6.0544 Rs: Humanities Labs (2/62)
Elaine Brennan (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Mon, 22 Feb 1993 11:10:12 EST
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 6, No. 0544. Monday, 22 Feb 1993.
(1) Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 10:49:00 PST (42 lines)
From: Michael_Kessler.Hum@mailgate.sfsu.edu
Subject: Reasons for a Humanities Lab
(2) Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 10:15:30 PST (20 lines)
From: cbf@athena.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber)
Subject: Re: 6.0531 Rs: Humanities teaching lab
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 10:49:00 PST
From: Michael_Kessler.Hum@mailgate.sfsu.edu
Subject: Reasons for a Humanities Lab
As the person who provides technical support for any networked computer
in the School of Humanities at SFSU, I can give practical reasons for
having a Humanities Computer Lab or Media Center, or whatever one may
want to call it:
Students, or faculty for that matter, are not necessarily computer
literate and must be shown how to operate the machines and the software.
Some CALL programs require at first fairly intensive support of lab
personnel.
Taking care of glitches, hardware problems etc. is much easier if the
computers are in a single room.
It is much easier to keep an eye on peripherals CD-ROM players,
Laserdisk players, etc. in a single room. In general security is much
improved by keeping the equipment in a single room.
I have the impression that Skip Knox imagines the use of stand-alones--
that is how I read the phrase "access to Internet." I would argue that
in the long run it is cheaper to get a license for limited copies of
software that is regularly used than to install a single copy in every
station. We have only 45 copies of WordPerfect and use Saber Meter to
limit access to 45 concurrent users. If it turns out that 45 copies are
not sufficient, we can purchase more but we do not need to install a
copy on each of the 150 machines we have in the building. Networking a
lab is cheaper than running twisted pair to stations located in
different nooks and crannies of a building.
I might add that neither the School of Humanities nor any other school
on campus ever imagined that its computer facilities would be located in
the library where its equipment paid out its own budget would no longer
be defined as its own. Furthermore, not all courses in the School of
Humanities are library intensive and yet may require the use of
computers.
Michael_Kessler@HUM.SFSU.EDU
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------30----
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 10:15:30 PST
From: cbf@athena.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber)
Subject: Re: 6.0531 Rs: Humanities teaching lab; Student Computers (4/89)
Let us take up English Romantic poetry.
Would it not be useful to have a collection of texts
(say the hideously expensive Chandwick-Healey collection)
and a sophisticated text analysis program, like TACT,
and set students to comparing imagery in Wordsworth
vs. Keats? Or using Richard Rust's poetry program
which allows students systematically to highlight
a certain feature and see how it is echoed throughout
the poem?
Can you do this on paper? You bet. Will it take longer
on paper and be far less precise? You bet.
Charles Faulhaber
UC Berkeley