mia, Author at mia ridge

July 15, 2012August 7, 2013

Workshop: Learning to play like a programmer: web mash-ups and scripting for beginners

Half day tutorial for the pre-conference workshops for Digital Humanities 2012: Learning to play like a programmer: web mash-ups and scripting for beginners.

Abstract:

Have you ever wanted to be able to express your ideas for digital humanities data-based projects more clearly, or wanted to know more about hack days and coding but been too afraid to ask?

In this hands-on tutorial led by an experienced web programmer, attendees will learn how to use online tools to create visualisations to explore humanities data sets while learning how computer scripts interact with data in digital applications.

Attendees will learn the basic principles of programming by playing with small snippets of code in a fun and supportive environment. The instructor will use accessible analogies to help participants understand and remember technical concepts. Working in pairs, participants will undertake short exercises and put into practice the scripting concepts they are learning about. The tutorial structure encourages attendees to reflect on their experiences and consolidate what they have learned from the exercises with the goal of providing deeper insight into computational thinking.

The tutorial aims to help humanists without a technical background understand more about the creation and delivery of digital humanities data resources. In doing so, this tutorial is designed to support greater diversity in the ‘digital’ part of the digital humanities community.

This tutorial is aimed at people who want to learn enough to get started playing with simple code to manipulate data, or gain an insight into how programming works. No technical knowledge is assumed. Attendees are asked to bring their own laptops or net books.

The tutorial will include:

what a humanities data set is and how to access one

how web scripting languages work (using JavaScript as an example)

how to sketch out your ideas in pseudo-code

the value of visualisation tools in understanding the shape of a data set

prepared exercises: ‘hello world’, using script libraries for mash-ups, creating your first mash-up using a live cultural dataset (e.g. a timeline or map),

how to find further resources and keep learning

July 13, 2012

Review: QRator at the Grant Museum of Zoology

I was invited to review the QRator project at UCL's Grant Museum of Zoology for the Journal of Digital Humanities Vol. 1, No. 2 Spring 2012: QRator at the Grant Museum of Zoology.

June 30, 2012January 9, 2021

NEH Fellowship for the Polis Center Institute on 'Spatial Narrative and Deep Maps: Explorations in the Spatial Humanities'

I was awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities Fellowship for the Polis Center's Institute on ''Spatial Narrative and Deep Maps: Explorations in the Spatial Humanities'. In their words, "this two-week intensive institute brings leading scholars from around the world to explore how deep maps can support relevant issues in spatial humanities".

A sneak preview of some of our prototyping work is available at Interface designs for deep maps: a presentation from #PolisNEH to #UCLADH. Some of the discussions about deep maps were captured in a post I wrote on Open Objects after the first week, 'Halfway through 'deep maps and spatial narratives'…' and a post on the project blog for the last day of the Institute, Catch the wind.

Other posts written by participants include:

June 19, 2012July 13, 2012

Scholar-in-residence, Cooper-Hewitt

I was invited to spend a week in New York as scholar-in-residence at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, a museum of the Smithsonian Institution dedicated to design. At the end of the week I presented my results to staff and wrote a post for their 'Labs' blog about my experience: Mia Ridge explores the shape of Cooper-Hewitt collections. Or, “what can you learn about 270,000 records in a week?”.

My report was also included in Digital Humanities Now's Editors’ Choice: Exploring the Cooper-Hewitt Collection Round-Up.

April 20, 2012February 4, 2015

Talk: 'Inspiring connections with collections'

I was invited to Auckland Museum to give a lecture on 'Inspiring connections with collections'.

Discussions with staff and the process of preparing for the talks inspired two blog posts: 'Designing for participatory projects: emergent best practice, getting discussion started' and 'What are the right questions about museum websites?'.