Natacha’s Project Idea

I  am interested in providing  French Language lovers of all levels in general and my students, in particular, a consistent and well-sustained Language and literature Website and app in which they could find appropriate material to broaden their horizons. More specifically, my aim is to bring my undergraduate students from various disciplines- that still take French language core courses just as university requirements- close to other aspects of French /francophone culture and civilization that are not listed in the course outline imposed by the curriculum to non-tenure-track faculties like me.

The postulate which underpins the idea of creating other website and app to the numerous existing ones lays on the discovery that too many of them are a little bit just a repetition of the topics covered in the curriculum. I want something that would take into consideration the website’s visitor or app’s purchaser’s need of evasion from standardized topic and issues so frequent in various language websites.

However, I am still in the domain of ideas and I have never built an independent website or app – I don’t consider the site I created last Fall in Cuny Academic Commons as neither an independent nor a well-constructed site: https://bpawa.commons.gc.cuny.edu/.  Thus, I  need to acquire in this course technical skills to built both a challenging  French-language website and an app.

Intro Project Ideas

I’d like to build a tool that would help students learn historical and cultural references in order to strengthen humanities undergrad liberal arts education. Many Freshman don’t know the most basic references of historical figures, myths, objects, monuments, literary references, cultural moments, etc. I see this as an interactive platform, perhaps in a blog/vlog form or in a technology format that I’m not yet versed in and/or that I might design and build.

One of the models for this idea is the 2010 BBC’s Radio 4 series, a “History of the World in 100 Objects” and the 2017-18 MoMA exhibition titled “Is Fashion Modern?” of the 100 most influential fashion items.

I see this tool being of use and value, through this example: I was teaching Media Studies 101 one day and the subject of Iago came up. The class stared at me blankly—no one knew who Iago was, shockingly. So rather than “lecture” them on Shakespeare I asked them to name any other antagonist or “villain” they knew. Silence. So I took it down another notch and asked them to identify an “evil” character or a “nemesis”. Still nothing. Enter the tool I’m envisioning which could be accessed and searched at that moment to bring up Iago, and then other references. Iago could be made to “ping” Shakespeare, Othello, the year/s Othello was written, actors who’ve portrayed Iago on stage and on film, and additional cross references.

I’m interested in learning and exploring Twine for this project idea, and recently, Omeka was recommended to me for it also.

These are my initial thoughts and conceptions, and I look forward to exploring them toward building this.

Carolyn A. McDonough Bio

Hi all, I’m Carolyn and I’m a non-matric hoping to become a matric in Fall 2018, applying to the MA in DH program at the GC. I hold my BA in Renaissance Studies and my first MA in Media Studies. My areas of focus within these two fields of study are history, Italian, Cultural Studies and all-things-media. I really like how Digital Humanities combines my two fields of study and the ITP Certificate Program is affirming this while also allowing me to explore many new ideas in combining the two. I’m very interested in critical thinking and thinking critically. I’ve adjuncted with a lecture appointment in Media Studies 101 “Media and Everyday Life” which was a Tier-1 critical thinking requirement for the Freshman I taught.

I’ve also worked as a digital media producer/editor for my own ventures and on the staff of major digital portals and international periodicals. I was awarded a post-grad Fellowship to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy, and more recently, a scholarship from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) for the online course “CATALYSTS: Artists Creating with Video, Sound and Time” through which I launched my blog/vlog cultureartmedia.com.

My avocation is music, voice, and vocal recording. I’m a third generation performing artist with performance credits that include national voice over campaigns, and I also teach voice in my “spare time” primarily to my daughter who is an accomplished singer/actor, but also to other up-and-coming young performers. I feel an equal passion for both my academic work and my creative/artistic work. I met my husband in Italy at the PGC where he was a fellow “fellow” and together with our daughter, we’ve shared many adventures in the arts over the years.

I’m really enjoying the ITP Certificate Program classes, fellow students, professors, labs and all that I’m learning through all of these.

Kahdeidra’s Project Idea

I am interested in the theoretical and applied connections between coding, game design, and literacy. In particular, I would like to design online games and apps that support critical linguistic awareness among African American youth in the United States. Linguistic diversity is often used as synonym for multilingualism, where variation within named languages is omitted. Linguists contend that the differences between languages and dialects are politically rather than scientifically determined. While the shifts from Black English to African American Vernacular to African American Language signify important ideological perspectives, naming itself does not instigate attitudinal and structural changes.

The default focus on named languages has tangible effects on education policy as the diversity of English varieties within speech communities is ignored. There are neither critical linguistic awareness professional development for teachers nor pedagogical interventions for speakers of regional and world English varieties. Because of this void, I would like to create interactive technology that uses game design to teach youth what I have termed comparative American linguistic and cultural awareness (CALACA). Calaca is a Mexican and Central American term for ‘skeleton’ or ‘death.’ As skeletons represent the ancestors, CALACA builds respect for the multicultural and multilingual inheritance of the Americas. In addition, CALACA also promotes religious pluralism by centering indigenous and African traditional religions.

Kahdeidra Martin Bio

My name is Kahdeidra Monét Martin. I am a writer, self-publisher, educator, and researcher with more than 13 years of working in education. I have worked as a tutor, club facilitator, after school site coordinator, community center assistant director, special education teacher, and lecturer of developmental English and composition.

My lifelong interests are in language, literacy, sociolinguistics, pedagogy, and Africana studies. I have a B.A. in African and African American Studies and an M.S.Ed. in Teaching Urban Adolescents with Disabilities. Currently, I am a Ph.D. student in Urban Education at the Graduate Center. In addition, I am a research assistant for Professor Melissa Schieble at Hunter College on a project examining critical conversations, and I am a Mellon Humanities Alliance Graduate Teaching Fellow at LaGuardia Community College.

My writing is divinely inspired, ancestrally edifying, and culturally conscious. I am outside of the mainstream, aligned with the Universe. I teach from my spirit, driven by the ethos of unity and justice to fan the flame of inquiry within all students. What inspires them to be their highest selves?

Project Idea Jing Zhao

My project idea is based on my data project of Digital Praxis 1. Because we will work on group projects in Digital Praxis 2, I need to discontinue my project for digital praxis 1. So I think maybe I could continue with that project in ITP Core 2. The project is a text analysis of all the issues of an academic journal titled Language Teaching and Technology. My goal for this project is to find out how technology is used in second language classrooms. I have done some preliminary work for this project. I used voyant tools to analyze a txt file that contains the issues of this journal published in the recent four years (this journal has been published since 10 years ago and I converted all the pdf files of the issues of this journal into a text file but somehow voyant tools could not analyze it. Therefore I used the issues of 4 years of this journal as a sample for analysis). I obtained a list of word frequencies of the text file, and then picked out the words that denote a certain technology, for example, wiki. I then had a list of frequencies of all the technology words  in this txt file. I put all the words on this list into different categories and ranked their frequencies. My next step is to study a certain technology and see how it is used in second language classrooms. For example, I found that wiki is the most frequent word on the list, so I think I can study how it is used through text analysis of the academic papers that have the word “wiki”. However, I don’t really know how to study the use of a technology through text analysis.

Jing Zhao Bio

Hi I am Jing Zhao, a MALS student. My track is digital humanities. This is my second semester in this program. I am a Chinese language teacher at Hunter College and a freelance Chinese-English translator/interpreter. I studied teaching Chinese as a second language and Chinese linguistics back in China. I came to New York in 2013 after teaching Chinese for a very short period of time in South Carolina. I studied at City College and got my master’s degree in the Study of the Americas and when I graduated, I came to NYU and studied Chinese-English translation. I love sleeping when I am not studying or working. My dream is to get my PhD and teach Chinese at higher education instituions like Hunter. I also hope that I can be happier and more relaxed while living a hectic life because I had been suffering from anxiety issues for a long time. I hope some day I can find the perfect balance  between life and work.

Assignments for 2/5

In addition to the reading for next week (2/5), please:

  • Write a blog post with your introductory project ideas (don’t forget to categorize)
  • Email Maura and Luke (at least) 2 dates you’d like to sign up as class motivator by Fri, Feb 2
  • Write a brief bio for posting on the People page of our course site (don’t forget to categorize)
  • Make sure you’re part of the course on the Commons (join on our Group page): https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/groups/itp-core-2-spring-2018/