twitter | Will B. Mackintosh

Tag Archive for twitter

Reflections on #SHEAR14

July 24, 2014 / Will / 2 comments

The analog program cover.

I just returned home from my most digitally enhanced annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR) yet, so it only makes sense that I capture my reflections on that experience in digital form.

As always, I am impressed by what a generous group of scholars has been drawn to SHEAR’s flame. With a few exceptions, the official comments and audience questions were gentle, constructive, and aimed at enhancing our understanding of the past rather than scholars’ egos. And I think this spirit is extra impressive in a group of people who study a period in which the American ideology of competitive individualism was first finding its footing and its ideological power. Read more

Category: Digital Life, Historian in the World / Tags: Digital Humanities, dooo, fi, Philadelphia, SHEAR, twitter

Analog Day, Digital Day

February 16, 2014 / Will / One comment

Virginia Snowpocalypse 2014: digital humanities or analog humanities?

This week’s assignment to explore “personal learning networks” through social media came at an auspicious time. Unlike Jason and Dave, last week’s snow days freed up some time for me, because of the particular moment I was in for each of my courses. (I’m screwed this week, but that’s another story.) That meant I had a fair amount of time on Thursday and Friday to play with Twitter and RSS. Read more

Category: Digital Life, The Aspiring Handyman / Tags: Analog Humanities, architecture, Brian, Digital Humanities, fi, Fredericksburg, historic district, PLN, TTRSS, twitter

Making a Collaborative Reading Notes Wiki

February 10, 2014 / Will / One comment

Screen shot of the wiki in progress; click to enlarge.

This semester I am experimenting with using MediaWiki as a platform for the students in my History of Manhood in the US course to build a collaborative set of reading notes. After being less than completely satisfied with my Twitter experiment last semester, I was looking for a new way to integrate an online component into my courses. One of the problems I had with student tweeting is that it generated a lot of noise; there was a lot of talking and very little listening. I had a hard time keeping up with all the tweets, and it seemed unreasonable (as well as unproductive) to expect the students to do so. In previous years, I had found that response-blogging suffered from a similar problem; there was an awful lot of expression and not a lot of contemplation. So I found myself searching for a different kind of online community, one in which the students wrote less but more thoughtfully, and actively engaged with what the others were contributing. Read more

Category: Digital Life, Teaching / Tags: dooo, fi, Matt, mediawiki, twitter, UMW

Twitter as an Academic Tool

February 9, 2014 / Will / 5 comments

Is it a siren song that I sing?

This week’s assignment for the Domain of One’s Own Faculty Initiative is to explore online scholarly communities. I spent some time racking my brain trying to think up Early Americanist communities online, until I realized that I have been an active user of just such a community for years, H-Net. I belong to several of their groups, and I get much of my information about fellowships, conferences, and new work from interacting with their email listservs and their newly renovated web portal. The size and breadth of its user community makes it an invaluable resource for me. Read more

Category: Digital Life / Tags: dooo, fi, instructional technology, Kevin, twitter, UMW

Teaching is About Relationships

February 7, 2014 / Will / No comments

Rural school near Milton, North Dakota, 1913. Courtesy of Fred Hultstrand History in Pictures Collection, NDIRS-NDSU, Fargo.

This week’s readings were all about using technology to open up teaching and learning and to take advantage of the “abundance” of teaching materials, expertise, and networks. These pieces all strike me as fine, as far as they go, but they mostly reveal an understanding of what makes for good teaching that is fundamentally different from mine. Read more

Category: Digital Life, Teaching / Tags: fi, instructional technology, twitter, umwdomains