HASTAC Scholars in the News!

The HASTAC Scholars Program received a nice shout out on Duke Today with thanks to Andrea Fereshteh, Senior Writer in the Office of News and Communications. You can find the article here: http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2008/09/vlog.htmlI have pasted in the article below (with a few additions of my own to honor all our local scholars. In credit to Andrea Fereshteh, if you re-blog this post, please either re-blog the original article or acknowledge these editorial additions!).

Shaking Up Humanities Learning

Inaugural HASTAC Scholars participate in vlog discussion

By Andrea Fereshteh

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Durham, NC -- This doesn?t look like your ordinary academic conference.

Forone, the speaker, social-media guru, author and teacher HowardRheingold is hanging out at home in a Hawaiian shirt and straw hat andtalking through a webcam to scholars from around the country. For two, rather than simply blessing the latest trends in the classroom, Rheingold is speaking passionately about how not to use new technology in teaching.

It?sthe first event of the year for the new HASTAC Scholar Program, a jointventure involving Duke and other universities that explores how newtechnology is transforming the humanities. Speaking on avideo blog or vlog, Rheingold told scholars that using electronic mediain the classroom is valuable, but only if it helps students participatein learning about the issues that matter the most to them.

?Teachingstudents to blog and post in forums and use wikis as a way of absorbingthe knowledge in the old fashioned way may not be as effective ? itcertainly does not get them as excited ? as if we start with inquiringabout the questions that matter to them,? Rheingold said.

?I?vebeen pushed by my students and my own growing understanding of what?sgoing on in my classrooms?to start with the questions that matter tothem. And then help them use the media to go to the texts to try tofind analytical frameworks and vocabularies and lenses that areprovided by those texts to try to find pathways to answers?to try tofind some skills that are useful in this world, for themselves.?

A Discussion on Learning

Watch and listen as technology writer Howard Rheingold discussesteaching social media. Scholars from around the world have postedvideo replies. The vlog can be found here.

AfterRheingold makes his comments, scholars start posting a series of videoreplies from across the globe. (To look at the vlog, click here.)

Thisis the type of discussion that HASTAC (the Humanities, Arts, Scienceand Technology Advanced Collaboratory) was created to promote.Co-founded by Cathy Davidson, Ruth F. Devarney Professor of English,HASTAC created the Scholars Program to help faculty and students share information about what they are doing on their campuses.

Five of the more than 50 new HASTAC Scholars are Duke students. Ga-YoungJoung is an undergraduate studying biomedical, electrical and computerengineering, and computer science. Kylie Prymus is a graduate studentin philosophy and a University Scholar, Rizvana Braxton is a graduate student in the Literature Program, and Lindsey Andrews and PatrickJagoda are doctoral candidates in English. Duke is also proud to support Scholar Mechelle De Craene, a special education/gifted education teacher and graduate student at Florida State University who started the HASTAC on Ning community.

North Carolina Central University has also contributed two HASTAC Scholars to this inaugural group. Raeshawn McGuffie is working on a Masters in Library Science, and Jovanna Foreman is a Senior studying Computer Information Systems. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will additionally nominate a scholar from within its School of Library and Information Science.

Thevlog-to-vlog discussion with Rheingold is the first event hosted by theinaugural group of HASTAC Scholars. Subsequent blog and vlog entriesposted by the Scholars will analyze whether and how new technologiesaffect the quality of online discussions.

TheScholars will spend the year as part of a virtual community of studentscreating, reporting on, blogging, vlogging and podcasting eventsrelated to digital media and learning for an international audience. The HASTAC Scholars will also orchestrate a regular discussion forum onthe HASTAC website featuringtheir own research and interests alongside those of leaders andinnovators in the digital humanities, such as open source scholarChristopher Kelty and Brett Bobley, director of the Office of DigitalHumanities for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

?Informationposted by the HASTAC Scholars will be of interest to anyone ineducational sphere who wants to learn about social networking tools,and how they can use them in the classroom in effective ways. We?rereally trying to push the envelope and get past ideas about traditionallearning,? says Erin Gentry Lamb, director of the HASTAC ScholarsProgram and a Ph.D. candidate in English at Duke. ?For people ineducation at all levels, this will be a place for both ideas anddiscussion.?

HASTAC was foundedand is primarily operated at the John Hope Franklin Center at DukeUniversity and the University of California Humanities ResearchInstitute at the University of California, Irvine.

© 2008 Office of News & Communications
615 Chapel Drive, Box 90563, Durham, NC 27708-0563
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