Tag Archives: workshops

Workshop: Recording Basics

On October 10, I attended one of a series of workshops presented by the CUNY New Media Lab on recording quality audio and visuals, which was presented to us in the context of workshops that would be helpful for researchers interested in digital archives.

The workshop was led by Stefano Morello and David Scheckel of the American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning, and covered basics technical aspects of video and audio recording.

The information I found the most helpful were the technical breakdowns of concepts like aperture, shutter speed, and ISO and how those all fit together into film exposure. The workshop also offered practical advice like examples of shot lists and the hot tip to always have technical redundancies on hand in case something isn’t charged or working for whatever reason. I have filmed projects before but largely flying by the seat of my pants, so having this professional breakdown was really helpful to me, and especially helped in thinking through my work plan for video interviewing in my final project proposal.

You can find the presentation slides in OneDrive, and both Stefano and David seem like great resources for any future questions!

Workshop: Beginning Game Design with Python

Back in October, I attended a workshop from GC Digital Fellow teaching attendees how to use pygame. I had previously used RenPy, a Python framework for writing visual novels, but hadn’t had much luck trying to learn game engines such as Godot. Before the workshop, our instructor, Zach, provided us with a GitHub link with the assets we’d need as well as instructions to download the pygame software. In addition to the images we’d need to create our game – a Frogger clone – we’d find a copy of the finished code, which we would use as a reference when building the game from scratch.

On the day of the workshop, Zach patiently took us through developing each aspect of the game, from the basic variables that we’d need to plug in later to a basic class for objects in the game to character movement. Along the way, he would mention additional measures that we could take on our own time, such as sealing off all four sides of the screen from player movement (meaning that the player can’t go “out of bounds” so to speak). I would often find myself detouring to tweak aspects of my game so that I could gain a deeper understanding of how each part of the code worked.

While we didn’t have time to get through the whole game, we had set up each element of the game and had the final code to reference after the workshop ended. At the end, we were challenged to tweak this final code to create a more interesting game, which I wound up doing. I took the challenge to have the treasure chest (the goal to complete the level) appear in a random position after the first level. I had the enemies increase in speed as the levels progressed at different rates, and moving in different directions. I also changed their movement pattern to loop around when they left the screen rather than bounce back and forth. I added a level counter, and had the game loop back to the first level in the event that the player loses. Through the workshop, I had the foundation and freedom that I needed to truly play and explore in the software.

This workshop, which uses free software and shares assets and instructions through a public repository on GitHub, made me think of our previous discussion on Open Educational Resources. The materials are freely available, and even without the guidance of the workshop, people can learn how to get started with pygame. Furthermore, although the project itself starts out fairly linearly, this form of instruction allows the participants the freedom to pursue their own interests with the software. For me, this is the best way to learn programming – to be able to not only ask your own questions, but answer them as well.

game play screenshot from my game "Frog-man"

Intro to Mapping with QGIS Reflection

On November 20th, I attended the Intro to Mapping with QGIS workshop led by Parisa Sateyesh through CUNY digital fellows. The workshop started with short introductions that included each participant’s interest in mapping with QGIS. I was excited for this workshop as it related to my final project goal of mapping language change in Scotland.  

I enjoyed the introduction to the practical part of the workshop. Ms. Sateyesh discussed how maps are not neutral representations of a universal reality, rather they are social constructs. Maps are tools of communication and are often used to represent relationships of power. Ms. Sateyesh shared her screen to show a fascinating map that questions our assumptions about the United States. It was a map of indigenous territories. Rather than the stark lines and colors separating the colonized states, this map had many overlapping structures and almost translucent colors to allow for the overlapping areas.  

I also enjoyed how Ms. Sateyesh went through chronologically the questions one must ask themselves when one wants to build a map. For example, one must ask “what story do I wish to tell?”, “What is my budget”, “What is my timeline?”, and “Do I want a static or interactive map?” Finally, one must find the proper data files to create a map. At the very least, one ust have a spatial data file that contains the geometry points to populate in QGIS. After that, one must gather the data files relevant to the research question. 

For the practical part of the workshop, we aimed to create a map of NYC that plots 10 popular sites to compare neighborhood data on median household income. To begin, we cleaned our data files and imported the spatial data into QGIS. I quickly found that my computer could not handle running zoom and QGIS at the same time. To continue with the workshop, I closed QGIS and followed along while taking notes on each step. Once it came time to import the secondary location data file, most of my peers had technical difficulties. The facilitators helped by explaining which settings to toggle, but it was unclear why those settings were that way. Overall, the technical difficulties took away some time and we did not end with the map we set out to create. During my mapping praxis project, I played around with QGIS before settling on Tableau for my final product. I found the ‘playing around’ and trial and error to be very effective in helping my understanding of the software. I did not find the workshop to help my understanding as much. 

Overall, I highly enjoyed the conceptual discussion on mapping with QGIS and the organization suggestions provided by the facilitators. 

Grant Writing Workshop

In late October, I attended a grant writing workshop hosted by the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy program. The workshop by Mieasia Edwards provided an overview of the grant writing processes and promoted group work and collaboration. Participants went into breakout rooms to discuss our proposals and gave each other advice and feedback. At the end of the workshop, we were also given time to create a white paper that could later be refined for grant applications.  

The workshop discussed the grant lifecycle, which includes seven steps: generating an idea, finding funding, developing a proposal, submitting it, negotiating and setting up an award, managing the award, and closing the project. There was also a lot of emphasis on defining the “why” of the research. I found this section particularly helpful when writing the abstract for the DH project. The workshop also provided a list of funding sources.

The section I found most helpful was the one that showed the grant lifecycle through the eyes of both a grantee and a grantor. It helped me understand what a grantor would look for, how to frame my proposal, and the importance of communicating my project’s significance.

Here is the link to the slides from the workshop: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1eUIruNjSa0ioWQZwhKBHWEJuoBT8HAHG/edit#slide=id.g2d4e7775594_0_31

I hope to use what I learned in last week’s class and the ITP workshop to help me with my project proposal!

#Blogpost: Intro to R Workshop.

On Thursday, October 11, 2024, at about 6 pm, I attended an insightful introduction to R workshop organized by Zachary Lloyd and Chen Zou, fellows at the Graduate Center Digital Initiatives (GCDI). The session was aimed at beginners and focused on the essentials of using R, an open-source programming language widely utilized for statistical analysis, data transformation, survey analysis, Machine Learning, etc.

While the w/shop was ongoing, I took minutes of the session, noting down highlights which made me miss some initial concepts in setting up the software for practice. I privately chatted with Chen during the workshop who was truly patient in carrying me along irrespective of my slow-paced learning curve of the tool. We were asked to create a posit account, which enabled us to access R on a cloud for practice.

The session began by distinguishing between R and RStudio, where R serves as the engine – the core programming language, while RStudio serves as the user-friendly interface (UI) where coding, data visualization, and manipulation take place that allows users to interact with R seamlessly. The instructor also introduced foundational concepts like Boolean operations (1/0, TRUE/FALSE, YES/NO), arithmetic functions (+,-, /,*), and vectors – which she mentioned are lists of items or variables of the same type. We also learned basic R syntax such as how to assign values to variables using the “<-” operator and how logical operations like `==` (equal to) and `!=` (not equal to) work in R.

One of the key takeaways was the instructor’s reiteration of the importance of practicing typing out codes instead of often falling for the temptation of copying and pasting, as it helps build muscle memory. The workshop also emphasized the value of making mistakes, which is a major part of the learning process in programming. As she mentioned, “Every programming language takes time to understand. It just takes consistent practice to become the best at it”.

We explored libraries like Tidyverse, a collection of packages designed to simplify data wrangling and visualization in R. Functions such as `view()` and `head()` were demonstrated for examining data, with the former opening a new page in RStudio and the latter displaying default the first six rows of a dataset in the console.

After being shown several examples, we did some practice exercises that enabled us to get a glimpse of how R functions. Most of my colleagues in the workshop seemed to be getting it, as there were multiple correspondences on the Zoom chat bar, which also meant that the workshop was hands-on.

On a final note, the workshop was a good introduction to R, emphasizing the importance of continuous practice and exploration. Whether for data visualization, machine learning, or statistical analysis, R offers a flexible and powerful toolset for data professionals.

Interestingly, the workshop ended at 8:04 pm with a Google digital evaluation form, which made me reflect on the increasing importance of digital documentation and feedback within digital humanities. As a potential digital humanist, every evaluation or rating not completed on a digital platform might as well be considered non-existent, reinforcing the role of digital tools in modern academic and research processes.

– Kelechi Iwuagwu (A Data Analysis & Viz CUNY GradCenter Candidate).

Intro to R Workshop

I attended the “Intro to R” workshop led by Chen Zhou and it was interesting to see, as a complete beginner how R is used. We discussed some of the top applications it’s used for which included statistical analyses, visualization, and data transformation. Our main program was the online version of RStudio on Posit Cloud. We also got to see how Chen is currently using R for a project she’s working on which addresses the difference between how men vs women pronounce vowels.

I did appreciate doing some basic exercises just to get familiar and practice with the syntax. We looked at basic functions and the use cases they could be applied to. Some of the syntax reminded me of other coding languages but other parts of it were completely new to me. For example, using pull and pipe to get the maximum value for a particular column in a dataset. Truthfully, unless it ends up being required for work or something equally important, I don’t plan on practicing R on my own time. I was more interested in seeing how it could be used for data viz, but we didn’t get that far since the workshop was only two hours and the majority of it was spent doing the exercises and discussing the answers.  I would’ve loved to see how it compares to other languages like d3.js or Seaborn in Python.

Overall, I liked the introduction to the coding language but wish we had more time to explore the data visualization side of it.

Two Workshops: “How do you DH?” and “Discovering NYC Open Data”

“How do you DH?” 

I attended the “How do you DH?” workshop on 7th October mainly to learn about the methods relevant to the field. The workshop briefly discussed the possible DH dissertation formats that could be either wholly digital or a mix of the traditional and digital approach and more importantly provided an overview of the methods employed. 

The presentation slides used in the session list the DH methods on slide 11 and the following slide lists a simplified version. The subsequent slides provide a couple of examples for each of the methods. Especially useful are links to text analysis tools such as Voyant (slide 17) that allow you to enter text and view the result immediately OR the data visualization catalogue (slide 23) that could be referenced for exploring the right tools for our project. 

The workshop ended with a breakout room session that allowed us to clarify the format and methods as each group reviewed the method and tools used in sample projects. The exercise was adapted from the Miriam Posner video, “How Did They Make That?” that we discussed in our September 11th class.

Discovering NYC Open Data

Last week, I attended the NYC Open Data class run by the Open Data Ambassadors Program. The workshop provided a quick overview of the history of open data, other available resources and the instructor demonstrated site navigation, finding, reading, filtering and visualizing datasets. The session was informative, although if you have explored the site beforehand some of the content around site navigation might be redundant. The session will be good for people new to the site as you are encouraged to follow along on your own devices.

Recordings of earlier sessions are available here along with a list of additional resources, and useful applications available in the NYC Open Data Project Gallery such as the NYC Population FactFinder. There was a useful Q&A session at the end of the workshop and they mentioned that their team is usually very responsive to queries received online as well. If you are interested in attending one of their monthly sessions, check out their class schedule.

Workshop 2: How do you do DH?

Today I attended another GC Digital Initiatives workshop How do you do DH? It was presented by a fellow DH student. In it, we were given a general overview of what DH is and why it might be used. We talked about different methods and tools used within DH. There was some interactivity to check for understanding, and to also gain insight on participant’s individual interests. 

We also participated in a breakout room group activity where we were given a project to analyze to determine if it was a DH project, what methods and tools were used, and if the project was successful in whatever goal it had intended to pursue. Projects ranged from dissertations simply published online, a podcast series as dissertation, a gamified DH experience, and an online digital exhibit. 

Overall, this was a good introduction to the topic, especially if one is completely new to DH. I made sure to save a copy of the slides which included links to helpful websites to determine which tools to use for what methods. The presentation was very approachable, and made me want to seek out other workshops from the GC Digital Initiatives in the future.

Workshop: Intro to Python

Today I attended the GC Digital Initiatives online workshop Intro to Python. The session was 2-hours long, which is about as long as you would like a workshop to be to not get total brain fatigue. However, as may be evident, Python is a complex tool that requires hours of dedication to understand and then experiment with implementing. 

I have no experience with this programming language, and felt like I was in the right place. The level of the content was right from the beginning, providing baby steps to start to understand the foundation of the logic of this tool. As discussed in a previous class, we worked synchronously together through a new asynchronous tutorial offered via the DHRIFT site. This provided a clear and organized structure for the class, as well as an aesthetically pleasing, but also delightfully minimal visual to follow along with. 

We were introduced to types, variables, running scripts, functions, errors, lists, and more. Cleverly the DHRIFT site had a live Python code editor embedded into the page so we could all practice without needing to download and install any software, or be moving back and forth through several windows. The moderator engaged us in thinking through problems and there were mini-quizzes we did together to check our understanding. 

Overall it was a good experience, and was professionally and kindly done. Just for my own personal sake, I am not wrapping my head around how this tool is actually used and implemented and if it is worth the time vs. output ratio. I think I would really need to put in some serious hours to begin to crack this code. All in all though, it was good. Again, just personally, I think I would rather pursue other digital tools that are more approachable before diving into Python. 

As mentioned already in class, I think the DHRIFT site is a great (and developing) site to find asynchronous and approachable tutorials for a variety of digital tools. I am looking forward to checking out their text mining tutorial next.