The first DiKopA workshop is done
On the 3rd and 4th of June our network on “Digital Competencies in Archaeology” (DiKopA) met in Darmstadt, Germany. We had 10 presentations, 9 pitches and a World Café. The network and external visitors met in the lecture hall of the university library. Short story: I learned a lot from the DiKopA workshop.
DiKopA
I have already written about the DiKopA project that I am coordinating with Marion Bolder-Boos and Georg Pantelidis from the Technical University of Darmstadt. We have already met once within the network, but recently we had our first full workshop. It was the first of two within our funding. The workshop focused on the opportunities and challenges of digital teaching and learning in archaeology.
On the first day we had two keynotes and presentations from our network, and on the second day we had some presentations, pitches and a World Café, which were basically groups discussing specific topics. We also had a presentation of various VR applications offered by participants from the University of Tübingen.
Presentations
The presentations were very varied. Martina Trognitz started with a reference to data management. Others talked about serious games in museums, general didactics, archaeogaming and markdown languages. I was interested in the concept of versioning when writing any text or paper. Maria Shinoto talked about her workflow when writing texts and using Git to have a versioning system. I will give it a try, because she kept saying how writing in this way freed her.
I myself talked about why archaeologists need to learn and teach about video games. It was more or less a general talk about what archaeogaming is and why it is important to understand what video games show. The medium is one of the most influential and the profession of archaeology and the past are regularly misrepresented. I received many questions and positive feedback.
Pitches and more
The pitches were something new we tried. We wanted to give an overview of software and methods for digital teaching and learning. Each pitch was only (supposed to be) four minutes long. There were pitches on drawing software, learning systems, storytelling apps and databases. In general, I liked the pitches and the short format, although it is hard to summarise the pros and cons of a software in such a short time.
In the end, the workshop was quite successful and I learnt a lot about new workflows and software. I will definitely need some time to go through them in the near future, but hey, it also gives me topics for this blog! We are also planning to publish the workshop in an open access publication soon.
