Bryn Mawr College's Digital Competencies Program helps students build the digital skills and critical perspectives on technology needed for success in the digital age.
Happy October! In honor of National Cyber Security Awareness month, our Competency of the Month is 3.4 Metadata! One of the less familiar terms to many, "Metadata" just means data about data. If you've found a new favorite song based on the "Artist" tag, checked a picture to see when it was taken, or used the library catalog to find books with a particular subject tag, you've used metadata.
Metadata about you can also be collected when you work online, so this competency ties in well to the privacy and cyber security issues we'll be focused on this month. Look for new student-created Information Security resources and material this month as part of the Bryn Mawr Information Security Education Program!
Metadata is also useful for academic research. This fall, Bryn Mawr's librarians are offering multiple opportunities for you to learn to use Zotero, a free citation management tool. Among other things, Zotero can help you collect metadata about the sources you're using for your essays, and can help you format these into a bibliography. See the LITS calendar for information about Zotero opportunities this month.
September Highlights
Just a couple of weeks ago on September 11, our amazing summer Educational Technology interns (Digital Curriculum: Romy Dangol ’19, Eunsoo Jang ’20; Audiovisual Production: Kim Davis ’20, Megan Pemberton ’20; Information Security: Leslie Goloh ’19, Julie Gonzales ‘19) presented at a Tech Talk in Old Library, giving members of the Bryn Mawr community a sneak peek of future student-created tech projects to come, from building the Augmented Reality Library Scavenger Hunt to producing a short information security film. The interns gave insight into both the digital competencies they learned and the projects they were able to accomplish using their tech skills. Keep an eye out for more of their material during Information Security month!
Plus, by the time you read this, students in the September 29-30 Data Intensive will have had the opportunity to develop their Data Management and Data Analysis competencies, meet Data Science alums, and experiment with different data tools such as GIS and R. More details in the November newsletter!
October Digital Competencies Opportunities
LITS Digital Seed Grant Applications
Attention all Bryn Mawr faculty, staff, and grad students! Our LITS Digital Seed Grant application deadline is coming up on October 15. Developed for the purposes of promoting engagement with digital technologies and digital teaching, learning and research, Digital Seed Grants can be submitted regardless of an individual’s prior experience or expertise. You don’t want to miss this opportunity!
Tech Talks
We'll also have two more Tech Talks taking place this month in Old Library. On October 2, Sofia Fenner discusses politics, encryption, and data security. Fenner makes the political case for encryption and other data security practices, drawing on her experience living in authoritarian regimes and working with the Bryn Mawr Institutional Review Board's "Encryption for Everyone" project. On October 23, David Ross will give a progress report on using Moodle to deliver content and assess student mastery to provide targeted just-in-time activities in a core quantitative methods class. He will touch on the pros and cons of flipping the classroom. For more info on the Tech Talk series, see the LITS calendar!
Student and Staff Conference Presentations
Tech Talks aside, the Bucknell Digital Scholarship Conference will also be taking place this month! We give a rousing “anassa kata” to the digital scholarship fellows and BMC staff members who will be presenting.
Questions? Comments? Want to get involved? Email us at digicomp@brynmawr.edu.