I am a part of a team of students, scholars, entrepreneurs, and volunteers who are building a digital library and genealogical/family history database for African Americans (Gullah-Geechee) in coastal Georgia and their “distant relatives” in Sierra Leone. The purpose of this project, sponsored by the Carlton-Carew Ep Foundation, is to exchange resources and ideas, initiating a dialogue to bridge cultural, historical, technological and economic divides in the present. At THATCamp I would like to share the goals for this project, find new friends and partners, and most importantly get feedback and suggestions on how to incorporate emerging technologies into this project.

For those who don’t know, Khan Academy is a website of over 3200 short videos on such topics as math (from basic all the way up to calculus), physics (from just a little above my head to way above my head), finance, art and history.

Duolingo is an innovative language learning platform where users learn a language for free while translating the world wide web at the same time.

Both of these sites incorporate some of the ideas included within the Digital Humanities Glossary that Michelle posted: Digital Pedagogy, Digital Teaching, Flattening Learning Curve, Flipped Classroom and Gamification.

I am proposing a session in which we go through the websites Khanacademy.org and Duolingo.com (I have established accounts with both) and use them as a context for a discussion on the concepts above. More importantly, of course, the discussion will be used to generate thoughts about what we can do as educators to use these technologies and others like them to maximum benefit. Or perhaps we should be creating our own technologies?

If you haven’t used these sites, I encourage you to check them out. They’re actually pretty fun.

Michael Luther
Reference Librarian
Robert W. Woodruff Library