The Open Digital Archaeology Textbook Environment is a collaborative writing project led by myself, Neha Gupta, Michael Carter, and Beth Compton. (See earlier posts on this project here). We recognize that this is a pretty big topic to tackle. We would like to invite friends and allies to become co-authors with us. Contact us by Jan 31st; see below.
Here is the current live draft of the textbook. It is, like all live-written openly accessible texts, a thing in the process of becoming, replete with warts, errors, clunky phrasing, and odd memos-to-self. I’m always quietly terrified to share work in progress, but I firmly believe in both the pedagogical and collegial value of such endeavours. While our progress has been a bit slower than one might’ve liked, here is where we currently stand:
- We’ve got the framework set up to allow open review and collaboration via the Hypothes.is web annotation framework and the use of Github and gh-pages to serve up the book
- The book is written in the bookdown framework with R Markdown and so can have actionable code within it, should the need arise
- This also has the happy effect of making collaboration open and transparent (although not necessarily easy)
- The DHBox computational environment has been set up and is running on Carleton’s servers. It’s currently behind a firewall, but that’ll be changing at some point during this term (you can road-test things on DHBox)
- We are customizing it to add QGIS and VSFM and some other bits and bobs that’d be useful for archaeologists. Suggestions welcome
- We ran a test of the DHBox this past summer with 60 students. My gut feeling is that not only did this make teaching easier and keep all the students on the same page, but the students also came away with a better ability to roll with whatever their own computers threw at them.
- Of six projected chapters, chapter one is in pretty good – though rough – shape
So, while the majority of this book is being written by Graham, Gupta, Carter and Compton, we know that we are leaving a great deal of material un-discussed. We would be delighted to consider additions to ODATE, if you have particular expertise that you would like to share. As you can see, many sections in this work have yet to be written, and so we would be happy to consider contributions aimed there as well. Keep in mind that we are writing for an introductory audience (who may or may not have foundational digital literacy skills) and that we are writing for a linux-based environment. Whether you are an academic, a professional archaeologist, a graduate student, or a friend of archaeology more generally, we’d be delighted to hear from you.
Please write to Shawn at shawn dot graham at carleton dot ca to discuss your idea and how it might fit into the overall arc of ODATE by January 31st 2018. The primary authors will discuss whether or not to invite a full draft. A full draft will need to be submitted by March 15th 2018. We will then offer feedback. The piece will go up on this draft site by the end of the month, whereupon it will enjoy the same open review as the other parts. Accepted contributors will be listed as full authors, eg ‘Graham, Gupta, Carter, Compton, YOUR NAME, 2018 The Open Digital Archaeology Textbook Environment, eCampusOntario…..
For help on how to fork, edit, make pull requests and so on, please see this repo
Featured Image: “My Life Through a Lens”, bamagal, Unsplash
