-a-deformed-humanities/">here</a>. In a <a href="http://www.merlinmann.com/roderick/ep-71-everybody-has-a-hamburger.html">recent episode of the podcast Roderick on the Line</a>, John Roderick described being asked by a conference organizer to provide slides for a talk he had been invited to give. Not knowing PowerPoint himself, Roderick asked a friend to make the slides for him — without, beyond mentioning the title of the talk, telling the friend what he was going to say. As the subject of the talk was punk, it was actually, if accidentally, about the most appropriate use of PowerPoint possible.

I'd like to experiment with using PowerPoint in this way at THATCamp. What I'd like to do is put together four teams of two campers. One partner would choose a topic and write a ten minute talk. The other partner–knowing only the title of the talk–would build a deck of 20 slides. At THATCamp, the first partner would deliver the talk, and the second partner would advance the slides. At the end of each talk, we'd use the Q&A to explore what, if any, creative tensions, serendipitous insights, and hilarious hiccups these accidental PowerPoint presentations-cum-Mad Libs reveal.

Please use the comments section below if you'd like to jump on board, ask questions, and help organize. If you already have a partner in mind, great. If not, people should pair up ahead of THATCamp. Each pair will probably need to settle on a title a couple weeks ahead of time in order to have enough time to write the talk and prepare the slides in time for presentation at THATCamp. Topics and titles don't have to (and probably shouldn't) relate to digital humanities topics. In some ways, I think the more traditional the topic and title, the more vanilla the humanities content, the better. 

UPDATE: I think we will deliver these presentations as part of the Maker Challenge on Saturday afternoon. That will give everyone a little more time to organize. Please use Friday to pair up and write your talks/assemble your slides. Continue to use this space for connecting and coordination.

Book your room at the Mason Inn by May 7

We have reserved a block of hotel rooms for THATCampers at the Mason Inn at a special rate of $102 per night. You must book your room by May 7 to get the conference rate. The Mason Inn is located on the Fairfax campus of George Mason University, about a five-minute walk from the Center for History and New Media, where THATCamp will take place. The Mason to Metro shuttle also stops at the Mason Inn and can take you to/from the Vienna Metro station and to/from CHNM. See GMU’s hotel page for other hotel options.

Book your room at the Mason Inn

To book by phone, call 877-296-6695 and mention “THATCamp Room Block.”