Teaching and Learning archives?

As an archivist, I'm very intrigued by self-archiving systems such as suggested today by a professor over email. Teaching faculty have a weekly meeting called Friday Forum where often the subject involves teaching or research. The idea is to create an archive, open to the Earlham community, with syllabi, teaching practices, improving discussion, etc. Earlham is very much a teaching institution, and this makes a lot of sense to me. While here at Earlham our physical archives focuses primarily on print material, it is clear to me if we want to continue archiving and chronicling Earlham's history we need to pay close attention to systems like ELS and other ways that Earlham's history is being archived--including students uploading pictures to photo sharing sites like Flickr. Of course, teaching is such an essential part of Earlham's mission having an archive--online or physical--devoted to teaching and learning is a great idea. (assuming of course people submit material!)

One aspect of systems like ELS that intrigues me the most is the ability for social tagging, which allows many users to identify the subject of a particular item rather being limited by Library of Congress subject headings or other such controlled vocabularies.

I'm excited about projects like this that can capture Earlham's history and teaching practices in ways we haven't always been able to do- for example, we might get a professor's papers after they have retired or died, but with digital files items can be captured in real time--of course, it is possible we might not always want to do this or professors could be concerned about confidentiality and copyright. I think the positive aspects outweigh the negative and hopefully these are challenges we can work on here at Earlham.

Fun and Educational things I did this week

(not necessarily in any kind of order)

1. Visited the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, in the Texas School Book Depository. I thought it was an excellent museum, with good integration of video footage of various aspects of JFK's assassination with the museum exhibits. It is really weird to stand in the place Lee Harvey Oswald stood.

2. Fun with Rafia's WACKY GPS system. It often lies.

3. Engaging in shenanigans with Rafia's colleagues.

4. Southfork Ranch, where Dallas was filmed (outside scenes anyway). Oddly enough, we went there on my insistence. EPIC photos were taken there.

5. Ft. Worth Zoo: many active and adorable animals lived here including black bears, a white tiger, lion cubs, cheetahs, meerkats, otters, and more.

6. Kimball Art Museum: A nice art museum, with terrible signs for parking. But a nice museum.

7. Free IMAX videos including "Sea Monsters" and "Extreme". I preferred "Sea Monsters" while Rafia preferred "Extreme"

8. Movies watched: X Files I Want To Believe which I have decided was a dream and thus will pretend didn't really happen, Hamlet 2 which was mostly funny, and Wall-E, which I loved, but wept throughout.

9. Photo Shoots of Rocky, Uniqua, DJ Pinja, Bearning Love, Renee, and a nameless blue reindeer

10. Delicious foods were eaten, possibly to the point of gluttony.

11. San Antonio Missions National Historical Park was wonderful.

12. Riverwalk in San Antonio was sort of cool, if you like that sort of thing. I sort of do. Love San Antonio, and the Southwest, overall.

13. Much, much more!!!

In Dallas

I am at Rafia's. I'm reading the New York Times while she shops for shoes!

Graceland

I am in Jackson MS tonight after spending the day at Graceland and driving part of the Natchez Trace in Mississippi (and a brief trip to Oxford MS). Memphis was full of Kentucky and East Carolina fans; having avoided the sports page over the last week I was oblivious to the bowl game being played until I started wondering about all the UK flags on the cars passing me on the highway. Anyway, Graceland was nuts. I sort of felt the same way I felt about Las Vegas--really glad I visited, but felt a little overwhelmed.

Other than a trip a while ago that took me to Tupelo and Elvis Presley's birthplace, I have not spent much time in Mississippi. Tomorrow I'm going to take the Natchez Trace to Natchez before heading to Beaumont Texas, near where my grandfather was born. I am not sure what I'm going to there, but I've never been to that area and I'm curious about where my family is from. My ultimate destination, of course, is Arlington.

The outside of Graceland:



Crazy airplane:


TV Room:


Me with mirrors on stairs:


Presents in the Jungle Room


Trees inside house:


The drive on the Natchez Trace was very foggy (still pretty, and not much traffic)