Peter Merholz posts about discovering that his house was once owned by a Japanese-American couple interned during World War II. For Peter, or anyone else interested in this topic, I'd recommend checking out Densho. They've collected hundreds of hours of oral history interviews and other material on the topic (internment/incarceration). There might even be interviews of people who were connected to Peter's community.
As an aside, the Densho project is a nice example of how technology is changing scholarship and history. Providing this wealth of information through the internet, with ample metadata, is pretty unusual in the archive world, I think. Granted, it has been five or six years since I've been in the academic history community. Back then, when I would talk to people about projects like Densho (I first met the Densho guys when I was a history grad student), folks would look at me funny. I don't think they quite grasped what a little technology could do. Maybe the new generation of historians is a bit more tech-savvy than the last...
I've been asked to post the list of topics I used in the retreat I wrote about the other day.
First, a few words on how I picked the topics. I billed this as an "emerging technology" retreat, but savvy readers will note that most of these trends have already emerged. But, as with any form of communication, the key is to know your audience. And, in this situation, we were covering many topics in which most members of the group had only a passing familiarity. Plus, most of the topics on the list have a direct connection to our work (proving online educational resources). Also, while some of these trends have been around for a couple of years, we don't yet have a good handle on their impact.
So, with the caveats aside, here's the list:
This past week I helped lead my co-workers in a retreat focused on emerging technology. I make it a point to try and stay on top of developments in the field with the help of 250+ RSS feeds. But for those whose jobs aren't primarily focused on technology, it made sense to use a retreat like this to ensure that we all have a common understanding of the top issues of the day, especially as they relate to our current and future work.
I really wanted to avoid a Karl-driven event, so I took a few pages from the unconference playbook. Devotees of this concept will no doubt notice that we skipped a few key features, like the self-organizing nature of the outline, but I think we still managed to capture the spirit.
To start with, I put together a list of about a dozen trends, with a very brief description of the trend, some introductory resources, and some probing questions. I let each participant (there were seven of us) pick a topic. Then, I gave them very minimal directions: they had an hour to address the topic in a computer lab. They could do anything, including lecture, discussion, or activity. The presentations didn't need to directly address our work, but they could (for those that didn't, we did post-session wrap-ups to capture relevant thoughts). Based on the topics chosen, I put together an introduction where I tried to raise a series of themes that I thought wove through the two days.
I was really pleased with the outcome. No two presentations ended up alike. We had a couple that were more lecture-style, but even those featured group activities. Others were discussion-heavy, and some relied on group activities. None of this was planned; it just organically happened, and it worked brilliantly.
And, by having the participants lead sessions, it ensured that everyone walked away with deep knowledge in at least one area.
I encourage you to give this style of professional development a try sometime. It worked quite nicely with this small group, and I imagine that the unconference idea would work nicely with larger groups, too.