Just Housing

Just Housing

by Michelle Wilson Comment Closed
Podcast Faculty Instructor: Amy Chazkel Librarian: Michelle Wilson humanrightspodcast.sandbox.library.columbia.edu This podcast was developed in conjunction with a course offered in the Fall 2020 semester through the History Department. The course explored housing, and its legal, social and political meanings, as a concept that can only be fully understood as a historical phenomenon. Using examples from cities around the world, these episodes feature archival and oral history research as they delve into stories that get to the bigger picture about how, throughout the world, the provision of shelter for urban populations has been at the center of urban crises and conflicts, as well as their solutions.  https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/just-housing/id1552759875 ...
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Literature Humanities Podcast

Literature Humanities Podcast

by Michelle Wilson Comment Closed
Podcast Faculty Instructor: Lisa Hollibaugh Librarian: Michelle Wilson lithum14.sandbox.library.columbia.edu All first year students at Columbia College participate in the Core Curriculum, including the year-long class Literature Humanities. Literature Humanities is been devoted to thinking about the power of different types of literature—in the ways that it can reflect ideas and emotions and behaviors that are part of our experience as humans (i.e., its content), and in the ways it can be shaped and expressed so that thestory moves us, persuades us, delights us, incites us, and/or inspires us (i.e., its form). And we’ve doneso by considering the works of authors who are themselves readers of literature and who are reflectingthe influence of the content and form of literature on their thinking and their writing. These works have been chosen by a group of faculty who regularly review and debate the syllabus of Literature Humanities, and your instructor has also made a few individual choices of her own. In a podcast, the LitHum students were...
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Facing the Violent Past

Facing the Violent Past

by Michelle Wilson Comment Closed
Podcast Faculty Instructors: Ariella Lang and Karen Murphy Librarian: Michelle Wilson humanrightspodcast.sandbox.library.columbia.edu This podcast was developed in conjunction with a course offered in the Summer 2021 semester through the Institute for the Study of Human Rights. The course examined the ways in which societies have addressed the questions of accountability and the challenge of “dealing with the past” in the aftermath of political transition and violent conflict that have marked the last half century. In particular, the course examined the discourse around “historical wrongs,” and attempts—international, national, local—to address such wrongs.  The podcast format challenged students to hone their writing and communication skills, asking them to distill complex and sensitive topics, as well as academic research, for a public audience. In addition to providing an introduction to the work of public historians and activists, students felt invited to connect with the subject of their coursework. By speaking in their own voices and publishing that work to a public audience, students also said they felt empowerment and...
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Scalar Widgets

by Michelle Wilson Comment Closed
Scalar 2 User Guide: Working with Widgets A widget is an interactive element that can be embedded in your Scalar project. Scalar has 6 kinds of widgets that you can add to any page: Timeline, Map, Carousel, Card, Summary, and Visualization. Note: Visualizations are discussed in the tutorial on Relationships. Timelines and Maps Create timelines and maps to display elements of your project in chronological order. The Scalar timeline widget can display any elements in your book (pages or media items) as long as they include metadata in the “temporal” or “date” field; Maps can plot elements of the book if the “spatial” field has been populated with geographic coordinates. Remember that you should always take a moment to populate metadata when you import media items and construct pages so that all of your content will be available to you when you want to create a widget. Widgets can be tied to pieces of text or added as inline elements to a specific location...
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Scalar Annotations

by Michelle WilsonNo Comments
Scalar Notes A Scalar note allows you to add annotations to your text. Scalar notes can be composed of text or media, allowing you to comment on or illustrate ideas. Scalar notes can also be a good way to provide definitions or translations to foreign language terms or add citations.  Scalar notes are similar to media in that you can tie notes to specific pieces of text or place them precisely in a specific location on the page. To create a note that appears as a pop up, select a portion of the text and click the Scalar note button You can then either select another page or media item from the content list that appears, or select “Create page-on-the-fly.”  Scalar notes will be notated by post it icons and will appear as pop ups if they are linked to texts. Scalar Notes can also be images/audiovisual materials. Inline scalar notes will appear in boxes embedded on your page. These can be a great...
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Building Scalar Pages

by Michelle Wilson Comment Closed
In Scalar, pages host texts, media items, and interactive elements. Pages can be linked together, tagged, and organize in order to guide your readers through your Scalar book.  Create a New Page Start a new page by clicking the + symbol in the upper right icon bar in your book, or visit the dashboard by clicking the wrench icon, navigate to the Content tab, and click the “Add new page” button.  Begin by choosing a title and description for your page. Just as we thought about naming our media items uniquely and descriptively so that we can find them easily, we also want to thoughtfully choose titles for our pages, and decide on a naming convention that will help us group related items through keyword searches. This can be as simple as including the chapter tile, or theme, or numbering pages that are about the same topic:  Chapter 1: Making a Scalar Book, Chapter 2: Telling a Great Story Chapter 1a: Making a Scalar Book,...
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Adding Media to Your Scalar Project

by Michelle Wilson Comment Closed
Media Start your scalar project by importing media. Because of the way the Scalar interface is designed, you cannot upload new media objects while you are using the page builder tool. While of course you can add media to your project at any time, it can greatly streamline the process of constructing your Scalar book if you have media objects ready when you are ready to build your page. You can bring virtually any kind of media into your Scalar project, including images, audio clips, videos, and even websites themselves.  Uploading and Importing Media Objects When you are logged into the Scalar dashboard, you will be able to import media either by clicking on the import media icon in the top right corner (box with an arrow icon) or by navigating to the dashboard (wrench icon) and selecting import media from there.  It is possible to import media from various places around the web, including online archives like museum collections, and images and videos...
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Introduction to Scalar

by Michelle Wilson Comment Closed
Getting Started with Scalar Use this tutorial and the instructions below to acclimate yourself with the Scalar interface. The Scalar 2 User Guide is another helpful step-by-step resource that is linked throughout these lessons. Log in The first time you log into a Scalar site, you will be asked to choose a username, enter your email address and password (of your choice), and a registration key. The registration key will be provided to you by your instructor along with the link to the class Scalar project.  Once you have registered we will be able to add you as a user and author for the class book. QuickStart: Registering an account and creating your first book QuickStart: Creating a new book after registering The dashboard  When you enter the Scalar dashboard for the first time, you will be prompted to switch over to the updated dashboard. Click the link in the yellow box at the top of the page to access the most recent interface.   In the dashboard you’ll...
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Writing for the Ear

by Michelle WilsonNo Comments
A short guide to writing a great scholarly podcast. Take a copy of your highest graded paper from the last semester or your most recently published article. Read it aloud to a friend. Was it easy to read? To pay attention to? Do they remember what you said? One of the first things any podcaster learns is that writing for a listening audience uses a different author's toolkit. When we are listening, we absorb information, keep track of facts and characters, and visualize numbers and data differently. Furthermore, when we podcast, we are sharing our research stories with a public audience. The rhetoric and vocabulary we use to signal to peers that we too are conversant in disciplinary conventions can become alienating to a general audience. To be an effective and engaging podcast hosts, we need to master a new way to communicate. Let's consider eschewing jargon in favor of a welcoming vocabulary and exchanging formal presentation for friendly conversation. Below, we...
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Recording Podcast Audio

by Michelle WilsonNo Comments
Podcast Recording at Home If you have a little money to invest in purchasing audio recording equipment, there are many affordable options for recorders, or microphones that can connect to your phone or computer. The kind of microphone you choose will be influenced by price and also what kind of sound your podcast will require; for instance whether you plan to record single voices speaking directly to the microphone, need to capture sound from far away, or want to be able to collect multiple people talking at once or record environmental sounds. For additional information on selecting microphones and getting clean audio at home check out: "Recording Audio" from the Google/PRX Podcasting 101 series Audio Recorders from the Berkeley Advanced Media Institute Tips and tricks for recording at home Regardless of what equipment you are using, there are some simple tricks that you can keep in mind to improve the quality of your audio. 1. Choose your recording location wisely Find a space that is quietSmaller spaces will produce...
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