Rails Girls: Closing the Coding Gender Gap in Digital Humanities

By Tawnya Ravy

Hello GW English Grads! You may remember a few months ago a small contingent of GW Eng-Grads attending a weekend conference called ThatCamp (you can read about our adventures here) following our department’s first Digital Humanities graduate class (taught by Dr. Alex Huang). Well our Digital Humanities education continues with Rails Girls, a group that aims to give tools and a community to women who are interested in technology. We actually learned about the noble goals of Rails Girls (closing the coding gender gap) at ThatCamp in June. One of our questions at ThatCamp was “how can we learn how to code?” In addition to other resources (like Code Academy), Rails Girls was championed as an excellent opportunity to stretch our newbie skills with digital tools. We all applied for the Rails Girls event hosted at George Mason University on September 6-7. A few weeks after submitting our applications (basically consisting of information on our level of knowledge of coding), we received notice of acceptance to the event with instructions for setting up our computers in preparation for the event. The first night was simply a set-up party designed to help folks who wanted help setting up their laptops with the software, and to meet the organizers and other participants. The following day we began to code. Upon arriving in the research hall we were sorted to different tables named for different characters in Alice in Wonderland (in honor of the DH theme) where we met the others in our group and our table coaches. Right away we got a short tutorial on various simple commands and their meaning – we even learned our first coding joke: rm-fr (a command which strikes fear into the hearts of programmers). Then we were instructed to follow a set of exercises designed to teach us some basics called 100 Minutes of Ruby. For the next hour we had our coach chair-hopping to help us, soothe our initial frustration, and fill in the instructional gaps. Let me stress that many of us were complete newbies at all of this – I didn’t even know how to open a command line to start. By the end of the hour I understood some of the basic rules of this little universe, and only felt slightly overwhelmed. Then we switched to the Ruby guide for creating an app. This guide gave us line-by-line instructions on how to build an app that allowed us to open a twitter line, plot an address on a map, and much more (much of which I did not even get to by the end of the day). This is the part for me with the steepest learning curve. It was, however, very satisfying when it all worked the way it was supposed to. I was even able to fix a problem by myself after an hour of calling over my coach every few minutes. Finally we took a break for lunch which consisted of two amazing tacos from a food truck that was pulled up right to our building just for us. We all sat on the building steps, ate tacos, and talked about our Digital Humanities projects. After lunch we had a quick presentation on how web apps fit together in a Bentobox like model. The rest of the afternoon we had an option of either continuing with our apps and exploring the extra features or joining groups to discuss different digital tools for DH projects. For example, I joined the mapping tool table, but there were also tables for data-mining and collections. We discussed already established mapping tools like GoogleMaps, DIS, and Neatline, and then we engaged in a thought-exercise in how we would go about designing and building a map app of our own (for finding tacos appropriately enough). Soon enough it was time for the Rails Girls Reception at the campus inn bar. We all had “drink me” tickets for a free glass of wine or beer, and many of us stuck around to discuss our DH projects and coding ambitions. I met so many amazing women, had a wonderful learning experience, and came away with a great appreciation for programming. I fully intend on participating in another Rails Girls event and checking out Code Academy when I get a chance. Rails Girls also organizes Meet Up events and online forums to turn to for support and advice. Even if I never build an app from scratch, I can see how useful this instruction can be for me in developing and expanding my DH project. Do you have a favorite DH tool you wish you could manipulate? Wordpress? Omeka? Find out the kind of code they use and take advantage of these incredible opportunities to learn code and become a member of this vibrant community of techies.

Interested in exploring the digital humanities in your own scholarly work? Join us next at our inaugural GW Eng-Grad Digital Humanities Working Group on Wednesday September 18th 11:00am at The Corner Bakery. Hope to see you then!

Curating Your Online Presence

Post by Maia Gil'Adi

On March 4, 2013 Alex Huang, Associate Professor of English, Director of the Dean's Scholars in Shakespeare Program, and incoming director of graduate studies, gave a guest lecture titled, “Curating Your Online Presence” (you can see the full presentation here) and answered questions about how junior scholars can better shape and polish their image online, not only as students in a PhD program, but moving forward into the job market and in their future careers. In case you missed this wonderful event, here is a summary of the information and tips Alex provided:

Before you can begin curating your online presence:

1. Search for yourself online and gauge your online impact: Before one can start honing and molding an online presence, we must assess our presence online. Google yourself and see the places you are mentioned—see the impact of your online presence (digital footprint).
2. Keep everything up to date: Make sure that all online profiles (these include, but are not limited to: Academia.edu, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MLA Commons) are updated regularly. Decide your desired time commitment in maintaining your various profiles and monitor them regularly. Alex made very clear that less is more—having fewer pages in which one actively participates is better than having a vast array that are neglected or not update regularly.
3. Self-archive and share what you can: Make sure that your academic output is available for view.
4. Connect and interact online: Comment on blogs, tweet, Facebook with other academics, making your presence and opinion heard and available to other academics.

When creating and maintaining your digital presence, Alex recommends creating a consistent, clear and concise message as a scholar. By honing and maintaining your digital footprint (an active contribution to your profiles and interactions with others online), hopefully your digital shadow will grow and echo—those things that others post about you and your work will increase in visibility. Interestingly, Alex indicated the importance of creating a brief but comprehensive view of yourself as a scholar, specifying the importance of using different jargon for the multiple sites one is on (i.e.: LinkedIn is useful, Alex mentioned, but better for the private sector and academic jargon should probably not be used on it).

A key way to ensure that one has a wide-range of online impact is by identifying key platforms in which to share scholarly output (i.e.: articles, teaching resources, etc.), and redundantly share the same work in a variety of formats (i.e. MLA Commons, personal websites, Academia.edu, etc.). For me, one particularly revelatory and useful fact that Alex shared during this conversation was the advantage of posting accepted conference abstracts, conference papers, and seminar papers which you consider to be excellent on sites such as Academia.edu

In the case of full-length articles (as opposed to abstracts), he did mention that once an article is being peer reviewed and considered for publication, you should take down the article from these websites. The abstract itself can stay up.

Other key bits of information:

• Twitter is a useful but an ephemeral medium because of its brevity—Alex did not find this online activity to be the best for scholarship dissemination, but did mention its use for finding CFP’s, new texts, and connecting with other scholars/writers. 
• It has become the responsibility of the experts to disseminate their own information.
• GWU provides students and faculty with the space through which to create a personal website (http://home.gwu.edu/~GWid) and can be set up by visiting: http://helpdesk.gwu.edu/manuals/webpages/started.acad.html
• Alex did mention, however, that this is not the most advanced place for a personal website, but is useful (and free!) for junior scholars before they go on the market
• Facebook is a great place through which to connect with other scholars and place people into groups—Make sure that (acceptable) information is open to the public, but use the security/privacy settings on the site to ensure that certain information (i.e.: pictures, posts) that should remain private (for personal friends eyes only) remain private.

Alex Huang’s comprehensive presentation was a great how-to for junior scholars in creating, maintaining, and expanding their online presence in productive ways in order to make their work more visible. Make sure to read through Alex’s presentation, and feel free to contact me with any questions: mgiladi@gwu.edu

Maia Gil'Adi is a second year PhD student of American Literature and Culture in the English Department of the George Washington University.

Part 3: Using Technology in the Classroom

Part three of our online content from the Teaching Seminar focuses on how we use technology in the classroom and for teaching. We focused primarily on how English teachers can use this technology, and we discussed a range from basics about Blackboard to incorporating digital humanities.

1) Blackboard - Many of us wish that we had an alternative to blackboard because it is a challenging system to use effectively for teaching. However most students expect teachers to rely on this tool to some degree. Check with your school's IT department and see if they are offering workshops on Blackboard. They can teach you tricks and tools that would be hard to learn on your own. If you intend to use blackboard in your course, make sure your students are, in fact, familiar with the system. It may be useful to set an initial discussion board assignment or a class writing submission in the first week so that you can be sure they know how to use these blackboard functions. Familiarize yourself with the Grade Center! This can be one of the most helpful tools in blackboard because it gives your students a clear idea of their current grade all term and helps clear up grade confusion. Use the Course Documents tab to post all handouts and assignment sheets that you give out in class. This allows students to find copies of them if they lose the hard copy, and takes away the excuse if they miss a class. Finally, try out the External Links function - this can be extremely useful if you want to keep links to the Writing Center or Library on your campus, or if you want students to view a youtube video or author website before class.

2) Dropbox - many of you may be familiar with this tool, but let us reiterate how amazing this file system is. Dropbox allows you to store files on a server that you can access on any computer. You can also download the "box" on any computer that you use regularly so that saving and accessing files is as easy as pie. No more keeping track of a USB drive or emailing files to yourself. It also allows you to share files easily with your colleagues or students. Watch the tutorial here and sign up asap!

3) Powerpoint or Prezi - We often wonder if using powerpoint presentations would be useful for lectures, especially for literary lectures. Can they really be useful in this context? Well an interview with one of our speakers made me a believer. This faculty member uses powerpoint presentations not only to show his class useful images such as maps and historical pictures, but also to perform in-class close reading. In one example he showed me how he highlighted a passage in the powerpoint and explained the way in which his class unpacked the quote. For certain parts of the quote, he was able to flip to another slide to contextualize the word, listen to a sound clip, or see a revision of that quotation. In this, he avoids the problem of lecturing with slides and an inattentive audience. The way he uses powerpoint encourages his students to engage. We also want to mention Prezi here because it is an alternative to Microsoft's powerpoint. It is a unique program to construct presentations, and you can open a free educator's account with them. So check it out here.

4) Alternative Course Management System - You may feel that Blackboard is simply too limiting to manage your course (many of us are in agreement). So one of our speakers addressed an alternative system which allows him to use technology creatively in his classes. This particular system relies on a website called Wordpress (one of many blog/web page options, but this does not require that you know html). Setting up the course here allows him to do many of the traditional Blackboard functions such as post documents (which he grabs from his dropbox files), post external links, and moderate a discussion forum. It also allows him to use technology creatively for his course. For example, he blogs after each class what the main discussion points were, any questions for future readings, or any announcements such as changes to the syllabus or assignment deadlines. He also utilizes the blog function as a writing assignment tool - requiring his students to post in-depth blog posts (including embedded art or music and close reading), and for students to respond to each other's posts. Even though this takes a bit of work to build and maintain, it seemed to be a great alternative to blackboard course management. Check out the Chronicle for articles which detail ACM systems and how to start one of your own.

5) Social Media - We also discussed how various social media can be employed as a teaching tool. Twitter, for example, has been featured on The Chronicle as a potential tool for teaching (click here for an example of this), although it is debatable how handy it actually is. We also discussed Facebook as an option. One of our speakers uses Facebook a few ways to engage students - creating a group for the class which allows the professor to post class updates or links. Students can also create fan pages for certain authors, allowing for some creative research opportunities. Using this, as our speaker pointed out, integrates academic work into their normal lives (social networks).

6) Digital Humanities - We also briefly discussed the growing field of Digital Humanities. While this subject is too involved for this small blog post, I do want to mention the specific focus of digital archives coming out of the field of Digital Humanities. Our speaker mentioned the Mark Twain Project as a great example of how digital humanities can be useful not only in research, but in teaching text. Another example is the Global Shakespeares Project which provides open access to film adaptations of Shakespeare, as well as an opportunity to see how scholarship can develop in a Digital Humanities context. If you are interested in exploring this further, check out this text The Youtube Reader recommended by our speaker.

7) Online Presence - As professionals, we need to be aware of what is out there online for our students, colleagues, and prospective bosses to see. I regularly google myself just to see what comes up. However, it is not enough to prevent embarrassing things from ending up on the internet. One of our speakers suggested that we take some time to cultivate our online presence as part of being a professional. Join LinkedIn or Academia.edu (a professional social network for those in Academia) to collate your professional information. Create your own webpage and purchase the URL (for an example, click here).

This concludes the information from our Fall 2011 Teaching Seminar. We are contemplating a spring Teaching Seminar as well, and we want your ideas and feedback! Was there a topic not covered in this series that you would like to see in the Spring? Please email us or leave a comment below. Also, please take a minute "Like" us on Facebook to see upcoming events, advice, and links. Finally, remember that you can now subscribe to this blog via email using the bar at the right (if you have trouble with this, delete your cookies and try multiple browsers until it works). Thanks, and stay tuned for upcoming Spring professional development events, including EGSA's Symposium (February 10 - see our Facebook page for details).

Teaching Resources

Here is part of our online content from the recent Teaching Seminar. If you have additional resources, please share them with us! Also, take a minute to follow this blog, or subscribe via email - we have many more exciting posts planned.

Teaching Resources

Learn about our school's Writing in the Discipline Program, and use the new WID Board to find helpful writing resources:

GW WID Program - http://widstudio.wordpress.com/

WID Board (find handouts, advice, hot topics in teaching writing) – http://widboard.proboards.com/index.cgi?

Consider encouraging your students to use these campus resources:

GW Writing Center - http://www.gwu.edu/~gwriter/

GW Gelman Library - http://www.library.gwu.edu/

General Writing Resources for Students and Faculty:

List of Writing Resources for Students - http://www.nvcc.edu/annandale/lrc/writing/links.htm

Dr. McClennen’s Close Reading Guide - http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/s/a/sam50/closeread.htm

Even if you do not teach an online class, this site can offer guidance in using course management and incorporating technology into your curriculum: 

Online Teaching Resource - http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm

Good Resources to list on your syllabus:

MLA Resources – www.mla.org and http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/ and http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/DocMLA.html

Teaching Students with Disabilities - http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/disabilities.html

GW Disability Support Services (Faculty Resources) - http://gwired.gwu.edu/dss/faculty/

GW English Department (Undergraduate Information) - http://departments.columbian.gwu.edu/english/undergraduate

Explore the possibilities for digital humanities, using technology for teaching, and alternative course management systems:

Digital Humanities - http://www.judaica-europeana.eu/digital-resources.html and www.digitalhumanities.org

Dr. Alex Huang Projects and Resources - http://alexanderhuang.org/

Dr. Jonathan Hsy's Course Management Blog: http://eng3420.wordpress.com 

For ideas, developments, and issues in pedagogy, subscribe to news updates at the Chronicle: 

The Chronicle of Higher Education – http://chronicle.com/section/Home/5