Posted in Archaeology & Material Culture, Courses, Cyprus, Digital History, iPads on June 27, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
As I noted in an earlier post, Dr. Sam Fee of Washington and Jefferson College designed an iPad app for use in the work of the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project in Larnaca, Cyprus. Over the next two weeks, I will be reporting on our use of the app as well as finishing my series of posts on how we used iPads in Cyprus.
You can read Dr. Fee’s latest posts on the “PKapp” at the 2012 Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project blog:
More soon on our experiences with the iPads.
Posted in Uncategorized on June 13, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
HNN is seeking dedicated interns who have a passion for history, politics, and new media. We are the only website around wholly devoted to the task of putting current events into historical perspective every day, but we can’t do it without the valued contributions of our intern staff, who have the rare privilege of expanding their journalistic and new media skills along with their historical knowledge!
We’re looking for students and recent graduates who are self-starters and capable of making good judgments without close supervision. Excellent writing skills are mandatory; excellent writing skills for a general as opposed to academic audience are preferred, but not required. Experience with copyediting, copywriting, proofreading, Internet marketing, social media, SEO, graphic design are definite pluses, but not pre-requisites — you’ll be learning these skills on the job!
If you have any experience with HTML coding, content management systems, or blogging, please be sure to mention it in your cover letter!
Here are the basic facts: Internships are for a minimum term of two quarters. You should expect to put in 10+ hours a week. INTERNS DO NOT HAVE TO WORK AT HNN’S OFFICES, though interns located in the Twin Cities area are encouraged to work at HNN’s office in downtown Minneapolis. Interns will communicate with the editor(s) through e-mail, Skype, and the telephone. Basically, if you have access to the Internet, you can be an intern at HNN!
All internships are unpaid, but class credit can be arranged.
Click here to read about intern responsibilities.
As you’ll see, this is not a make-work job. You’ll do real work; nothing Mickey Mouse.
If you are interested in applying for an internship please send your resume to the editor, David Walsh. BE SURE TO INCLUDE THE INTERNSHIP YOU wish to apply for.
Breaking News Intern
Breaking News interns are responsible for updating the Breaking News and Historians in the News sections of HNN by posting excerpts of news stories relating to history and historians. This position requires a great deal of Web surfing and reading news stories, good judgment over what stories are appropriate for inclusion on HNN, what excerpt length is appropriate, which stories should be highlighted, and whether or not stories should be retitled. Interns will develop headline writing skills and a familiarity with modern web design and content aggregation. Click here for further guidelines.
Roundup Intern
Roundup interns are responsible for updating the various Roundup departments on HNN, where we post excerpts from historically-informed commentary from around the web by both historians, other academics, journalists, and even politicians. This position requires a great deal of Web surfing and reading, especially of op-ed pages and opinion magazines, good judgment about whether an article is appropriate for excerpt, what excerpt length is appropriate, etc. Interns will develop critical reading skills and a familiarity with modern web design and content aggregation. Click here for further guidelines.
Social Media Internship
Social media interns are responsible for maintaining and improving HNN’s presence on various social media platforms, including (but not limited to) Facebook and Twitter. Interns will be responsible for communicating with other Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. groups and users to increase our brand recognition. This extends beyond just posting advertisements about HNN on other group walls and pages — it means getting involved in a dialog with other users. Good judgment and a cheerful disposition are essential for success as a social media intern!
Editorial Internship
Editorial interns are responsible for soliciting articles from historians, working with authors to improve articles, copyediting, proofreading, and uploading pieces onto the HNN website. This position requires excellent judgment, strong writing and editing skills, and Web savvy.
Feature Internship
Feature interns are responsible for implementing feature projects, typically two to three per intern. These projects could include profiles of historians, working on the HNN Teacher’s Edition, cataloging the historical gaffes of politicians, or writing short factsheets on topics in the news. Good judgment and writing skills are a must!
Posted in Uncategorized on June 6, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Congratulations to Eli Kane, a junior history major at Messiah College, who was chosen for the prestigious summer internship program at the Library of Congress. Eli will be interning with college students from a host of colleges and universities across the country, including Oberlin, Gettysburg, Williams, William & Mary, NYU, Johns Hopkins, and Vanderbilt. He will be working in the Geography and Map Division and will get a chance to present some of his research at the end of the summer.
Posted in Archaeology & Material Culture, Cyprus, Digital History, Faculty Research, iPads, Student Research on June 3, 2012 | 1 Comment »
This year, Messiah college students and faculty have been using an app tailored to collect data related to our excavations at the Hellenistic site of Pyla-Vigla. Our app designer, Dr. Sam Fee, has introduced the app in his first blog post at the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project blog. He promises additional posts in the next couple of weeks on project design, user interface, technical challenges, and lessons learned.
As he posts more about the app, I’ll chime in about our experiences using the app in the field. Stay tuned.
Posted in Archaeology & Material Culture, Courses, Cyprus, Digital History, iPads on June 2, 2012 | 3 Comments »
One of our first orientation activities for students was a self-guided tour of Larnaka, the city where we are living for a month this summer. A city of about 70,000, its coastal orientation is oriented to tourist circuits and vacationers: long promenade along a line of palm trees and sandy beach line with overpriced hotels and restaurants.
Over the years, we’ve sent students on a photo scavenger hunt on their first full day on the island. We typically give students a paper map of Larnaka. Students walk around and collect photos of places both historically significant and practically useful (e.g., the post office). Students become familiar immediately with the coastal area of the city, see parts of the older city, learn practical information, and get some photos of the city.
Here’s a snippet of the exercise:
Now, requiring that students use iPads for this small group exercise, on the one hand, does not really improve on the paper forms. Carrying around a 2 pound device is more burdensome than paper. But the iPads enhanced the experience with the potential for photographs and the maps.
If we had devices with 3G, we could have used the Map app consistently, but our wi-fi devices restricted internet access to the lobby of the hotel. Still, students did find a way around the problem of no connection: load the map of Larnaka at the appropriate resolution in the hotel lobby (when Wifi was available) and track location by the blue dot. There was, of course, no way of resizing the map during the tour without internet access. Walking around with an iPad makes one conspicuous, but it is much less so than opening up a huge tourist map to pinpoint one’s location.
Students took photographs with their own cameras, but could easily have taken them with the iPads. When we toured other sites on the island, in fact, I noticed students using the iPads for this purpose. In both the case of Tim at the Kolossi castle and Kaylee at the church of Ayios Ioannis Lambadistis (below), the iPads were a nice substitute for dead camera batteries.
We also used iPads in self-directed exercises in the museums. I transferred paper versions of the exercises into Dropbox. Students added the documents to “favorites” (so that they could access it without wifi), and then copied and answered the questions in the Notes app.
Below, students in the back courtyard of the Larnaka District Archaeological Museum.
Besides the map and photograph potential, the iPad improved the experience in one other way. When we ran guided historical tours of the city of Larnaka / Kition and the ancient site of Kourion, we made reference to a number of plans and maps of the sites to show how the topography had changed. We could have passed around paper maps and plans as we have done in the past, but there were multiple documents to keep track of. It was actually easier to transfer multiple PDFs of maps and plans and have students look at them through the Files app. This feature does have the potential to enhance our tours and presumably student learning. I could imagine, for example, a self-guided tour of Larnaka through a set of questions (as above) and these digital plans and maps.
Map of 19th century Larnaka in Nikolaou’s The Historical Topography of Kition
The downside to using iPads on tours was carrying around the 2 pounds in the heat of the day, the glare from the sun, and students being frequently distracted from the iPads by Cypriot lizards!
I think using these devices for tours has great potential for enhancing knowledge of the history of sites, especially if we can adopt apps and structure exercises that make use of the best features of the iPads.
