Unbetitelt

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Landeskunde Entdecken Online: Technology to Present History and Art to the Public

Landeskunde Entdecken oneline: 

http://www.leo-bw.de/web/guest/home

The state in Germany where I lived last year has a website set up by the Landeskundliches System Baden-Württemberg, a centre for regional studies of the state of Baden-Württemberg. Landeskunde Entdecken Online (LEO: meaning local studies discovery(exploration online) presents artifacts and other primary source documents with accompanying metadata descriptions and general information about the item. I think that this resource is REALLY cool and it is very much a virtual museum, allowing -say- scholars in Guelph- to check out what is in storage and on display in this region of Germany without actually going there.

There are also reports and videos about Humanities projects going on concerning the history of Baden-Württemberg, scholars involved, and particular displays. The creepy lady in the centre gives you a rough overview on how to use this interface and what kinds of documents are available to look at. 

I think it is particularly interesting how different interfacs in digital humanities research change their set up and presentation depending on who the target audience is in the area. A resource such as Orlando is strictly documents, and one needs to pay to have access to it: it also requires a great deal of skill and how-know to navigate through it effectively. Without surprise, I would imagine very few outside of academia would have a private subscription to a system such as Orlando. However, LEO (Landeskunde Entdecken Online) is an interface for the general public and along with all the images, videos, and flashy interface, has a digital tourguide to show you around. 

What are your thoughts on this pretty neat project? 

[nicksdigitalrepository-blog]

Using Digital Technologies in Archaeology

Hey Internetpeople!

I wanted to bring to your attention a real cool (and famous) application of digital technologies to explore subjects in the humanities: in this case archaeology. Digitial Satellite mapping technologies such as Google Earth have made visible long-forgotten ruins, which would be of great interest to archaeologists but are invisible on the ground, or even from an airplane only so high about the surface of Earth.

Using Google Earth, the burried foundations of ancient Egyptian pyramids have been made visible as well as another project (using radar), in which an archaeologist used Google Earth to map out the streets of an unexcavated ancient Egyptian city. I think this is mind boggling! Using technologies in space to find what lies underneath the earth's surface: saving money and time which guess work when it comes to finding archaeological sites and conducting survey work based on the composition of the soil and how ancient structures changed the soil structure. 

How digital technologies further advance the humanities!

Google Earth Pyramids found: http://gizmodo.com/5934205/lost-egyptian-pyramids-appear-on-google-earth

Radar finding ancient Egyptian City: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10367930

[nicksdigitalrepository-blog]

Skype Communication Project

Hey everyone!

On my spare time, I am using facebook to connect my friends from the Guelph Muslim Students' Association with my young Muslim friends at das Zentrum für islamische Theologie an der Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany where I studied in 2012. I thought it would be a cool idea for my friends on both continents to connect with one another, and ask each other questions about their experiences as young Muslims in the western world, juggling between dual (or sometimes tripple+) identities, expectations from both their families' and their countries' cultural norms, and their own questions of curiosity about Muslims in another part of the world. I noticed in both Canada and Germany, as well as all across the world, the internet has become such an important medium for young Muslims to understand their world, connect with eachother, foster debate, create their own music and other forms of expression, and to keep their faith alive but bring it new, personalised meaning to themselves as the first generation of the 21st Century. 

I have so far posted an inquiry on the facebook group in Germany, and there has been much excitement for it. I still need to find a few minutes as post something to the Muslim Students' Association facebook page for those friends of mine in Guelph. I cannot wait to see how it all transpires, and which languages will be used to communication, and which mediums aside from skype or facebook. For the English-to-German communication barriers, I am luckily fluent in both languages and can act as a translator, but I also am excited to see those students with Farsi or Arabic as their first languages communicate, as well as those who are from Turkey or Bosnia and other larger ethnicites which are represented in both cities. 

Do you have any questions or comments or suggestions as to what I could add or think about??

[nicksdigitalrepository-blog]

Hey Everyone! As my first post for my blog regarding Digital Humanities, I thought it would be appropriate to post for you the link to a real neat documentary. It is more of an animated lecture from an anthro professor in the US who had his students create youtube accounts, and along with analysing trends of videos which took off and became internet sensations, his students also helped him understand the phenomena of vloging and how creating videos allows people to converse with one another over time and space... as well as with themselves, as it provides an interesting platform for them to analyse their own emotions and experiences. I would love to read any of your thoughts regarding it!!