Digital Humanities – Spring 2018

Fears & Hopes:

In this class, I hope to learn more about the different aspects of digital humanities. I am excited to learn about the different digital tools on the computer. Additionally, I hope that these tool will be beneficial for me, and I plan to teach what I learn to others. One of my fears for this class is that I will have trouble understanding the different aspects of digital humanities. This is the first class I have taken, involving computer tools because I have mostly taken education classes for my major. This class is definitely intimidating to me, but I know that the information I am going to learn will be useful in my future. I definitely am going to put in a lot of time, and effort in order to thrive in this class. I hope to conquer these fears, and become more knowledgeable on Digital Humanities over the course of the semester. With the motivation I have, this is definitely possible.

I don’t really know what digital humanities are. I thought the class would focus on coding and the rhetoric of digital text platforms like wordpress and popular social media sites. But the class seems like so much more. I mean, geography and history? I did not expect those topics to be looped into this course, but I’m interested to see how they all connect. I hope I’m any good at them – I know I’m good at English, but those subjects? Doubtful. I hope we do happen to touch on coding though like I initially thought we would; I think it’s so cool. Ever since I took Writing in the Digital Age with Professor Kevin Rutherford I’ve been obsessed: I instantly downloaded dreamweaver on my macbook and started messing around with it after the class. I want to learn Java script and Ruby and Python – I hope I will one day.

I’m also happy we’re using wordpress for our blogging – I just began an editing internship with Study Breaks magazine and they make me use wordpress too, so I’m very familiar with the platform.

-Sarah DeLena

 

In this class, I hope to seriously improve my technology skills and learn new ways to apply these tools. I believe these skills can aid me both in my every day life, and, especially, in my future classrooms. Technology is a huge part of education, whether it be tablets, laptops, powerpoints, projection, etc. Although my current fears are that I struggle with using technology (macs, new websites, apps), my hope is that I will come out of this class confident in my skills and ability to utilize it to better my students.

Introduction to digital humanities from what I experienced from the first class session is pretty much what is in the title of the course. When the professors explained the course I was excited to hear about the mapping section of the course because I have a strong interest in geography. Learning the topics of public history and geography and others through the computer and other technology is unique because that’s not how it is usually done. My hopes for this class are to become more technologically sound when it comes to these programs we are going to use throughout the class. My fear for this class is we are going to stray away from topics with the rotation of teachers this often.  

From this course I would like to gain a deeper understanding of what is “digital humanities” and how to apply it to what I want to do in the future as well as gain a variety of skills that could help me be a more desirable person in the job market. Also I’m excited to play with computers and programs.