Author: abbymullen
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It’s Going OK
Over the past few days, I’ve been wrestling with a bizarre type of guilt: guilt that things are working. Like everyone, I moved my classes online after spring break at George Mason University. I teach two classes in the history department, one a 46-person class called “The Digital Past,” and one a 13-person topics in…
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Just Putting Words on “Paper”
These past few weeks have been full of “Big Emotions,” as we sometimes say around here. I am in a very privileged situation, with a steady job that isn’t going to disappear this semester, a nice house, kids who aren’t terrors, no worries about where the next meal is coming from. And yet. Sometimes the…
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Spellcast: A Podcast About Words
My daughter is really into the spelling bee at the moment (she’s in third grade and her school is doing the spelling bee). She brought home a spelling list, which we busted through in a few hours, with a respectably low number of misses. But I remember from my spelling bee days that I knew…
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First Day Exercise
I think of the first day of class as 1/3 user manual and 2/3 sales pitch—why should these students stay in this class? So making the first class interesting but also informative is critical. The goal for the first day is threefold: (1) Introduce the class’s content and responsibilities. (2) Give the students a feel…
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Podcasting in Class
I asked on Twitter yesterday if those who used podcast creation as part of their classes would share their materials or, even better, their podcasts. I got some pretty cool stuff. So here’s a roundup, possibly incomplete (the threads kind of got away from me a few times). If I’ve missed something you suggested, or…
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Student Communication: Pedagogy Musing #2
My self-maintained list of failings as a teacher is quite long. But I’d like to think that communicating with students outside of class is not on that list. I do everything in my power to make sure my students have ready access to me at all times. And yet it often feels like I’m not…
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Preble Hall Podcast: A Bit of Self-Promotion
A few weeks ago, I got to be the guest of Claude Berube, director of the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, on the new podcast from the museum, Preble Hall. It was really fun to talk First Barbary War with him. Give it a listen if you’re so inclined.
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Pedagogy Musing #1: Backward Design
[Note 1: Today is the 8th anniversary of my mother’s death. I’ve written about her before, but it seems fitting that I should write about her again as I start my promised series of blog posts musing about pedagogy. Note 2: This post is called “Musing” for a reason: it’s really just somewhat random thoughts…
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Using Tropy for the Classroom
It’s no secret that I’m a Tropy enthusiast. I often say that I would use and recommend Tropy even if I weren’t the principal investigator on the project. But this semester my work is divided between Tropy and teaching, on both the undergraduate and graduate level. And it turns out that pairing these things has…
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Digital Methods for Military History: An Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities
In October 2014, I ran a workshop at Northeastern University called “Digital Methods for Military History,” designed to (you guessed it) introduce digital history methods to military historians. It was a two-day event that covered a lot of ground, and many participants suggested that they’d like a longer period of instruction or a follow-up event.…