University of Maryland |
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Maryland Insitute For Technology In the Humanities |
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Project Coordinator
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Project Description MITH plays a pioneering role in developing advanced technological resources for revitalizing, reinventing, and expanding humanities research and education. Housed in McKeldin Library, the Institute serve both pre-college and college faculty with technical resources and a broad array of programs: training, fellowships, colloquia, polyseminars, conferences, curriculum development, and student mentoring. In collaboration with the Active Worlds Educational Universe project, MITH would like to create the MITH world. Based upon our grant proposal to the NEH (http://www.mithe.umd.edu/about/propsal.html), MITH imagined the use of a MOO to facilitate a variety of projects developing over the course of the next four years. The Active Worlds environment would greatly enhance our original vision, which includes: * The Virtual Auditorium, which would be used for special events, formal guest lectures, by speakers from around the world, and the demonstration of our Fellow's own work to a larger online audience. MITH fellows will each be obliged to give on virtual lecture during their tenure, forming the core of a series of virtual lectures that MITH will offer each year. * Virtual Classrooms, where faculty and students who are interested in the integration of technology and the humanities can meet for informal lectures, presentations, or open discussions. These rooms will be programmed in different configurations - informal discussion areas where speakers must queue up and only to or three are allowed to speak at once (but an unlimited number of others can listen), and one way "lecture halls" * Virtual Polyseminar, in conjunction with the MITH Polyseminar, and participated in by humanities faculty and students at U, 15 virtual participants from around the country will be selected through a competitive process to join the Polyseminar. The virtual participants will be asked each week to complete the assigned reading, post a position paper, and meet for two hours in the MOO with the other members of the Polyseminar. At the end of its term, each Polyseminar will mount a virtual Colloquium where interested parties from around the country can join the members of the seminar in a discussion of its findings. * A Teachers Lounge, where secondary school and university teachers from around the country who are interested in the integration of technology and the humanities will log-in for real-time live communication, posting assignments and curriculum ideas, queries to colleagues, meetings, or help from other teachers on the teaching of art history, foreign languages, history and literature. * Virtual Offices, where MITH Fellows can meet interested teachers, scholars, and students for discussion of issues of mutual interest. Each MITH Fellow will be obliged to hold at least 3 virtual office hours each week. *Virtual Spaces: online pedagogical or research "spaces" for exploratory learning, including navigating famous locations, real or imaginary, will be created. These worlds can easily be programmed as places for virtual "artifact handling" the examination and studying of everything from an Aeolian harm (complete with image and sound), to a poet's rare manuscript or rough-draft notebook, to a nineteenth-century "Claude glass" (a special curved mirror for viewing and sketching "picturesque" landscapes) - each teaching valuable historical and cultural lessons through interaction and questioning, an active engagement in the process of discovery. Currently in process are two projects that lead to the fulfillment of these goals. The Virtual Dickinson Homestead Team, a group of undergraduate computer science majors, is working with MITH in a collaborative effort o meld technical writing skills with technology development tasks. The group is beginning work on a digital reconstruction of Emily Dickinson's home - the Homestead. Martha Neil Smith, director of MITH and editor of the Dickinson Electronic Archives lead the team as they attempt to reproduce both the space and the life of a writer in the nineteenth - century. The virtual Homestead, when completed will be a tool for researches, students, and teachers from a variety of disciplines, including literature, history, art history and architecture. As an AWEDU participant, MITH will integrate the Homestead project, allowing for virtual field trips to the Dickinson home. Student assignments could include the construction of web sites dedicated to an area of interest, including nineteenth-century art, architecture, gardening, and society. Jo Paloetti, a MITH Spring 2000 Fellow, is interested in testing the potential of Active Worlds for exploring diversity and identity issues. For example, given an array of avatars and the ability to mask their real identities, how do people interact? What effect does this experience have on their attitudes towards others? She will be linking this to an existing course site based in Web CT, Diversity in American Culture. Currently, she imagines a section in the MITH Active World as a replica of a campus dining hall, in order to explore issues of integration and self-segregation. | ||
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