4/10/2014
I explored the Google Sky to see if I can use it for my Astronomy course. The tool is sill under development, so it's not as sophisticated as Google Earth. We can not navigate to get anywhere we want to go as we can with Google Earth, and the map is not 3-d. Instead, it's a huge collection of beautiful pictures of the universe, including different constellations, galaxies, planets, etc. , which serves well as visualizations of different objects and phenomena in the universe. I look forward to seeing more happening with this google tool. It could be very useful for any level of study of the universe.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Monday, March 10, 2014
Blog Post #4 - My Project Idea
3/7/2014
I have been thinking about how to effectively apply the techniques and methods I have learned in our PLS seminars to my teaching of science courses. It is not very straightforward for me because science teaching is not quite the same as humanities teaching. For me, most techniques or apps/tools we use to do text analysis cannot be organically incorporated into my science teaching.
I did some"out of the box" thinking and finally came up with a very good idea: Instead of using the text analysis and other tools which works better for humanities and less appropriate for sciences, especially physics/astronomy teaching, I am going to construct a pool of tools/apps for physics and astronomy teaching and post the links on my ePortfoio or Blackboard. These links will be open to all my students and colleagues, especially adjunct faculty members,who usually are not expected to devote as much time to pedagogy research as we full-time faculty are.
I have been thinking about how to effectively apply the techniques and methods I have learned in our PLS seminars to my teaching of science courses. It is not very straightforward for me because science teaching is not quite the same as humanities teaching. For me, most techniques or apps/tools we use to do text analysis cannot be organically incorporated into my science teaching.
I did some"out of the box" thinking and finally came up with a very good idea: Instead of using the text analysis and other tools which works better for humanities and less appropriate for sciences, especially physics/astronomy teaching, I am going to construct a pool of tools/apps for physics and astronomy teaching and post the links on my ePortfoio or Blackboard. These links will be open to all my students and colleagues, especially adjunct faculty members,who usually are not expected to devote as much time to pedagogy research as we full-time faculty are.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Post #3 - Exploring Text Visualization Tools
2/7/2014I selected a book from Project Gutenberg titled as " The Evolution of Modern Medicine- a Series of Lectures Delivered at Yale University " by William Osler in April, 1913.
The above word cloud was created using Wordle based on the whole text of the book.
And then I created a visualization of the same text using the Voyant Visualization tool. It gave me a summary as follows:
- There is 1 document in this corpus with a total of 66,108 words and 9,270 unique words.
- Most frequent words in the corpus: the (5,782), of (3,853), and (2,154), in (1,776), to (1,349).
And a visualized graph was generated as shown below:
The experiments with these text analysis tools were fun and pretty easy to use. I believe students will love this.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Post #2 Challenges and Opportunities in the Digital Humanities
2/4/2014
I read the NYT article "Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches" by Patricia Cohen. This article mainly discussed the challenges humanists are facing when it comes to digital humanities. More specifically, how big data are changing the scope and the way humanist do research.
In this article, the author mentioned that "Digital humanities scholars also face a more practical test: What knowledge can they produce that their predecessors could not?" In other words, what can humanists do with the unprecedented data available to them and what conclusions can they draw from them?
After reading the article, I personally think digital humanities is more like an opportunity than challenge to humanists. Most time, a good book, an amazing movie, a fantastic musical may mean different things to different people. The impact of them is in our hearts, in our mind, hard to describe accurately, even harder to share sometimes. But with digital tools, imaginations, pictures in our mind, even feelings can be built into a concrete object. More amazingly, a lot of people can work together to make it more accurate, comprehensive and delicate.
To me, this evolution in humanities is very similar to the evolution form 2D to 3D movies in the film-making industry. It's not destroying something old and building something new. Instead it's develop new things on the basis of old things.
There are challenges, but more opportunities coming with it. Every one should embrace this new era or big data, both scientists and humanists!
I read the NYT article "Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches" by Patricia Cohen. This article mainly discussed the challenges humanists are facing when it comes to digital humanities. More specifically, how big data are changing the scope and the way humanist do research.
In this article, the author mentioned that "Digital humanities scholars also face a more practical test: What knowledge can they produce that their predecessors could not?" In other words, what can humanists do with the unprecedented data available to them and what conclusions can they draw from them?
After reading the article, I personally think digital humanities is more like an opportunity than challenge to humanists. Most time, a good book, an amazing movie, a fantastic musical may mean different things to different people. The impact of them is in our hearts, in our mind, hard to describe accurately, even harder to share sometimes. But with digital tools, imaginations, pictures in our mind, even feelings can be built into a concrete object. More amazingly, a lot of people can work together to make it more accurate, comprehensive and delicate.
To me, this evolution in humanities is very similar to the evolution form 2D to 3D movies in the film-making industry. It's not destroying something old and building something new. Instead it's develop new things on the basis of old things.
There are challenges, but more opportunities coming with it. Every one should embrace this new era or big data, both scientists and humanists!
Friday, January 24, 2014
Post #1 Beyond Two Cultures
Jan. 24 2014
My name is Xin Gao. I am new here are LaGuardia as an Assistant Professor in the Natural Sciences Department, teaching Physics.
Students in my classes are mostly engineer or Math and Science majors. Most of them have pretty good science and math literacy. I am not sure if students feel a tension between Science/Math and the humanities. I personally love literature and do not feel these two areas conflict with each other. The digital tools actually makes it easy for me to read. There are many free books online. Instead of carrying a heavy book in my handbag. I just open an app in my cellphone and start reading whatever I like on my way to work/home. Without these tools, I would not be able to spare time to read this much.
For students, I think digital tools will do the same to them. No matter the student is a Humanities major or a Science major, it is only easier for them to pick up some knowledge from the other side with today's new technological gadgets.
I think when people say "two cultures", they mean the way scientists think maybe different from the way humanists think. It is possibly true. But it doesn't mean these two thinking methods conflicts with each other. I truly believe one can be both rational and perceptual. It just depends on the situations. That's also why great scientist as Einstein can play the violin very well. In this sense, "two cultures" do not only conflict with each other, but also compliment each other.
We all have potentials. We just need to explore them and give them the opportunities to develop.
My name is Xin Gao. I am new here are LaGuardia as an Assistant Professor in the Natural Sciences Department, teaching Physics.
Students in my classes are mostly engineer or Math and Science majors. Most of them have pretty good science and math literacy. I am not sure if students feel a tension between Science/Math and the humanities. I personally love literature and do not feel these two areas conflict with each other. The digital tools actually makes it easy for me to read. There are many free books online. Instead of carrying a heavy book in my handbag. I just open an app in my cellphone and start reading whatever I like on my way to work/home. Without these tools, I would not be able to spare time to read this much.
For students, I think digital tools will do the same to them. No matter the student is a Humanities major or a Science major, it is only easier for them to pick up some knowledge from the other side with today's new technological gadgets.
I think when people say "two cultures", they mean the way scientists think maybe different from the way humanists think. It is possibly true. But it doesn't mean these two thinking methods conflicts with each other. I truly believe one can be both rational and perceptual. It just depends on the situations. That's also why great scientist as Einstein can play the violin very well. In this sense, "two cultures" do not only conflict with each other, but also compliment each other.
We all have potentials. We just need to explore them and give them the opportunities to develop.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Ideas for Seminar Projects Using DH
1/10/2014
I did some research and "discovered" a bunch of websites for physics simulations and videos, such as:
Phet
MPEA
MyPhysicsLab
In the project, I will re-design the lectures for the course I am teaching and incorporate the simulation videos in my teaching.
I did some research and "discovered" a bunch of websites for physics simulations and videos, such as:
Phet
MPEA
MyPhysicsLab
In the project, I will re-design the lectures for the course I am teaching and incorporate the simulation videos in my teaching.
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