Voyant Tools is one of my favorite text analysis tools because it is fast and easy to use, even for people who have no background in text analysis. Although Voyant offers a lot of options—which can be overwhelming—the interface presents basic results that any user can easily customize. The results of Voyant’s analysis can be downloaded as visualizations or in tab-separated or JSON data formats, and Voyant also generates embed codes for its tools (which I’m using for this blog post), as well as citations for specific analyses. This post will cover basic Voyant functions, including inputting texts for analysis, working with and understanding basic Voyant tools, and downloading data. Continue reading “Text analysis using Voyant Tools”
Author: Beth Platte
Social annotation with Annotation Studio
Annotation Studio is an open-source browser-based annotation platform that allows members of groups or classes to take notes on a shared document. You might think of it as similar to the comment feature in Google Docs, without the ability to edit the text itself. Social annotation allows students to interact with a text and each other asynchronously. Faculty in literature classes might use Annotation Studio to highlight specific areas of a text and and ask questions on them before class or to ask students to select sections of a text they want to discuss in class and compose leading questions. In foreign language classrooms, students might comment on grammar or vocabulary they found difficult and ask for help from classmates, or an instructor could use Annotation Studio to provide glosses of difficult vocabulary or cultural context for a text.
New Language Lab website
The Language Lab at Reed has a new website! You can access it at www.reed.edu/language_resources/.
The main page includes links to the drop-in tutoring schedule for foreign languages and a list of media available at the IMC by language.
Use the menu on the left to find resources for modern languages offered at Reed. A menu for each language provides options for categories of resources, such as typing help and online dictionaries.
Continue reading “New Language Lab website”Reflections on Digital Scholarship Week at Reed
The last week of March was Digital Scholarship Week at Reed. Instructional Technology Services and Library staff, with generous support from the Center for Teaching and Learning, organized the week-long series of events to showcase digital methodologies in research and teaching at Reed. Students and faculty from a variety of disciplines were among the presenters. I enjoyed the way that talking about digital scholarship brought scholars from different disciplines together in one conversation.
As someone with a background in the humanities, one of the questions that interests me is how scholars of the humanities use digital methods, so I was very glad that Dr. Miriam Posner (’01) returned to Reed as part of Digital Scholarship Week. Dr. Posner is a faculty member and coordinator of the Digital Humanities program at UCLA. She holds a Ph.D. from Yale in Film Studies and American Studies. Dr. Posner presented a workshop on visualizing data in the humanities and a lecture on her work on the visual culture of lobotomy in the United States. Continue reading “Reflections on Digital Scholarship Week at Reed”
Digital Scholarship Week at Reed
Across Reed’s campus, students and faculty are using digital tools to produce scholarship in a variety of disciplines. But there are many of us who wonder what “digital scholarship” means, or want to know more about digital tools and their use in teaching and research or how data relates to the humanities, or are curious about how Open Access affects scholarship in different disciplines. Continue reading “Digital Scholarship Week at Reed”
Annotating PDFs in Preview and Adobe Acrobat Reader
Annotation, or adding notes directly to texts, is an important part of scholarly work. Many of us learned to annotate using some old-school tools: pencils, highlighters, maybe sticky notes to physically “tag” our books. As more and more texts are available online, however, tools for rich annotation of online and digital texts have evolved to allow readers to highlight and take notes on digital texts and webpages. This blog post starts with the basics. In it, you’ll learn how to annotate PDFs using apps you probably already have installed on your computer. It’s the first in a series, so look for future posts to cover other note taking and annotation apps. Continue reading “Annotating PDFs in Preview and Adobe Acrobat Reader”
NWACC’s EdTech Deck
Every year, during the first week of November, educational technology specialists from across the northwest gather in Portland for a roundtable. This year, Trina Marmarelli and I attended the North West Academic Computing Consortium (NWACC) Roundtable. As a relatively new Reed employee, it was interesting for me to meet and hear from educational technologists from many different types of institutions.Many of the conversations I had involved the relationship between technology and pedagogy, and how technologists could effectively work with faculty to meet educational goals—whether with the aid of technology or not.
Online language exchanges
If you want to practice your speaking and listening skills in a foreign language, you may be interested in a language exchange with a native speaker and English learner, in addition to meeting with the drop-in and individual tutors available at Reed. During the exchange, you speak with your language partner for about half an hour in English to help them with their spoken English skills and then for half an hour in their native language to help you. Language exchanges can be especially useful if you’re studying or practicing a language not currently offered at Reed or not supported by Reed tutors (Arabic and Japanese, for instance). There are several websites that help language learners meet for a language exchange. Continue reading “Online language exchanges”
Language Labs: A Brief History
The middle of the 20th century was an exciting time for foreign language study in the United States. During World War II, the army created the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) to provide education to officers with strategic wartime skills, including foreign language proficiency. Following the scholarly opinion among linguists of the day, who believed that language was acquired through habit, the ASTP taught language primarily through oral drills. As the ASTP spread to institutions of higher education throughout the country, the army developed audio discs in dozens of languages.