Digital Multimedia

In using tools like Omeka and the blogs, I was able to learn about the cities around the globe in ways I would never imagine before. Though much of this course was grounded in urban theory, film, and literature, using digital tools and multimedia platforms has allowed students to interact with the course material in an untraditional way. I absolutely believe that the integration of multimedia and digital tools has helped me gain a lot more from this course had we not had those things. I will explain the two key ways the digital tools and multimedia contributed to my coursework: peer sharing and interaction and change of format (essays being online and including pictures, videos, film clips, quotes, theory). In order to elaborate on how these methods affected the course I will explore four tools: Google Mapping, Omeka, Timeline, and the Blog.

Traditionally, humanities courses, in my experience, much more individualistic. There is not much, if any, interaction and exchange of ideas and responses between students, and most definitely not over a digital medium. If there was feedback to be received, it would always be hand written annotations on the sides of essays. However, the Blog posts in particular challenge that idea of individualism. We had to comment on each other’s blog posts throughout the course, and I found that I understood various works, themes, ideas, and cities as a whole in different ways than the other students. What I noticed was that each student would see something different, whether it be a completely different theme, or a different take on the same theme. The commentary I received also allowed me, for my Omeka essays, to focus on the flaws of my arguments and analysis and instead turn those into strengths to further my claim about a particular city, whether it be through other multimedia and texts or different Blackwell Reader theory. I also appreciated a lot of personal engagement, in that many of the blog posts involved personal knowledge whether from family, travel, or information from other courses. The information that I did not learn from lecture or from a text or film directly was both interesting and helpful in learning about the cities. Cities are layers, both at a physical level and at a personal level. Each person takes something away from a city and that conglomerate molds the culture and feeling of particular cities. Engaging with their work through the digital blog, both by reading and by commenting, has helped me develop a more broad and indepth contextualization and understanding of every city that we’ve written about.

Unfortunately, I do not have the funds to travel across the world to cities such as Moscow, but Google Maps has given me the opportunity to explore the city almost as if I was there. I especially appreciated the part of our Moscow assignment where we had to plot our sites on Google Maps, and though it was a bit tedious at first, the result was incredible. It was very interesting to see how my points looked on a broader perspective when it came to the city as a whole. When I looked at everybody else’s points based on their topics it struck me how so many things intersected even though the themes on the surface didn’t seem to be related. I was also surprised to learn just how big Moscow was. The feeling and knowledge I gained from the Google Maps is related to my earlier mentioned theme of peer sharing and interaction as a large benefit of the digital and multimedia tools used in the course.

Another big theme and way that the digital tools and multimedia both challenged me and enhanced the experience of the course for me was by completely changing the format of the traditional essay. Though the essential structure of our exhibits and blog posts included traditional essay components: thesis, introduction, body, and conclusion, our work was very different than anything I had ever done. The inclusion of multimedia such as screenshots of film as well as images was challenging to integrate into essays, but I fully believe that the multimedia added a visible dimension to all our work. It’s just like the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words” and in various instances the multimedia we included substantiated our work better than a page of verbal explanation could. Therefore, the inclusion of said media deeply contributed to all my projects and posts. The media other students chose was very intriguing as well, because for each city there seemed to be endless media, and the various mediums and choice showed me various aspects of each city that I would not have seen through my own work.

Overall, this course itself is very different than most things offered at Harvard. Harvard does not have a concentration on urban studies, which is a central focus of this course. Therefore, the course itself set up a lot of room for exploration that other courses didn’t provide at the college in terms of urban studies. The integration of multimedia and digital tools into the course provided me with a new way to learn not just through lecture and literature, but through my peers and through various mediums whether it be maps, film, or theory itself.