Digital learning day  was started by the Alliance for Learning, and in partnership with the National Writing Project. “Digital Learning Day will celebrate innovative teaching practices that make learning more personalized and engaging and encourage exploration of how digital learning can provide more students with more opportunities to get the skills they need to succeed in college, career, and life.” Digital learning is any instruction that uses technology to strengthen learning. This includes using online content and courses, using technology to strengthen lessons, applying technology to create better resources, providing online access to educational materials, and many others.

Campus Archaeology has always been committed to using digital social media as a way to reach the public, and is always testing new ways to do this. Our students and interns are given opportunities to work with different technologies, and all of us at Campus Archaeology are bloggers. While it may seem counterintuitive for a discipline focused on the past, we are always on the look out for the newest technology to see how we can better educate the public and have more effective outreach.

In her post on Inside Higher Ed: GradHacker, Andrea Zellner discusses three ways to celebrate: try something new, share a success and track you own digital learning.

1. Try Something New: Today I am trying to work with SketchUp, a program that allows you to draw architecture and create 3D models. Its been successfully used for a number of archaeological projects and could potential be a fun way for Campus Archaeology to engage with the public and show them a different side of archaeology at MSU.

2. Share a Success: Campus Archaeology has had a lot of successes when it comes to integrating technology into teaching and sharing archaeology. We use Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, FourSquare, YouTube, and our blog to connect with the campus and broader community. You can see how we connect campus to archaeology through digital media by checking out a poster presented by Terry Brock and Dr. Lynne Goldstein on the topic. Most recently our interns began using OMEKA to create digital museum exhibits to showcase their research. You can read about Paige’s experience with OMEKA here, and visit her exhibit: Artifacts vs. Archives.

3. Track our Digital Learning: We’re using digital in a lot of ways on a day to day basis. Today we tweeted to get votes for Campus Archaeology to be chosen as the number one excavation for outreach from Archaeological Institute of America (you can vote for us here until 2/7!). We are using Google + to spread the word about the work we are engaging in. I checked into the offices this morning on FourSquare. We are also planning for excavation this Spring using Geographic Information Systems. We’re always learning about new ways to interact with the public online. We are looking into using VisualEyes for some projects, and potential SketchUp to better visualize our excavations.

Author: Katy Meyers Emery