Cultural Studies Course Environments/Multimedia Database Annotator

A common challenge to University faculty using technology in their teaching is taking the assets that they use (slides, images, movies, audio, text) and integrating them into a meaningful course environment. The database model is a way for faculty to put their content online in an organized layout that connects different media in nontraditional ways. The Multimedia Database Annotator allows Web access to indexed video content, produces a browseable storyboard of images based on video keyframes, supports the addition of editorial annotations, and provides the foundation for creating and maintaining a dynamic video-rich course Web site.

Professor John Broughton of Teachers College in partnership with CCNMTL is developing a database to store information and pointers to video clips, image sequences, movie summaries, commentary, screenplays, and relevant supplementary resources. The need for the database evolved out of Broughton's desire to have students to have wide access to a wide variety of media and make connections among them. The database includes moving video excerpts, selected frame sequences, filmed guest lectures, selected course lectures, and student annotations on all of the above. All are searchable by keywords and lecture themes. The Multimedia Database Annotator is easily incorporated into a Web learning environment.

Historical Studies for the Sociomedical Sciences

CCNMTL is working with professors Amy Fairchild and David Rosner to develop a Web based research, study and communications environment that will transform the way they teach their history courses. Typically, educational technologies are developed or implemented with a certain course in mind. While the tools often enhance or augment that course in unique and valuable ways, the overall structure of the course remains the same. In the case of "Historical Studies for the Sociomedical Sciences", CCNMTL has collaborated with the faculty to develop and implement educational tools that will fundamentally change the dynamics of research and teaching.

Students in multiple courses will be contributing to and taking from research conducted on an online forum. Moreover, that forum is organized into divisions that correspond with the iterative steps with which successful historians approach their materials. Those steps are (1) problem identification (2) hypothesis (3) analysis and (4) source identification. Students and faculty are able to communicate with each other and share data across each of these steps. For example, students can post and critique hypotheses that stem from problems that are originally identified. Analysis, which takes the form of student-driven multimedia essays, follow the hypotheses and can be assessed by any of the students or faculty associated with the courses. Finally, sources that students identify online, or scan and upload, can be shared across classes, and annotated by those course participants.

This configuration of tools, then, promises to help students understand the way in which professional historians approach problems, and enhance their ability to use resources in an authentic manner. Success with the tool will likely portend changes in the way in which history courses are organized and taught at the college and university levels.

Multimedia Template: "The Art World" by Arthur C. Danto

Danto's "Art World" MMT, being developed in collaboration with Michael Kelly, will allow students into the art world of mid-1960s America. Columbia University's Professor Emeritus Arthur C. Danto published "The Artworld" in October, 1964, and it instantly became a touchstone of scholarly debate. Writing in response to a show of Andy Warhol's work at the Stable Gallery in April 1964, Danto sought to lay out the basic principles of the philosophy of art he developed over the next few decades, and combine it with a number of different theories of art current at the time. By including other scholarly and theoretical works treating the theory of aesthetics, and populating the site with visual imagery from a variety of art media to help document what was happening in aesthetics, art theory, and the arts circa 1964, students will come to appreciate the originality of Danto's thought and how he was influenced especially by the New York art scene. In addition to relevant texts and digital representations of art works, the MMT will include interviews with Professor Danto.

"The Art World" by Arthur C. Danto

Multimedia Template: Hell's Kitchen South Project

Hell's Kitchen South Project

Multimedia Template: On Christian Doctrine by Saint Augustine

On Christian Doctrine by Saint Augustine

Multimedia Template: Paradise Lost, Book IX by John Milton

Paradise Lost, Book IX by John Milton

Multimedia Template: Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by Fredric Jameson

Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

Multimedia Template: Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke

Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke

Multimedia Template: The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois

In concert with four University Professors, CCNMTL produced The Souls of Black Folk, a multimedia project exploring one of the central works of African-American culture of the twentieth century. W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was a distinguished editor, historian, sociologist, political activist, and renowned author. While serving as professor of economics, history, and economics at Atlanta University, Du Bois published his collection of essays The Soul of Black Folk (1903), which called for the African American middle class to mobilize itself against bigoted racial policies. The multimedia project refers to both historical events and biographical experiences as a means to deepen the user's understanding of the text. This multimedia treatment of the entire text includes archival film footage, "Sorrow Song" recordings for nearly 30 spirituals, and over 150 texts and documents written by or to Dr. Du Bois that have a direct bearing on Souls. This multimedia version of The Souls of Black Folk also contains interviews with Columbia University faculty members Manning Marable, Casey Blake, Robert O'Meally, and Alan Brinkley on a variety of topics germane to the major issues and themes of the work.

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois

Multimedia Template: Television's Screens: Hegemony in Transition by Todd Gitlin

Television's Screens: Hegemony in Transition by Todd Gitlin

Multimedia Template: The Tragedie of King Lear by William Shakespeare

The Tragedie of King Lear by William Shakespeare

Showcase: The Tragedie of King Lear

Multimedia Template: Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Using CCNMTL's multimedia template (MMT) as its infrastructure, CCNMTL is working to re-present the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to the many Columbia students who study it each semester in several schools throughout the University. While each of the thirty articles in the declaration, and the preamble that introduces them, is written in terse, legal language, the history that has forged that language is nuanced, vast, and fascinating. The UDHR MMT promises to offer a unique glimpse into historical events that lead to the document's creation, events contemporaneous with that creation, and history that has been altered as a result of the UDHR's existence.

Serving as the spine of the project, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will be placed in a multi-layered context of the past, adoption (1948), present, and future. The project benefits from the outstanding Human Rights resources that exist at Columbia. These include the Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School, the Center for the Study of Human Rights, and a host of faculty who are involved in teaching materials related to the UDHR. The UDHR multimedia template will incorporate various media components such as photographs, images, video, notes, glossary, cross references to other Columbia University sites, course-specific bulletin boards, concise bibliographies, scholarly articles, and links to sites on the World Wide Web. In addition, CCNMTL and its faculty partners, will interview and capture on video several Columbia University faculty who were instrumental to the construction and adoption of the document in 1948.

Pierrot Lunaire

The Pierrot Lunaire Project, being developed in collaboration with Professor Ian Bent, explores the world of Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire. French poet Albert Giraud published his lyrical and fantastic poem cycle Pierrot Lunaire in its totality as 50 Rondels of Bergamo in 1884. The cycle was subsequently translated into German in 1895 and 1911. Soon thereafter, Schoenberg set 21 of the poems to music.

The project Web site will include the original French version of all 50 poems, in addition to the German translation. English translations of both French and German poems will populate the site as well. An archive will eventually include all critical reviews of performances, performance contracts, the musical score, French and German recitations of the poems, an on-stage performance of Pierrot Lunaire produced by Prof. Bent and CCNMTL, and other subsidiary documents and images that illuminate Schoenberg's masterful work. Scholarly presentations of medieval roudeau, cabaret, and Commedia dell'arte will also be incorporated into the site. These features will allow students to more fully understand and appreciate Schoenberg's artistic landmark.