FAQ

FAQ & Helpful Hints

Workbench? Content? JupyterLab? What?

There are two interconnected components to this course.

  1. This website: it is the overarching context for what I am trying to teach you re digital archaeology. It specifies what to read and listen and do each week. Most of the time, when I want you to do something, it will be at your workbench.
  2. The workbench. The workbench is made of two things:
    a. JupyterLab Desktop: this is an application that you download and install. When you first run it, if you’ve never done any kind of coding work, it will ask you if you want to install the bundled Python. You say ‘yes’. This platform lets us do a variety of computational approaches to archaeology.
    b. The content: this is a folder of markdown text files and ‘jupyter notebook’ files that together help you do the exercises I want you to try. A markdown text file is signalled by the file extension .md (just like a word document is signalled by the file extension .doc and a pdf by .pdf). A file that ends in .ipynb is a special kind of text file that JupyterLab Desktop recognizes as combining text and code. JupyterLab Desktop enables us to run the code and manipulate the results. I sometimes call these ‘computational notes’ or ’notebooks’ or ‘jupyter files’.

Instructions on how to install all of this is here. See also week 1

A special feature of the JupyterLab Desktop is a custom extension I built for it that turns it into a note-making application. Thus, I want you to make new markdown files inside the content folder I give you where you keep notes on your observations and experiments, thoughts and readings. These notes can be interlinked with other notes or the computational jupyter notebooks. You end up with a personal wiki style record of your thought and work. There is a cognitive benefit to actively making notes and making them join up in meaningful ways.

You can make your weekly logs in the workbench. You can drag and drop individual files to your repository on github.com. You can also export notes from your workbench as .doc files if you feel the need to make things more pretty.

When do I submit weekly ungraded work for feedback?

By the end of the relevant week. Fridays preferably, but anytime during the week is fine. I will always send out to everyone a summary the following week of things I’m seeing (good things, things that need work). I’ll follow up with a short note to individuals for individual things.

Add your materials to your online Github repository. Commit the changes. Take note of the URL. Then, look at the bottom of every Weekly Work page. There’s a link to a google form. Fill in the form; give me the URL to your materials. But for the avoidance of doubt: this is the form

Information about setting up your github account and using it is here

Make sure that you respond to the prompts for reflection.

When and where do I submit the consolidation documents (ie, materials for grading)?

Every fourth week:

  • Module 1 consolidation document: due by the end of day FRIDAY of week four. OCTOBER 3
  • Module 2 consolidation document: due by the end of day FRIDAY of week eight. NOVEMBER 7
  • Module 3 consolidation document: due by the end of day FRIDAY of week twelve. DECEMBER 5

Use the google link at the end of the relevant week’s page to give the url to your repository containing your consolidation document. But again, for the avoidance of doubt: this is the form

How formal should the ungraded work be?

These are more working documents and memos to your future self. That said, they should be clearly intelligible. Also, anything that you produce in the course of trying one of the exercise is the kind of thing that is useful for your future self, so put it all in the repository.

How formal should my consolidation document be?

I expect the same level of formality and professionalism appropriate to any third year university course. Writing is thinking; writing is the work.

You want us to do all of this stuff?!

Short answer: No

Long answer: I want you to push yourself until you get stuck. And then I want you to tell me about it. I want you to talk with other people in the class. I want you to find solutions, but I also want you to be comfortable in not necessarily finding them right now. This class is about habits of mind, not correct answers. Ok? The focus is always on process. Do not aim for ‘completion’ ie ‘I did all the exercises I deserve an A’. Drive for understanding. One exercise where you understand what’s going on and you could use as a foundation for doing something new is far more valuable than clicking through all of the code cells in a computational notebook so that it can be ‘done’, without understanding why or what’s going on. (Look, this paragraph has all sorts of emphatic markers in it: pay attention!)

Let’s say there are 40 hours in the week. You’re a full-time university student, with 5 courses. That’s 5 x 3hrs of lecture per week: 15 hours expected to be in class. That leaves 25 hours for non-classroom work (research, reading, exercises). 25 / 5 = 5 hours per week per class. Therefore:

  • spend 3 hours per week reading / listening to / exploring the course materials
  • spend 5 hours per week doing the exercises

= 1 day of the week, just for this course. Push until you get stuck. Report, reflect, move on.

If you complete everything I set for you, great: you didn’t get stuck so I expect to see in your log that you went out and pursued an idea further. If the first thing I asked you to do utterly flummoxed you, great: you got stuck so I expect to see in your log evidence for your thinking around why you got stuck, things you might come back to, implications for your own learning.

Process is more important than product. This isn’t about completing every side-quest. That’s not what education is about. You can pick your battles in terms of most of the things I ask you to do.

What’s a good way to ask for permission to visit a graveyard?

Write, or use this to develop a script if speaking to a person:

“My name is [x]. I am a student in Dr. Shawn Graham’s HIST3000 at Carleton University. As part of our coursework, we are looking at how digital tools can be used to study local history and archaeology and in particular, for recording how gravestones change over time.

I am writing to ask permission to visit [cemetery name] to take digital photographs and measurements of the older monuments. This work does not involve any physical manipulation of or interference with the monuments or grounds.

I would not visit the cemetery during a service or otherwise interfere. The information that I record will only be used in the context of the class exercises.

Dr. Graham would be happy to chat with you to explain in more detail about the exercise and how the data will be handled or discuss any questions you may have. He can be contacted via email at shawn.graham@carleton.ca or by phone at 613-520-2828 (the main History department reception). I look forward to hearing from you; my contact details are below.

Yours sincerely, [your name]”

I can’t access reading x?

Many of the links to readings are via our university library. Try logging into the library website first before clicking on the link. If you’re logged into the library, and the link still doesn’t work for you (it’ll have ‘proxy.library.carleton.ca’ in the url) contact me.

Other links are to copies that I’ve secreted on this website and you should have no issue accessing those.

Sometimes, links die and websites go offline. If this describes the situation, let me know right away. I pulled this course together some months before term started. Try dropping the link into the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive; sometimes a page might’ve been saved.

…and of course, sometimes I just screw up the html for this website and break the link. Let me know if you get a ‘404’ file-not-found error. Click on this link to see what that looks like

Why aren’t readings listed alphabetically?

Sometimes, it’s because I know that you’ll read things in the order that I present them, and there’s an implied emergent narrative. Sometimes, it’s because I forgot to. Sometimes, it’s because I’m messing with convention.

I’m having tech troubles, what do I do?

  • send me an email with a subject line that summarizes the exact issue you’re having. You should write the subject line last after you’ve written the body of your email; that way you will actually understand the issue you’re having
  • explain what you were doing, what you expected to happen, what actually happened, what precise step you were at when you encountered the problem, and describe the difficulty you are having.
  • help me reproduce the problem so I can understand what’s going on. Provide screenshots, take a video. Walk me through what you’re doing.
  • then, when you’ve done all that, send the email and be patient. Wait three days before asking again if you don’t hear from me (I’m not ignoring you, I just get a lot of email.)

Help each other out. As the course progresses, you will have many opportunities to ask for help from me and from your peers - post these in our discord server in the appropriate channel.

Sometimes, you will see questions that you can answer. Answering the questions of your peers, helping them out, is an excellent way to meet one of the course outcomes. A few guidelines for answering questions:

  • There are many different ways to solve these issues; someone might post a different way but that doesn’t mean that either of you are necessarily wrong.
  • Read the question carefully. Request clarification if there are bits that the original poster didn’t make clear - help them to ask better questions.
  • Use screenshots and screenvideo (I find screencastomatic handy in this regard) to show how things worked for you.
  • Provide links to useful relevant material if you know of it.
  • Assume the best of everyone: not everyone has the same fluency with these machines, and it takes a while to learn the language.
  • Do not, for the time being, drop any code or issue through a generative language model (AI), looking for ’the answer’, unless I have explicitly suggested you do this.

What kind of citation style should I use?

I’m not that fussed, so long as you’re consistent. I tend to follow Internet Archaeology:

Harvard Style. The main rule of thumb is to provide as much information as possible. If there is no date, use the abbreviation n.d. Do not abbreviate journal titles. No brackets or full stops around year of publication. Single quotes around journal/chapter titles. Journal/Book titles in italics. Volume numbers in bold. Page number ranges may be elided but full ranges where there may be ambiguity. DOIs where available should be cited in full (https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.24.8 not doi:10.11141/ia.24.8). Distinguish between publications by same author in same year with a,b,c etc. Websites and other digital resources without DOIs should state a Last accessed date.

Why is there so much stuff to read?

Because this is an online asynchronous class and I loathe video. So read carefully, fully, and take your time.

When was that podcast recorded?

It was a few years ago. But it features interviews with digital archaeologists whom I respect and whose observations are still germane and worth the listen. Please ignore anything that obviously dates it.

I don’t think there’s anything in there where I directly instruct you re anything concerning assessment etc, but if you suspect there is, please email me for clarification.

Hypothes.is doesn’t seem to work with website x?

Sometimes, a website will have its own annotation layer already. In such a case, Hypothes.is won’t work. You can try their proxy service (go to https://via.hypothes.is/ and paste the url in), but there’s no guarantee. If you can’t annotate, don’t worry. Just make regular ol’ notes as you read.

I ask you to annotate as you read because again, this is an active process that makes a difference for how you learn things, and what you pay attention to. By making reading social you can also see where something sparks thoughts, confusion, connections for your peers.

I worked alone for many years. It’s hard to learn that way. Given that this is an asynchronous classroom, we have to make an extra effort to obtain the social dimension without which learning is incomplete.

I’m using Obsidian in another class. Can that work here?

Yes; obsidian is a piece of software meant for note-making, and it understands wikilink syntax. It will not (by default) see or permit you to edit .ipynb files. But you could have both obsidian and jupyter lab desktop (our workbench) open at the same time, working on the same folder. I have not tested this. But I see no reason why this wouldn’t work. If you’re asking this question, I will assume that I don’t need to explain Obsidian any further; but if you’re someone who’s only just encountered it and would like some guidance, just send me a note.