PITF Showcase

Three Harvard humanities course Web sites were presented by Presidential Instructional Technology Fellows (PITFs) at the Digital Humanities and Innovative Computing PITF Showcase event on Thursday, Nov. 8. Each presentation included a description of the course and a demonstration of selected features on the course site.

Note: the course site links below require a HUID/PIN for access.

Humanities 27: Travel and Transformation in the Early 17th Century
http://my.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k16254
Some highlighted features of the course Web site included a clickable ship tour, integrated You Tube video clips, interviews with faculty and lecturers, interactive timelines, Google Maps and Google Earth modules, and a hyperlinked syllabus. A good overview of Stephen Greenblatt’s course site is featured in a recent Chronicle for Higher Education article: http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i09/09a00103.htm

Literature and Arts B-27: Majesty and Mythology in African American Art
http://my.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k17048
The PITFs working on this project demonstrated You Tube clips of African dance and culture, PowerPoint lectures uploaded to the site, digitized images of Peabody Museum objects, documentary and feature film clips, and PDFs/JSTOR links to course readings.

Literature and Arts B-85: American Musicals and American Culture
http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/2449
The student illustrated an impressive Flash-generated “flippable” book made from a theatrical program discovered in the Harvard Theater Collection. He also mentioned that the course site contained a repository for JTOR links, as well as audio and video clips.

Discussion following the presentations touched upon topics such as making the course materials available to students beyond Harvard, questions of copyright and fair use, using the course sites for in-class teaching, and how to assess guided vs. exploratory browsing.

Overall, a wonderful demonstration of how some of the latest technologies are currently being integrated into Humanities course Web sites at Harvard!