Hello everyone! My name is Anders. I’m a PhD candidate in the anthropology program here at the GC, and I’ll be auditing the ITP Core 2 course this semester. My dissertation research examines masculinity and the phenomenon of “seduction communities,” communities of men including dating coaches and their followers who train each other in social skills to attract women.

Although my research is primarily ethnographic (involving participant observation at training seminars, community meetings, and bootcamps), I’ve become increasingly interested in the capabilities that digital research methods allow for gathering and analyzing data in other formats. I’ve been swimming around in the DH community at the GC for a couple of years now, and from a research perspective I’m specifically interested in natural language processing and network mapping; including things like text-mining and topic modeling the semantic contents of ebooks (of which there are hundreds and hundreds), and also mapping textual features and network relationships among users of anonymous online chatroom forums.

This digital interest has led me to become more interested in interactive technology and pedagogy, both because of the possibilities that technology has in and out of classroom settings and teaching relationships, and also because it relates to the kinds of concerns that my research subjects have about the process of learning, digital social networking, and fashioning identities through digital media that transcends geographical boundaries.

So happy to meet you all (again for most of you)! This is my hands-on semester where all of my courses involve getting my hands dirty with some type of tech/code stuff, and I already feel emotionally safer knowing that I will be around you folks while I suffer.

I have two things in mind right now. Subject-wise, my main interest is the history of internet and its relation with the shaping of contemporary society, and how to look at various dimensions including but not limited to education/knowledge production, gender, governmental policies, disasters, etc. while navigating both in the U.S. and South Korean context.

The other thing I am pondering about is the increasingly popular field of machine learning, and my relation with that field. While I do sense industrial hype being built around it, the increasing access to the computational methods seems to offer some educational benefit and I would be happy to think about and work on ways to harness it in humanities research. I’ll try to elaborate on this in another post.

Hello all! My name is Sara Vogel, I am a first year doctoral student in the GC’s Urban Education program. I am interested in researching the intersection of computer science education, digital literacy, and bilingual education at the K-12 level. These interests were shaped by my work as a teacher in the US and abroad, and as an educator with young people in after school and out-of-school time programs where the students worked on developing their own video games and multimedia projects. I am excited to dive in to ITP Core 2 and to put all of the theory from last semester to work! You can find me at http://cuny.is/saraevogel

Some ideas I have been kicking around for the independent study project include:
– Fleshing out a network diagram visualization of the K-12 computer science educators network in NYC as the CS4All initiative gets off the ground (maybe using data from those who coordinate the network).
– Creating online professional development modules for teachers of emergent bilingual students — using some of the content I’ve worked on with the CUNY-NYS Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals project.
– A tool which in some way helps me analyze the multimedia/digital practices of youth whose languages I don’t speak.

Hello Fellow Core II People,

I was lucky enough to meet many of you last semester as a student in Core I, but would like to introduce myself regardless. I’m a second-year student in the Educational Psychology program here at the Graduate Center. This semester I’m excited to be working alongside all of you and learning different skills during labs. My interests are learning, memory, executive functions, games and collaboration.