Multitasking

April 9, 2013 in Doing

While watching Louisville win at basketball, I worked on building a learning object in Sophia.org, a free and open platform for sharing learning tutorials. My students had helped to create a simulation in Kentucky civil rights history, and I want to share it with the world.

When I’m done, you’ll be able to see it at
http://www.sophia.org/kentucky-civil-rights-history-1960-64-two-scenes-t-tutorial

Connecting students and librarians

April 8, 2013 in Being

How best do we assure our students connect up with our librarians in a meaningful way?

It’s been over a week and we still don’t have a good connection yet for one of my student groups ready to interview a Kentucky Hall of Fame inductee!

Here’s how it went:

January – students meet oral history department librarians and get an orientation/overview of resources and services

February – students choose their topics and work on historical research, writing their journal logs on our open knowledge initiative site KYWCRH (hosted, by the way, by MATRIX), http://www.kywcrh.org.

March – student group contacts Suzy Post, KY Hall of Fame inductee, and get permission to conduct an oral history interview. As an aside: this is indeed very generous of her since there are already several interviews available already – but my students are sure they have questions that have not yet been asked – see for example, http://www.kywcrh.org/archives/3358. I have full confidence that this will be a terrific and productive interview…. BUT… my students need to connect up with the UK Oral History Department, make sure they are clear on the official forms (for giving permission for release, etc.), the equipment and the format of their questions.

Email trail for the last several days:

avatar for theraptordr

theraptordr

From:  [my student]
Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2013 3:43 PM
To: Hollingsworth, Randolph
Subject: interviewDr. H,Could you get me the contact information of who dreambig123 and I need to meet with to discuss our interview?Thank you

avatar for dreambig123

dreambig123

From: Hollingsworth>, Randolph
Date: Wednesday, April 3, 2013 3:55 PM
To:
Cc: Douglas Boyd , dreambig123
Subject: RE: interview with Suzy Post for HON251 project

Hi ,Before you and dreambig123 meet with Suzy Post, I’d like for the three of us to meet with Doug Boyd (the gentleman you met at the beginning of term over in the UK Special Collections, Louie B. Nunn Oral History Department) or whomever he assigns.  You’ll want to get the recording device from him as well as the release forms, etc.

I’m copying to him here to ask him if he would rather meet with us, or if he has a staff person in mind for us to work with on this.

Thanks for the email reminder!
rh

Doug Boyd

Doug Boyd, Director, Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at University of Kentucky

…. and then, for several days (ncluding a continuing stream of responses this morning) emails go back and forth about the timing of this meet-up. My job is simply to make sure the 3 of them (the two students and the librarian) continue to copy each other on the email trail as they search for a time to meet.  Don’t they believe in using a shared calendar? no, it’s got to be via email that this gets hammered out.

Busy students, busy librarians!

But, I have faith it can happen.yes, I just have to have faith.  My role is to remain consistent in my desire for them to work something out and assure some quality in their interactions with the interviewee and the product of their interview.  I remain convinced that this quality will most likely happen if they connect with these critical resources offered by the staff of one of the best oral history departments in the world.  Right here on our campus!  So, it’s just a matter of being sure it will happen.

Being sure… really sure…. it will happen….

This morning I was no Tom Cruise

April 8, 2013 in Doing

The Realworld  Minority Report

If Homeland Security can do it, why can’t we do this in our university with teaching and learning?!

After capturing some images that might be useful for a first blog post today, I realized I forgot completely to take photos during a big meeting with the representatives of all UK’s colleges this morning! So, I’m already behind…. but that’s an excellent example of how it works on a daily basis for me.

I want these gloves to be available in every university conference meeting room!

This morning’s meeting was about how the various college representatives could create a 3-week residential academy for GEAR-UP KY students in the Summer of 2014.  As a digital humanist, I desperately wanted them to use an online tool … something like a mind-map or even just a doodle-pad.  But then I realized, not everyone would have brought their own device – and I didn’t reserve laptops or whatever.  So, forget it.  Used sticky paper on the wall, and they taped clippings of paper from their previous contributions … sigh. They did beautifully, but I missed the elegance of digitized media.  I imagined the groups swooping and sweeping their ideas between categories, just like Tom Cruise in Minority Report.  But then, I came back to reality…

First thing

April 8, 2013 in Reflections

First thing this morning, took a picture of what I see each morning coming to the office. Is this who I am? What do I bring?

20130408-120525.jpg

Greetings

April 2, 2013 in Reflections

Glad to be participating in Day of DH 2013. Looking forward to using this site on April 8th. Since this is the first time I’ve participated in a Day of DH, I’d appreciate getting some advice on how best to manage the expected activities of self-observation (and reflection) during a regular ol’ crazy workday.