Final Project Idea (Anders): For my final project, I would like to build an interactive website for my digital dissertation research using Scalar. My dissertation research in cultural anthropology examines the production of masculinity and the phenomenon of “seduction communities,” including dating coaches and their followers, who train each other in interpersonal skills and ‘charm’ to attract women. This website would act as an interactive online ‘museum’, and a public portal through which to present some digital data (as well as results of my dissertation research), and to connect my work with audiences beyond academia. In many cases, this digital data takes the form of pedagogical media produced by dating coaches and designed to inculcate particular understandings of self and other. Using Scalar (http://scalar.usc.edu/scalar/), this project will invite readers to navigate open-ended, inverted, and non-linear pathways through multimedia archives of data including textual, video, and audio-based media gathered over the course of my research. Specifically, the site would be designed to allow readers to explore connections among—and discover new relations within—ethnographic data (text, video, audio and photography) that will be annotated, tagged, indexed, and deposited in the website. Text-based captions can accompany the multimedia ‘objects’ to explain, contextualize, or critique the objects. By allowing users to create divergent pathways through the archived materials, interact with and comment on pages, as well as to connect and dialogue with other users, the site will hopefully create an online safe space for community building around progressive and inclusive gender identities.
Wow! Scalar seems like an incredibly useful tool… I wonder if it would be a useful way to organize some of the resources we’ve put together at the CUNY-NYSIEB project… thanks for posting!
Anders- have you started working in scalar? I’m really curious about the platform and how you make the many bells and whistles legible. Looking forward to what you come up with! Also- great talk yesterday! I look forward to seeing the rest.
Hi, for my project I am thinking of a academic/professional hub for teaching residents, teachers in the induction phase of teacher education, and novice teachers. So often students in teacher education programs as well as new teachers in the classroom feel alone and overwhelmed. This hub will be a place where residents can read or post article, share lesson plans and content information. They can post job opportunities, blog about experiences and post job opportunities.
I originally started using Google + as a clasroom hub and then expanded the community to include former students that were either still in Induction or novice teachers. I am thinking of perhaps using perhaps Commons in a Box but am open to suggestions for other platforms.