Reading Then and Now

This past weekend, I attended the "Reading Then and Now" conference at the University of Virginia.  It was a wonderful event.  I came away with many new ideas and, of course, a new list of books to read.  Here are the highlights that I thought would be of use to teachers and students:



The UVa Scholars Lab has developed a collaborative reading/annotation space called PRISM.  There are many ways that teachers and students can use this, in fact, it is being used by the k-12 community in ways unexpected by the developers, which I think is fantastic.  The basic idea is that there is a text in the "window," which can be highlighted by individuals according to preset themes or ideas, or elements.  Then you can look at the passage and see what percentage of students marked which theme in what section.  If that is too confusing, try the PRISM tutorial on YouTube, embedded here.

It is meant to be a conversation starter for class discussion of a text.  Why did we all mark this?  Why did some of us mark the same section one way and some another, etc.  Even the presenters said that it isn't meant to be an end in itself, but it might be a way to infuse a little fun into something that students do not usually enjoy, annotating.  You can create your own Prisms, with uploaded text of your choice, and they can be private to your group or public.  It is definitely something worth trying out.

Juxta Commons is a tool that allows you to compare two (or more) versions of the same text.  The presenter I saw used it to look at two different editions of a published text, but students could conceivably use it to compare drafts of their own papers.  The main thing to remember is that Juxta collates different versions of the same text and shows you the differences, so it would not be something you would use widely, but it could be helpful in showing how much revising a student has done, or if you were looking at two versions of the same story, etc.





I had several nerdtastic moments while in Charlottesville.  First of all, there is something about a university founded by Thomas Jefferson, built on a farm once owned by James Monroe that lends it a certain gravitas.  It is a history nerd's version of heaven.  Then there is the added bonus of seeing Edgar Allan Poe's preserved dormitory room.  On display in the special collections were a first edition of Montaigne essays and an early edition of Hamlet (printed just after Shakespeare's death).  The keynote speaker was Andrew Piper from McGill University and, being a fan, I brought, Dreaming in Books along and asked him to sign it.  Yes, I am that big a nerd.  And finally, on the last day, I attended a talk in the Rare Book Room where I held in my hand an Aldus Manutius.  If you don't know what I am talking about, see my earlier post, here.  The photo to prove it...

Photo of Aldus Manutius Dolphin and Anchor taken with permission at the Alderman Library 4/6/2014

PS--for the full-length version of the paper I presented, see the link in the right sidebar under Workshop Handouts--"Men Reading Badly"