This session reported on a strategic initiative at Columbia University launched in 2007 to build bridges between the library and educational technologies. The initiative aimed to improve services and respond to opportunities. Students are encouraged to remix, annotate and enrich digital collections for the benefit of future students and the public. Through a variety of projects the library and educational technology unit are working together to provide students with rich learning experiences.
In one case, students used archived artefacts which hadn't been seen or used for many years to create digital artefacts by taking photographs, scanning old papers etc., giving students the opportunity to experience primary research artefacts. However, this does raise issues about the conservation of the actual artefacts.
Another project gave students the opportunity to collect video and audio interviews to create a 75th anniversary documentary film for the Apollo Theatre. The footage was then put into a digital archive in the library.
A third project enabled students to annotate digital images of Tibetan objects with object biographies. Each student took ownership of one digital image and explored in great detail the history of the object in order to create a biography. This involved collaboration between librarians and educational technologists. The library had the subject knowledge, and the educational technologist had technical capability to create digital biographies.
Details of all the projects can be found at: http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/digitalbridges/
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
sounds like an interesting set of projects. with the first case, you mention that there are issues raised about conservation of original artefacts - can you go into a bit more detail, eg, is it to do with the handling/photographing of the originals, or about what happens to them afterwards?
ReplyDeletealso, was there any indication of whether the digital artefacts are re-used/built upon by later cohorts of students - or whether they're preserved somewhere as they are, gathering digital dust until someone looks at them in future?
I was a bit unclear about this. From what I understood, the artefacts were being digitized to make them more accessible to future cohorts but it seemed that the excercise would perhaps be repeated as it was such a valuable learning experience for students to be able to handle real artefacts. It was the handling of the artefacts that raised the conservation issues though, so perhaps it was just a one off and future cohorts will get to use the digital version. The artefacts are (and have been for a long time) in storage in the university library but the students have helped to provide an acurate list of all the items.
ReplyDeleteSome similarities here with a couple of other sessions:
ReplyDelete1) "Print" and 2) Mix, Mash, and Share: Empowering 21st-Century Research with Maps
The future is about getting data rich resoruces to students for authentic learning.