One of the recurring concerns/complaints surrounding the Domain of One’s Own project is the inescapability of WordPress. Most students and faculty on OU Create and other Domains projects use WordPress sites, either for personal portfolios or class blogs. As a counterpoint, I wanted to feature a few of the Omeka sites that that have been built on OU Create in the past few months.
Like WordPress, Omeka is a php based platform with a one-click installer in Reclaim Hosting environments. Unlike WordPress, Omeka is not built for blogging but rather for cataloguing. Omeka is particularly useful for collecting meta-data about documents, images, movies, baseball cards, or other media. It was originally developed and is still maintained by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.
Below are screenshots of several OU projects along with the creators’ descriptions of each. You can click on the image to go to the project’s site.
The Carl Albert Center’s Local Digital History Lab is a project based initiative that focuses on preserving history and highlighting important policy issues in the state of Oklahoma. It combines the archival resources at the Center with materials and experiences donated by the public. The first series of lab events focus on the intersection between environment, extreme weather, and public policy in the state.
Each lab bolsters connections between archival collections and the communities they serve. The events also contextualize important issues by organizing community digitization events and making harvested materials available to the public online.
The site features archival materials made available by the Carl Albert Center Congressional and Political Collections, the City of Tulsa Engineering Services Department, and members of the public. It includes over 4,000 pages of digitized text, 255 photographs, 90 maps, and over 100 minutes of oral history.
The United States changed rapidly during the 1930s in response to a series of economic, environmental, and social factors. The Great Depression transformed the relationship between the national government and its citizens. The physical landscape was also altered through massive public works projects and conservation initiations. Moreover, this was one of the richest periods of creative cultural activity the nation has seen.
Created by students at the University of Oklahoma, this site documents and explores the 1930s and its enduring legacies in Oklahoma. Please explore the digital exhibits and collection of photographs, documents, videos, and maps discovered and created during the research process.
Visit the About This Project Page to learn about the creation of the site.
One of the professors from the Making Modern America project, David Wrobel, has continued his use of Omeka in a follow up class on John Steinbeck’s literature. Working again with librarian extraordinaire Sarah Clayton, Dean Wrobel’s students are putting together exhibits examining the various facets of Steinbeck’s work from his travels, to his work on the War and his relationship with Oklahoma.
Videos for Italian Teaching and Learning is a curated database of openly available videos. Daniela Busciglio and her collaborators are collecting and tagging videos to help students work on various grammatical and thematic concepts. By sharing these videos online, Daniela can share these resources with undergraduates at OU, and with learners of all levels and at all schools.
In January 2017, 13 members of WAN’s Gulu subgroup worked with faculty and students from the University of Oklahoma to conduct a “Photovoice” project. Photovoice is a method that combines the power of photography with critical group reflection to interrogate everyday aspects of life.
The project began with each WAN participant creating individual photos intended to show elements of daily life, including both life-giving aspects, but also significant challenges. Many participants chose to recreate memories from life in captivity. Others focused on how they live now. After the individual photography, the participants used the photos to teach each other about their own perspectives and to discuss common themes and desires for change in northern Uganda. The exhibit presents photos from each participant along with her personal statement.
The goals of the both the project and this exhibit are twofold. First, the photographs are meant to teach the viewer about the participants’ lives, their concerns, and their desires for change. Second, the project is intended as an opportunity for the participants to reflect on their priorities and WAN’s activities aimed at improving conditions for women in post-conflict northern Uganda.
Focusing on the history of race and education in Oklahoma, students will utilize this platform to gather and discuss primary sources that inform the rich and complicated history of the state around schooling concerns. For students engaging in historical projects, it is essential to critically examine not only literature that informs our field, but similarly engage in research projects within classes that will put theory into practice. This course, Documentary and Narrative, examines problems and methods of non-empirical/non-experimental research in history of education. Particular attention will be paid to qualitative methods that collect data from documents, from oral history interviews, and from observations and experiences in settings that utilize approaches related to case study and narrative inquiry techniques. Use of primary and secondary sources, field notes, and case study applications are discussed along with the roles that the researcher plays in terms of generalization and interpretation. Similarly, this platform will facilitate conversations on ways to engage in historical research that informs the evolving technological changes we are witnessing today, as a vital conversation on the survival of the field.