Going Back to My Roots.. aka. High School

Over the summer, the cohort talked about the idea that the digital humanities community thrives off of collective learning. As we have mentioned before, digital scholars learn from one another. One way I can expand my digital humanities community of practice is by slowly introducing my friends, teachers, and professors to digital scholarship.

After learning about digital humanities over the summer, I decided to contact my high school about what I have learned. I wrote to the principal and president that

“I would like to give a presentation that explains what digital humanities is and discuss the importance of digital scholarship. I would also like to have an open discussion on how digital humanities can play an integral part of teaching the humanities and how digital tools can be used in a classroom setting.”

I was able to meet with the principal of academic advising and present a case for digital humanities.

I was able to give examples of digital projects and tools as well as propose ways these tools could be implemented in the classroom. Because I was presenting this knowledge to the high school I attended, I was able to make digital project suggestions based off of previous projects teachers have assigned me. For example, one history teacher always has her students do these presidential outlines. I suggested an idea that she could use Timeline JS to create a timeline of the US presidents. Each president could have their own individual Timeline to document their time in office.

Overall, I think the meeting went well. The principle of academic advising asked me to send him all the digital links that I had shown him. One fear I had coming into the meeting was the idea that he was going to dismiss the idea of digital humanities altogether. Although I only had time to give him a short definition of digital humanities, he was very much interested and enthusiastic about using digital tools in the classroom. He also said that he was going to schedule a meeting with the faculty to talk about using these tools and asked if I could possibly come back to speak with the faculty about my experience with digital humanities.

One reason why I decided to go back to my high school and talk about digital humanities is because I think it is important to start introducing digital humanities to a high school audience. As we talked about before, DH is not just for academic scholars but rather for anyone who is interested in the field. If we are able to introduce DH at the high school level; the idea of digital humanities would not be so foreign when entering college. Digital humanities may also be seen as a more legitimate tool if students are getting exposed to DH by their teachers at a younger age.

In addition to my high school, I was also able to advertise for digital humanities in my 300 methods class. One of the first assignments we had to do was create a picture timeline of US history. Me being thinking in DH terms, I decided to create a timeline using Timeline JS. When the timeline was presented to the class, the professor noted how he liked to tool but also saw the disadvantages of using Timeline JS. Unfortunately, we ran out of time and were not able to talk about the advantages and disadvantage of using digital tools. But I might visit his office hours to discuss what he thinks are the advantages and disadvantages to using digital tools.

I find that I have become a huge advocate already for digital humanities. I seem to inadvertently advertise DH both inside and outside the classroom… I guess I am a digital humanist… I will be sure to keep you updated on how things go with my professor and my high school.

-Best Wishes,

Keira