Comments on: All That Camp http://www.robmacdougall.org/blog/2008/06/all-that-camp/ Rob MacDougall Dot Org Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:00:38 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Playful Historical Thinking http://www.robmacdougall.org/blog/2008/06/all-that-camp/#comment-893 Playful Historical Thinking Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:35:04 +0000 http://www.robmacdougall.org/index.php/2008/06/all-that-camp/#comment-893 [...] new tools than at identifying crucial or compelling problems to apply them to. (At least, that was my sense at the first THATCamp, in 2008.) Rather than simply shoehorning educational content into existing games or game genres, [...] [...] new tools than at identifying crucial or compelling problems to apply them to. (At least, that was my sense at the first THATCamp, in 2008.) Rather than simply shoehorning educational content into existing games or game genres, [...]

]]> By: Tom Scheinfeldt http://www.robmacdougall.org/blog/2008/06/all-that-camp/#comment-892 Tom Scheinfeldt Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:46:13 +0000 http://www.robmacdougall.org/index.php/2008/06/all-that-camp/#comment-892 Rob-- Great post. I don't think we were in a single session together, so it's great to get a round up of everything I missed. I also think your "more tools than problems" observation is right on. Part of the problem there is funding. It's a lot easier to get money to build some cool piece of software than to frame an issue. Hopefully that is changing somewhat. The main aim of our new NEH-funded text mining project, for instance, is to bring historians together in focus groups to ascertain what, if anything, they would do with text mining tools if they had them. Indeed, it's to get non-digital historians asking why, in the first place, they might need text mining tools at all. Only when we have some answers to those questions will we start building some (modest) tools. I think many areas of digital humanities could benefit from a similar, take-a-step-back approach. Anyway, awesome to see you at THATCamp. Rob–

Great post. I don’t think we were in a single session together, so it’s great to get a round up of everything I missed. I also think your “more tools than problems” observation is right on. Part of the problem there is funding. It’s a lot easier to get money to build some cool piece of software than to frame an issue. Hopefully that is changing somewhat. The main aim of our new NEH-funded text mining project, for instance, is to bring historians together in focus groups to ascertain what, if anything, they would do with text mining tools if they had them. Indeed, it’s to get non-digital historians asking why, in the first place, they might need text mining tools at all. Only when we have some answers to those questions will we start building some (modest) tools. I think many areas of digital humanities could benefit from a similar, take-a-step-back approach.

Anyway, awesome to see you at THATCamp.

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