In the leadup to planning our pedagogical workshops for the Praxis year, I explored a variety of methods and concepts. With my background in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), I naturally expressed interest in mapping as maps present a unique story and can facilitate new questions in research. I was also interested in digital storytelling, because as a historian, history is about presenting a narrative about the past that helps answer questions about the present, and hopefully knowing about history can impact our future. Ultimately, I decided to settle on digital storytelling, that also incorporates maps.

Drawing from the Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities site, it describes digital storytelling as the process of creating and sharing stories using digital tools, incorporating multimedia elements such as images, sound, and words in a narrative that is disseminated online. I really like the term used within the prompt for storytelling called remix. Remixing takes existing material and alters it and combines it to create something new. My own interpretation of digital storytelling is understanding and reinterpreting people, places, objects, or events in their proper context.

I am also connecting these definitions to my personal goals for the workshop. Earlier in the semester, one of our sessions asked us to state our goals for the workshop. One of my goals is a workshop that empowers participants to think on their own behalf and not rely solely on my instruction. A second goal is that my workshop will encourage collaboration among the participants. A third goal is I see more of a facilitator, so my goal is to help guide the conversation during my workshop versus being in teacher mode only. A fourth goal is to incorporate real-life experiences into the workshop. My final goal is to embrace the silences or vagueness of sources that come with research.

In the first part of the workshop, I will briefly present the opportunities available for digital storytelling drawing on my own experiences of using ArcGIS StoryMaps to present a narrative. For instance, a few years ago, I developed a class project Visualizing Segregation in Orlando: 1887-1950 where I used StoryMaps to visualize narrative segregation in Orlando, Florida. My StoryMap incorporated maps, images, and text that provided an interactive way to learn more about the history of segregation during the Jim Crow era. My brief presentation will open an opportunity to discuss techniques in digital humanities. There is more than one way to tell a story, so this portion also will provide an avenue for others to present their own ideas about digital storytelling. We will discuss questions like, what are good components that should go in a story or how should the order of a story be. (Also, based on conversations with Brandon, Tropy could serve as another digital tool, but still need to explore more before the workshop presentation).

In thinking about something simple, something familiar to me, and something that incorporates maps, my low-tech workshop will focus on digital storytelling influenced by our experiences on Grounds at UVA. As a graduate student, with my first year at UVA being entirely online due to COVID, my interactions on Grounds have largely been limited to select buildings and locations on grounds where my graduate classes were or where I held my discussion sessions. Even now, there are areas of Grounds I have never been. The low-tech activity thus will incorporate a printed map. Using a map like the UVA Visitors Map (second page), attendees will individually use colored dot stickers to mark building locations or general spaces on grounds where they frequently interact. Additionally, attendees will write short descriptions that describe these interactions in more detail such as what buildings or spaces we have interacted with, the frequency of these interactions, and our typical experiences there.

The last part of the activity will be collaborative exercise. After each person finishes their edited maps and written descriptions, they will hand these materials to another person. Now that each person has someone else’s sources (data), you will then see to draft a narrative about that person based on the evidence provided, and afterward, each person will share their narrative. As most stories we read about are often told second-hand, this activity will provide the attendees the opportunity to be creative and innovative in creating narratives about people we either have become familiar with or barely know. We can then conclude by thinking about the narratives we just created about each other but think of them digitally. One central question would be, what digital methods and tools are available to enhance these narratives (objects, images, sounds, etc.)?

In conclusion, I brainstormed various ideas for my workshop. Yet the process left me feeling very overwhelmed and anxious, not about presenting the workshop itself, but about finding the right idea and the right project that was low-tech. In meeting with Brandon, I had a moment of eureka where I decided to focus on being simple and work with what is familiar to me and not overcomplicate things. There is the popular phrase, Keep it Simple, Stupid (KISS) thought to have been coined by Kelly Johnson, a lead engineer for Lockheed Skunk Works, who argued that designs for products should be constructed simple enough that a common man could repair them with basic training rather than risking people’s lives with complexities. I plan to take this phrase to heart, but since I do not wish to insult the intelligence of anyone, I will change the last word to scholars. Keep it Simple, Scholars. It will make your life much easier.

I have always been intrigued by the process of coding. Part of this intrigue came from watching action and adventure television shows or movies that usually featured a tech person or hacker. Whether serving the interests of the protagonist(s), the antagonist(s), or sometimes both either willingly or by force, the tech person would navigate a dark screen full of numbers and letters that I now understand involves coding.

Recently, I have been rewatching the 2016 reboot version of the MacGyver television series which features a character named Riley who is an expert computer hacker who uses her skills to benefit the covert Phoenix Foundation. In one episode, the city of Los Angeles is under a ransomware attack by a hacker that causes a citywide blackout and takes control of a nuclear power plant that threatens the surrounding area. Upon recognizing the name N3mesis encoded within the ransomware code, Riley reveals that she helped write the code with two friends during her illicit hacking days before her work with the Phoenix, meaning one of her former friends was responsible for the attacks.

As the name N3mesis visibly appeared on the screen within the code, I had an epiphany from our conversations during the Code Lab on September 19 about how one can leave notes within the code to alert others of changes. In other similar TV shows and movies that I have watched involving coding, there have been references to messages hidden within the code that the protagonists have used to successfully confront the imminent threat or danger. Perhaps a month ago, these references to coding would have gone over my head, so it was refreshing to make connections to Praxis from popular culture.

Within television shows and movies, the image of a computer hacker features someone typing very fast, sometimes in an isolated location, and manipulating code to accomplish a task, whether for altruistic or selfish reasons, as seen in the image below. (Thanks Brandon for the introduction to HackerTyper.

Yet, as the exercises in writing algorithms in plain English have shown, there is a lot more involved in coding. With the tutorials to Git, GitHub, and Visual Studio Code, Shane, Jeremy, and Brandon emphasized that coding starts with the basics, learning and understanding commands like add, commit, pull, push, and reset.

With exercises in Code Lab such as the icebreaker assignment using Git, I believe it serves as a metaphor for the collaboration exercise. We add by contributing to a project, we commit to our changes, we push those changes to a larger context that includes the work of others, and then we pull to help merge those changes. If necessary, we may have to reset things and start the process over again.

The activity among our cohort was a bit of trial and error, such as accidentally clearing someone else’s work when seeking to make new changes. However, with assistance from members of the Scholar’s Lab, we eventually made progress in making changes without errors as reflected in GitHub. This icebreaker exercise serves as a metaphor for collaboration in general. Our cohort contributed to one project and sometimes we face challenges like inadvertently clearing someone else’s work. However, we can easily correct mistakes (or in the case of GitHub, see previous versions of our work) and we can take lessons about these mistakes to avoid making them in the future.

Praxis is invading my life…but in a good way. I hope to continue to make connections between my Praxis life, my academic life, and my personal life, such as the connections between coding and popular movie and television culture. I plan to take advantage of the opportunities of these experiences within the Praxis Program.

My name is Gramond McPherson, I am a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of History. I am a late-era millennial which provides me a vantage point of remembering the world before high-speed internet and smartphones while coming of age as these technologies became a normal way of life.

As a kid, I developed and learned technical skills that I have continued to use as an adult. For instance, in middle school, I learned how to type in a computer class. The teacher required the use of an orange keyboard cover that hid the keys from our view. Though difficult at first, this practice helped to develop my muscle memory in learning to type without looking down at the keyboard. Today, I continue to be proficient in typing because of the exercise of the orange keyboard cover. I also remember the pre-digital way of conducting research, relying on encyclopedias and books and using index cards to take notes. As a millennial, while I can find solutions to problems and complete tasks in both digital and non-digital ways, I am grateful for the technologies that exist to make my life easier and less complex. As a graduate student, I am especially grateful for Zotero which I have used for over a decade. This digital tool has made my research and writing process of generating citations and collecting bibliographical material more efficient and seamless.

Beyond technical skills, the non-technical skills that I either inherited or gained through experience have also served me well as I have matured. I have always been somewhat of an introverted person, though I can become more outgoing once I am comfortable within a social space. While some could perceive this as a disadvantage within collaborative spaces like the Praxis Program, I would argue the opposite. For me, being an introvert is less about how much I talk and more about what I choose to say or not say. Through my experiences in school, I sought to make my words count and think critically rather than simply seeking to hear my own voice. I also believe that being an introvert makes me a better listener, which is also a valuable skill for collaborative work. Lastly, being an introvert allows me to have greater attention to detail, including seeing the moods of people. As the Praxis cohorts are generally small, these conditions are perfect for an introvert like me to excel in.

As a humanist, particularly in the field of history, the most important skill I use is critical thinking. In thinking about history, I am not simply seeking to know about notable events or important people in isolation, but to answer the who, what, why, where, and how. These questions help me to gain a greater understanding of a historical period as well as become more conscious of the silences or historical gaps that exist concerning issues like race, gender, and sexuality. I hope to bring my critical thinking skills to engage with the digital humanities. As evident by the readings in Week 2 of Praxis, these debates on hegemony and silences are occurring within the digital humanities as well.

One of my goals for Praxis is to embrace the unknown. Coming into Praxis, I had some prior exposure to digital humanities. During my time at the University of Central Florida, I completed the requirements to earn a certificate in Geographic Information Systems which involved taking four classes, two classes that provided scholarly and theoretical introductions to digital humanities and two classes that introduced me to ArcGIS and allowed me to create a project using the software. Yet, even with this training and certification, there is still a part of me that feels inadequate and on a scale from novice to expert, I feel closer to being a novice than an expert.

Presently, I feel even more inadequate regarding Coding. For instance, in completing the objectives from the Week 1 Code Lab, in preparing my Development Environment, I faced difficulty on the first task in installing Homebrew due to some issues I was having in Terminal. However, in viewing research and problem-solving as valuable skills, I was determined to find a solution. In embracing equal credit from prior Praxis charters, I am thankful to YouTube, particularly the EasyOSX Channel’s video on installing Homebrew for helping me through that task. This semester, I am sure there will be other unknowns that I will encounter, and I hope that I will lean into the resources available, whether my Praxis cohort, the Scholars Lab, or others, to succeed this year.

Lastly, something that I hope to discover during this Praxis year is the technical skills that I already possess but have not been utilizing to my fullest potential. An example of this is using ArcGIS again after a nearly three-year hiatus. By then, the use of ArcGIS had expanded into using ArcGIS Online, which required some further adjustment. Yet, while ArcGIS had evolved, some of the technical skills that had remained dormant during my hiatus came back to me and I was able to succeed in completing various scholarly projects. In embracing the unknown, just as the orange keyboard cover helped develop my muscle memory to become proficient in typing, the setbacks I will face in becoming comfortable with the skills I will learn with the Praxis program will help to develop my muscle memory and with practice, I will become proficient in various technical skills of the digital humanities.