Coding Concepts for the Humanities: Simpsons CSS

Coding Concepts for the Humanities: Simpsons CSS

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Web developer Chris Pattle posted a CSS side project onto Github that renders characters from the TV show The Simpsons using CSS.

Project Page with CSS Code

He first broke the characters down into simple shapes, as an artist may do when geometricizing a figure, and then tackled the more complex shapes and finishing touches.

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By using a CSS style tester such as CSSDESK, you can help your students work on their web development skills in CSS by having them tweak the Simpsons characters. They will need both the CSS code and the HTML code of their favorite character to begin to work on this. If they are really ambitious, they can try their own hand at rendering cartoons (or perhaps create cartoons of philosophers, explorers or sonneteers?) themselves.

My own example — of course I chose Lisa!

Emerging digital humanists looking to change a character’s color would at least have to look up both the HTML hex color code and the RGB numbers as well. If she is interested in changing the pupil sizes, or making the character cross-eyed, she would look under the pupil headings. A possible assignment based off of this would be to give Bart, Lisa, or Maggie rainbow-colored hair, with each hair portion (they are numbered in the original code) a different color.

Word Processor Zen

Word Processor Zen

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Students who are getting increasingly accustomed to the minimalism of mobile device apps may find Microsoft Office’s Word to be a bit cumbersome. While the open source freeware LibreOffice and the cloud-based and collaboration-friendly Google Drive are readily available to students who have modest financial means or an aversion toward the older-feeling Microsoft Office Suite, there are additional options to inspire students when writing assignments for class.

So-called “zenware” word processors allow writers to write without distraction, often with ambient colors, scenery, and music or sound playing in the background. Buttons are not always visible, saving people from clutter from too many controls.

eh-hem

Meditative word processors can provide a great venue to encourage creative and scholarly juices to get flowing, and are ideally-suited for low-stakes and expressive writing assignments. Sometimes, more formal research papers may require higher-level formatting that even Google Docs cannot provide in its current iteration.

Here are some software examples to explore:

OmmWriter provides a distraction-free and beautiful design in order to facilitate much-needed focus on writing. Its controls disappear and reappear as one navigates towards or away from them. The backgrounds, colors, and sounds have been chosen with creativity and tranquility in mind, according to the developers. The price is suggested at $4.11, and it is available for Mac, PC and iPad. See OmmWriter in action via video.

ZenWriter, similarly, also offers a peaceful space for committing thoughts to “page.” This software also incorporates music and backgrounds in an effort to create a calm environment for the writer. I especially like that you can choose to write in “day mode” or “night mode,” perfect for early birds or night owls respectively. Keystrokes can be given audio functionality, and work is saved automatically. Still, it is limited in its scope and does not offer many formatting options. ZenWriter is available for Windows at the price of $9.95. Here is a short video review with demo.

WriteMonkey is also for Windows and offers a simplistic and distraction-free design with little information about the document you are working on displayed on-screen. For those interested in a more robust experience, there are a variety of plugins available to donors, but the program can be downloaded for free. A quick review and demonstration of WriteMonkey.

Paper by 53 offers an iPad app for those of us who like to write directly (like with a pencil) or to sketch along with writing during brainstorming sessions, but who still realize that keeping it digitally (so that you can save it to the cloud) is a good way to go. This app really brings out a lot of the great features of the iPad, and utilizes natural motions as commands (such as the cool rewind/undo feature). It is free to download, but there are several in-app purchasing opportunities to buy more tools, etc. It also would help to have a stylus you are comfortable with. Here is a thorough review of an earlier version of Paper.

A screenshot of writing/doodling on Paper.

Female Students and Online Participation

Female Students and Online Participation

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At a Writing Across the Curriculum symposium I attended earlier this year, a music professor presented some observations of student engagement from her experience in facilitating student blogs within her classroom. She asked students to submit reviews of music performances and also to comment on each other’s blog posts. Though female students and male students equally submitted the initial review blog posts, only male students commented on these posts.

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Immediately, I thought of how the Internet can be a hostile place for women.

Because of intersectionality, numerous groups of people may feel excluded from any given assignment within a classroom environment, and it is important to foster a welcoming atmosphere that addresses the concerns of every student.

In the article, How to Stop the Online Harassment of Female Journalists (which also has a problematic comment), the interviewed writer Ann Friedman has a few suggestions for how to prevent misogynist trolling in comments sections. She believes small communities and comment moderation can curb this behavior, which should be possible to achieve in a closed online learning environment. Additionally, she suggests having commenters log in through Facebook so that their real names are associated with their remarks. This may not be as applicable to the online classroom, as students who do participate in hate speech will likely face institutional consequences.

Counter to this, it may be advantageous to allow students to anonymize themselves (by using neutral handles such as “Anon 1,” “Anon 2,” etc.), and to only offer comment credit if all 25 of your students do comment on a given post (this would also compel students to self-enforce). That way, female students do not feel singled out. Of course, if students do leave confrontational comments this can backfire, so it may be worth looking into allowing admins, such as professors, to see who the commenter is, without permitting student users to.

Mya Poe also has some interesting thoughts on designing assignments for racially diverse students, which may be applicable here. In her article “Re-Framing Race in Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum,” she argues that race should be situated locally:

Instead of starting with generalizations about teaching writing to racially diverse student populations, it is better to start with discussions about local students and local needs. By describing specific students — students in our classrooms and programs — we can root our conversations locally, where all teaching and assessment stories should begin.

That is, it can be more productive to think about your individual students in your current course or academic program, rather than to think more abstractly about the gender, race, religion, first language, or national origin of your students. This may be where we can begin to address disproportionate involvement online, though armed with the knowledge that different groups of people may have different experiences with online forums, and may therefore be more adverse to engaging with that platform.