Teaching | MUSEUM FATIGUE

Breakout Discussion Groups in Minecraft

March 6, 2021 by Museum Fatigue

For the past few weeks I have been thinking about ways to standardize group discussions in Mineclass, yet not lose the spatial/creative component that is so special about working in Minecraft. When the semester first started I created breakout groups in Zoom audio and just asked students run off to some random place in-world to cooperatively construct a space and have their discussions. An unexpected side effect of that decision, however, has been that as groups have continued to use […]

Categories: Digital Anthropology, Teaching • Tags: breakout groups, class discussion, mineclass, Minecraft

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Week Two: Object, Place, Making, Beauty

February 6, 2021 by Museum Fatigue

This week, digital anthropology started with a few kinks to work out. Most importantly I needed to figure out how to free my class from various forms of entrapment and entombment in The Nether, and then get us all back to our cave classroom in The Overworld. On Tuesday I ran the first part of class on Zoom so that we could get through the discussion and content that I had planned in the syllabus. At the end of class, […]

Categories: Digital Anthropology, Teaching • Tags: mineclass, Minecraft

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So, I Buried My Anthropology Class Alive…

January 30, 2021 by Museum Fatigue

After my previous post about teaching a class in Minecraft, I had hoped that right now I would be excitedly tapping-out a follow-up post filled with cool descriptions and anecdotes of success. Sadly, as things turned out, on the second day of the semester I frustratingly entombed my entire class together in the fiery rocks of The Nether. Some backstory. When we started our second class it was clear that the Minecraft experiment had generated some heat. Students seemed engaged […]

Categories: Digital Anthropology, Teaching • Tags: mineclass, Minecraft, teaching

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Teaching a College Class in Minecraft?

January 27, 2021 by Museum Fatigue

Humans.Machines.Pandemic.Presence. Meeting online presents a challenge because we are synchronized in time, but not in place. While it might seem we are “together apart” like the advertisements proclaim, we aren’t together at all. Platforms like Zoom or Google Meets offer a stream of visual and audio information about what is going on in different places—making our synchronous exchanges more communicative, but the platform isn’t really anywhere. It just transfers incomplete flows of information about us across digital space that are […]

Categories: Digital Anthropology, Teaching • Tags: mineclass, Minecraft, pandemic, presence, virtual life

Require Presence in Virtual Classes, but Keep Cameras Optional

January 15, 2021 by Museum Fatigue

The question of presence in online classrooms is so interesting. Do we require students to have cameras on or off? How can one be virtually present online, when all they need to do in an actual classroom is show up and breathe—precisely what we want to avoid during a pandemic! Requiring cameras turned on in a virtual environment is an easy equivalent to just sitting in class, and does make students accountable for at least the minimal engagement of showing […]

Categories: Teaching • Tags: cameras, online teaching, surveillance

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Milanote is My Tool For Teaching in a Pandemic

August 6, 2020 by Museum Fatigue

This past spring semester, when all classes went online during the Coronavirus pandemic, I was suddenly in need of a way to keep my students connected and able to work together. I needed something that ideally would work for my discussion-heavy senior seminar that was working through some tough texts, and also be useful for intense group video documentary work being done in a visual anthropology class. Everyone was under a lot of stress so I wanted something to which […]

Categories: Teaching, Technology • Tags: group work, Milanote, online teaching, remote teaching, software

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Have Mobile Phones In the Classroom Reached Their Calculator Moment?

February 9, 2015 by Museum Fatigue

Last week, while reviewing our class syllabus on the first day, I made a decision to do a little experiment. Rather than make the announcement that mobile phones should be turned off during class, I did the opposite. I told my visual anthropology class that unrestricted use of mobile phones in class would be allowed this semester. Allowing all students to use their devices freely at all times seems very counterintuitive. In fact, even now I am concerned that in […]

Categories: Education, Higher Education, Teaching, Technology • Tags: calculator, classroom experience, iPhone, mobile phone, technology, TI-35

HU Visual Anthropology Class in the Local Newspaper

March 14, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

I was really excited an proud to see that this semester’s Visual Anthropology class got a writeup in this past Monday’s local newspaper. Mila Koumpilova, an education reporter at the Pioneer Press, visited our class the week before, sat through some student projects, interviewed students and then went to observe a filming session with a student and neighbor. Her article, “Film anthropology class bridges gap between Hamline U and neighborhood,” does a great job summarizing the history, goals and pedagogy of the class in a […]

Categories: Anthropology, Teaching, Visual Anthropology, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: Hamline University, Hamline-Midway Neighborhood, neighborhood, news, Robert Flaherty, Saint Paul Pioneer Press, student projects, Visual Anthropology Class

Class Lectures: The Content of the Form

January 26, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

I just reviewed course evaluations from last semester. Overall they were quite positive and some had some useful feedback. My favorite comment: “The teaching style was my favorite. I’ve never seen anybody draw and write such illegible things that end up making me understand exactly what is being said. It’s quite funny to me.” It just so happens that I have an image from the class to which I think this student was referring. I am a firm believer that […]

Categories: Higher Education, Teaching • Tags: course evaluations, Hamine University, student evaluations

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The Content of the Form

January 14, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

I just reviewed course evaluations from last semester. Overall they were quite positive, with useful feedback. My favorite comment from my Development to Globalization class: “The teaching style was my favorite. I’ve never seen anybody draw and write such illegible things that end up making me understand exactly what is being said. It’s quite funny to me.” While I wouldn’t say all of my whiteboards are illegible, and I would tend to blame the low quality of whiteboards and markers […]

Categories: Development to Globalization, Teaching • Tags: course evaluations, student comments

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