Active participation in the class discussion. Leadership and positive contributions to the class discussion, wherever that takes place. The course hashtag is #hist5702w. (I am @electricarchaeo on Twitter). Each week will involve one or two students giving us a warts-and-all post-mortem on a programming historian tutorial. You will reflect on how this tutorial intersects with your other courses, your own research, and indeed, the few readings that I will provide you (I expect you to follow through links to bibliography and so on in the tutorials and to bring those to bear in the conversation). If you are not leading the post-mortem, I still expect you to be familiar with the tutorial, the associated links and so on so that we can have a productive conversation. Each session will involve hacking, poking, prodding, and otherwise doing digital history. It'll be equal parts yack and hack, as it were. We can spend time every session considering how all of this will play to the final project as well.
Open Notebooks. 9 meeting entries (you are encouraged to make a repository in github just for these), plus 1 session where you lead the group through your experience with a paricular Programming Historian tutorial (these will be assigned). Your posts should/could reflect on the readings, the discussion, and what you learned from the session leader's experience that week. You should also be frequently posting regarding your final project as it develops.If you are working on a Programming Historian tutorial, make a particular note about any hidden 'gotchas' you encounter. Video notes/walk throughs are encouraged; Screen-cast-o-matic is free, easy to use, and quite effective. You can post these on youtube, vimeo, or similar. If you're on twitter, feel free to tweet the links using the #hist5702w hashtag. You will select your nine best entries for me to grade.
Project: the technologies of video games are an extremely powerful - and perhaps the natural?- form for digital work. The major project in this class will be to explore the issues of digital history as discussed in this course, evidenced through the creation of a playful engagement with the tutorials of the Programming Historian. This can be an individual effort, or a collaborative effort.
You will create digital history through a playful engagement with teaching digital history.
Reflective Short Unessay. This unessay reflects on the issues of digital history as experienced by the student in the course of completing the major project. Th length and format need only be 'appropriate' and 'compelling'. It can be built into a 'paradata' section to accompany your game. This unessay may be highly personal, and does not necessarily need to be 'written' in a text-forward dead-tree format. For more on ‘unessays’, see Daniel O'Donnell. The grading of the project and the reflective essay will follow the unessay conventions. We will talk about this.
It would be a good idea to bring your laptop or device to each session.
Digital history can be very frustrating. You don't have to work in isolation. You may collaborate; you can google for solutions; you can ask for advice on Twitter or elsewhere. Make sure, when you do get frustrated (and you will), to just walk away from the computer. There is more than one way to do things digital, and when you're frustrated you won't find any of them. Shut it down, go for a walk, have a coffee. Come back when you're fresh.
But do acknowledge in your work any collaboration or help you have received. Failure to acknowledge help received will be regarded like a failure to cite.
Class Participation: 10% + 10% for your session that you lead.
Open notebook entries: 30%
Contribution to Final Project: 30%
Final reflection: 20%