Hey guys! Hope this message finds everyone well. So, this is what Greg and I have in mind for our Kitchen Sink revision project. We want to improve the language, structure, and content of the tools section of the wiki and think it would benefit most from better, more comprehensive descriptions that actually provide insight into the ways in which the tools facilitate scholarship and can be used in an academic context. We recognize that there are several tools and categories, so to lighten the load and direct each of our energies at a specific part of the revision, we have grouped everyone. Each group has been assigned a few sections to work on. We want you to work within your group to determine how you want to revise your specific section. Don’t be afraid to use images, links, color, etc. Also, if you think your section needs to have tools added or removed from the list, please feel free to do that as well. Please complete this task before class on Tuesday. We are hoping to come in Tuesday with each of our sections completely revised. This way we can work on additional editing to the general language of the page as a group in class on Tuesday, make any other changes we see fit, and discuss the way everything worked. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us or post on the blog. Thanks for your efforts in advance and we are excited to see what comes out of the project!
Group 1) Ben, Phil, and Jennifer
Group 2) Ashley, Mikayla, and Bronwyn
Group 3) Julie, Michelle, Anderson
Group 4) Greg, Samantha, and Erin
Sections:
Group 1: Multimedia Toolset, Timelines, Mapping, Presentations, Diagrams
Group 2: Data and Tables, Video Viewing and Embedding, Video (editing, etc), Web Page Annotation, Storage Space and File Sharing
Group 3: Draw on Desktop, Audio/Music, Social Bookmarking, Media, Note Taking
Group 4: Graphics, Screen Capture, Blogging, Publishing
Just to avoid confusion: if you’re logged into the Commons, here’s the direct link to the editor for the Kitchen Sink utility page: http://commons.gc.cuny.edu/wiki/index.php?title=Kitchen_Sink/Kitchen_Table_Utilities&action=edit.
Hey,
Thanks for the organizing Samantha and Greg.
I just added a few paragraphs about Prezi and then a possible assignment/question.
Maybe in class we can think of how to better organize the page (I wasn’t sure if my additions add clarity or clutter).
I hope that’s in line with what you guys were thinking.
best,
phil
Hey Phil,
I think that everything you added is really helpful. I like the link to your own work as well as the anecdotes about your own personal academic experiences with the software. I think the site would really benefit from more descriptions like this. Great job!
Thanks for organizing, Greg and Samantha.
I just wanted to let you all know I created a new page for the two video sections here. I’m updating the links and info on the new page. I haven’t deleted the content on the original page yet, so this can also be undone if we decide to do it differently as a whole. I figured I’d let you know so we can communicate among groups if that’s useful.
Hi Ashley,
Everything looks great so far and thank you for all of your hard work! Just curious, have you ever used any of the tools or software yourself? If so, feel free to add comments about your experiences. I think that would provide a great reference given your interesting work with languages and literature!
Hey guys!
Just wanted to see how everything was going and thank everyone for their hard work so far. In case there was any confusion I figured I would reiterate our game plan. We want everyone to work on revising the descriptions of the tools in their assigned sections so that the descriptions are more thorough and helpful, particularly as a reference to how the tools function in an academic context. It is fine to only revise a few tools in your section because you know more about them, have experience with them, etc, and feel you can add a more in depth, meaningful reference and contribution that way. (see Phil’s post for a reference)
This way, when we get to class on Tuesday we can pull everything that everyone has done together and make any other revisions we want as a group. Obviously, there are a lot of tools and parts of the page so we won’t be able to completely overhaul everything but at least this way we can make some helpful and substantive changes. Please feel free to respond with any ideas, comments, questions, etc.
Can someone please help me before I explode from frustration…I have tried editing the wiki twice, but rather than being able to save my changes I keep getting this message:
“Someone else has changed this page since you started editing it. The upper text area contains the page text as it currently exists. Your changes are shown in the lower text area. You will have to merge your changes into the existing text.
Only the text in the upper text area will be saved when you press “Save page”.”
Why is this happening and what do I do?
Sorry for the frustrations Julie. Sounds like multiple people are editing it at once. My suggestion is to keep track of your changes in a text document and to keep trying to integrate them until you no longer get that error.
I added a couple things, but my group specifically spoke about note taking. I think there should also be a section (maybe under note taking, maybe under data) about text editors that are useful in writing up text in formats like HTML, XML, and CSS (i.e. gedit, BBEdit, and TextWrangler)
I’ll probably not add them to the wiki until class/after class, but here are the rough descriptions I threw together:
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Note Taking (Word Processing)
OpenOffice: A complete Office Suite, notable primarily for it’s word processor and spreadsheet. An open source alternative to Office or Pages
LibreOffice: A competing Open Source Office suite. The developers were originally part of the OpenOffice Community.
Note Taking (Programming): As we enter a time period in which computer programming becomes more essential, even for non-CS academics, I think several text editors that can handle more than Word Processing should be included:
BBEdit: One of the more popular proprietary text editors. This can handle HTML, XML, CSS, TXT, and a plethora of others.
TextWrangler: A free text editor from the makers of BBEdit. The “little brother” to BBEdit looks very similar, but is limited in what it can handle.
gedit: This multi-purpose text editor comes standard on most Linux distros. There is a Windows and OS X version. This is an incredibly sleek Open Source alternative to more expensive or less capable proprietary software.
oXygen: (Proprietary) This is a text editor especially suited to XML documents.
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I’d recommend before, say, a third large group adds to this wiki, perhaps there should be some revision involving a search for specific and citable academic uses of each of these tools.
i.e. Mary Todd in her English Class was trying to play an mkv file of a Japanese documentary, and had no luck until she discovered VLC player.
Obviously this is more “Academic labor” than anybody wants to do, but, you know, “info overload is just filter failure” and all… Just a thought.
I added and updated a couple things in the Audio section & included a review of 3 popular Language/Translation engines.
Working through this has brought up quite a few thoughts about these types of collections, though… Most notably, what need are we addressing, who is this for, why are we making it & why are people using it… I’ve written and re-written descriptions about 3 times with different audiences in mind…
I added more comprehensive descriptions (trying to focus on educational or academic use/relevance) to some of the items in the Draw on Desktop and Social Bookmarking sections.
Aside from this and in conjunction with Anderson and Michelle’s comments here, our group has been having an extended email exchange about being frustrated with the effectiveness this collection when it comes to thinking about using these applications to actually make anything…it just ends up being this mass of tools with only a generic sense of what one might do with any of them. Trying to figure out which tools we might us for our own projects really brings this to light…
Great insight, Julie. Look forward to hearing more about this in class.
Fwiw, please consider using our Commons group for exchanges such as the one you describe… would be helpful to share with others in the class, and potentially with future ITP students.
I added some descriptions and new items to “publishing.” Also began adding some items to “annotation” — sorry if stepping on anybody’s toes!
Also wondering if there’s room for a new category on “collaboration” or “collaborative writing” or if it overlaps too much with “annotation?” Would love to start this category as it relates to my potential project.