What is a Community Garden in the Digital Age?- WORK PLAN

Week 4 

Work task:

What is a Community Garden in the Digital Age? Finalized

Deadlines: Upload new and revised Project Proposal to Course Website (Faihaa)

Week 5 (March 2)

Work task:

Data Collection Breakdown (Faihaa/Nelson)

Brainstorm questions and explore data available online. Spend 2-3 hours (Faihaa/Nelson/Benjamin)

Check to see if each borough has 311 open data

Deadlines: 

– Discuss and brainstorm specific data our project will account for

– Analyze data information already available

Week 6 (March 09)

Work task:

Finalize specific data we wish to use

Organize data into separate spreadsheets (Faihaa)

Design ethnographic research and reach out to community gardens (Benjamin) 

Deadlines:

– Workplan

– Data Management Plan (Nelson)

-Personal Journal Entries (3/8/22)

-Group Outreach/Social Media Plan Group Project Update (3/10/22) (TBD)

Meetings:

Tuesday 9 of March 12.00: Group meeting

Friday 12 of March 11.00: Group meeting

Week 7  (March 16)

Work task:

Start to upload info on to Tableau (Nelson)

Use visualization and spreadsheets to find connections and discrepancies (Faihaa, Nelson, Benjamin)

Start looking into Website options to display visualizations

Do interviews and participations for ethnographic research

Deadlines: 

– Tableau Map

-Personal Journal Entries (3/15/22)

Meetings:

Tuesday 16 of March 12.00: Group meeting

Week 8 (March 23)

Work Task: 

– Create a draft on what website can potentially look like and start building the website

– Discuss what we wish to include on landing page, tabs etc

– Do interviews and participations for ethnographic research

– Start transcribing ethnographic interviews

Deadlines: 

Personal Journal Entries (3/22/22)

Group Project Updates (3/24/22)

Meetings:

Friday 26 of March 11.00: Group meeting

Week 9- Week 11 (March 30-April13)

Work Task: 

Work on website 

Highlight new data found

Create powerpoint presentation on project

Continue doing interviews and analyze ethnographic data

Deadlines: 

Personal Journal Entries (3/29/22 4/5/22 4/12/22)

Group Project Updates (3/31/22 4/7/22 4/14/22)

Week 12  

SPRING BREAK 

Work Task:

Independent Work on Project permitting time 

Week 13- Week 14 (April 27-May 11)

Work Task: 

Final adjustments to data visualizations and website.

Audio from interviews uploaded.

Work on Written portion of project

End of week 14 have a website/platform ready for feedback and review

Deadlines: Personal Journal Entries (4/26/22 5/3/22)

Group Project Update (4/28/22)

Week 15 

Work Task: 

Smaller adjustments to website/platform from feedback session

Prepare for project launch

Finalize website

Deadlines: 

Finish final website

Week 16 (May 18)

Work Task: 

All work should be completed!

Deadlines: Post Final Group Project to Commons

Email individual reflections to Prof. Maney

 

 

 

What is a Community Garden in the Digital Age? – Data Management Plan

  • What are the types of data that may be produced as part of this project?
    • This data will be collected via already publicly available data from websites such as NYC Opendata, GreenThumb Gardens website, GrowNYC among other individual community Garden websites. We will also focus on completely different sets of available datasets such as income by location in NYC, food deserts in NYC, among other ideas that will come up. In the following weeks, one of our team members will start to reach out to the community and begin an ethnographic study. This data will be new and be produced, edited by the team as a whole. It will consist of some recorded interviews as audio-file, transcription of the interviews and handwritten notes from visiting different community gardens. We plan to use information that the participants allow us to share. Information such as quotes, pseudonyms and overall group trends will be shared, and each interview will be stored on our shared google drive. This data is completely static and as long as the original hosting website is available, there should be a minimal risk of losing data. The only new data that will be produced is our cross analysis of any trends we see among different data sets. Extrapolation would be our “new data.” This would be stored in our shared google drive as our main document management system. This data would be static and this can evolve over time but we do not expect this to evolve during the next few months. We are planning to use free available software such as Tableau online and possible wordpress websites. TBD on the amount of data we are able to present. During this project we are using Google drive that is linked to three of our google accounts. If one of us loses access, then one of the other two can download any past data. We can also email or message each other with documents so we can have different avenues of sharing data.
  • What standards will you be using for data collection, documentation, description, and metadata?
    • We will continue to use google drive for our dataset storage. We will aim to download easy to open files formats such as Excel, CVS, Word Documents. We will document any findings in a shared MS Word document file. Our Ethnographer will determine if any information is deemed private and will determine how to store that data in a private separate file. We will all review the way we store the documents, we will constantly vet and modify the files as we see fit and bring up any data that seems confidential to the team. We should all be responsible for informing each other with anything we see. We will have folders with file hierarchy such as organizing per week or per location. We will name each file with a main topic on the title and update it as we add on to the document.  We will use standard data naming conventions as “Final project” or “interviews on xx/xx”
  • What steps will you take to protect your or your participant’s security, privacy/confidentiality, intellectual property, or other rights? (Check current university policies for requirements.)
    • We will have complete ownership of interview data, we will determine if the interview data should be kept confidential in the most ethical way.  Each visit and interview we make with community gardens, we will make it clear if the wish to be private and to what degree.  Additionally will we make it clear to them how we are gonna use the interviews and they are not obligated to answer and can step out of the project if they wish. Since we are using already available and public data, there should be minimal reason to restrict or review this data. However, as Data Humanists we would need to be careful on determining if this data can be used for political and Nefarious reasons. If so, we would try our best to broaden the datasets and naming conventions. 
  • If you allow others to reuse your data, how will the data be accessed and shared?
    • The data we create and publish will be under standard sharing protocols. The data will not be restricted nor behind a paywall. We expect a large audience to use this information, one being community leaders themselves using this information to enhance their connection to their gardens. As we are extrapolating data as well, we expect future researchers to further this work or use it as a foundation for their research. We plan to export and publish this data on wordpress and/or CUNY commons. We hope this data will live as a historical preservation on data collected after the pandemic of 2020. 
  • How will the data be archived for preservation and long-term access?
    • Our internal data collection and method of collection will be stored in our personal google drive accounts. The external data will be available until CUNY common is no longer available to the public. We will stick to simple, ample and easy to access formats like Microsoft Office.

Modeling Value in the Anthropocene – Data Management Plan

The Data

The original data source for the text is a searchable PDF file that is publicly available for free via Open Humanities Press’ website. We will also be appropriating Python scripts for running word embedding models also available online for free. Lastly, we will be generating notes to be stored in Jupyter Notebook files. The text and Python data will be regenerable so longs as the sources remain public and free. The PDF file will be converted to plain text. The code will initially be stored as .py files. Any visualizations will be image files (type TBD). The finished product (including code, text, and images) will be stored as an .ipynb Jupyter Notebook file. Jupyter Notebook will also be saved as PDF for sustainability. The tools we are utilizing are: Calibre for file conversion from PDF to .txt; Python and word2vec for text operationalization; Github for provisional code storage; Jupyter Notebook for project creation/storage. Github will be used to store, edit, and view code as we find, create, and alter it in the process of making. The final product will will also be stored on Github. We will backup files on our personal iClouds. File names will be the name of the author of the code and the version number. The different segments of code will be stored in the same directory on Github.

Data Standards

Data collection procedures are documented in a collaborative work place accessible as a collaborative .pages file. We are ensuring good project and data documentation via weekly in-person check-in meetings in addition to several virtual meetings per week. Both participants are responsible for implementing this data management plan. Project will follow the open access and open source practices of the Digital Humanities, the finished project being code and comments on said code that will be publicly available to all.

Data Security

Our data is not sensitive. There is no embargo period for our data. The text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License, which allows us to share and adapt the text, so long as appropriate credit is given and a link to the license is provided with an indication that changes were made.

Re-use and re-distribution of data

The sharing of the data from this project are not subject to any external requirements. Our hopeful audience is members of the philosophical community interested in appropriating computation methods for theorizing. We will publish the data on our public website in May 2022. Jupyter will necessary to access the data published.

Long Term Archiving and Preservation

Data will be stored for 5-10 years unless a more permanent means of storage becomes available in the meantime. Data should be archived for Stiegler scholars or other researchers interested in the Neganthropocene. Jupyter notebook(s) will be stored as PDF’s for sustainability. Data will be submitted to CUNY Academic Works for long-term maintenance. A subject-based archive may also be found appropriate if found.

Sounds of Music Data Management Plan

  1. What are the types of data that may be produced as part of this project?
  • We will generate the following forms of data through research, browsing existing datasets, and amassing data about:
    • Accessibility data, as it pertains to live, synchronous music enrichment programs:
      • How to Use Zoom: A Beginner’s Guide.
      • How to Be Unafraid of Online Activities.
      • Equipment and Assistive Technologies to Help Individuals with Specific Disabilities and Handicaps:
        • Equipment and assistive technologies designed for the visually impaired and blind.
        • Equipment and assistive technologies designed for the deaf and hard of hearing.
        • Equipment and assistive technologies designed for those who are paraplegics or quadriplegics.
        • Equipment and assistive technologies designed for those who experience muscle weakness or another condition that hinders their ability to perform delicate and/or manual tasks.
        • How voice assistant technologies can be used or modified to provide more extensive assistance to those for whom accessibility is a concern.
      • Data about latency, as it pertains to live, synchronous music enrichment programs:
        • How to tackle the issue of latency during Zoom and other virtual meetings.
        • How to overcome the problem of real-time, synchronous communication.
      • Data about trouble-shooting, as it pertains to live, synchronous music enrichment programs.

 

  • We will be generating survey data on whether or not the Sounds of Music pilot program enriches the lives of our participants.

 

  • We will be using Google Docs, Google Sheets, which will eventually be migrated to more stable, non-proprietary forms such as PDF and .csv.

 

  • Our greatest concern regarding the data is obsolescence. We fear that in light of the rate of advancement of assistive technologies, our data will quickly become obsolete.

 

  • Our data will largely take the form of text and hyperlinks, as well as APA citations, including the date the original information was accessed.

 

  1. What standards will you be using for data collection, documentation, description, and metadata?

 

We will collect data from consulting experts in the field of Disability Studies, as well as aggregate our research in order to find relevant information about assistive technologies and accessibility resources.

We will be working from several files, sorted by category, as well as a Google Sheets document that has several tabs to organize our data.

We will name files based on content. All files will be accompanied by a description of their content at the top of any document or file we produce.

 

  1. What steps will you take to protect your or your participant’s security, privacy/confidentiality, intellectual property, or other rights? (Check current university policies for requirements.)

 

We will be protecting our participant’s security, privacy, and other rights by anonymizing data collected about them, using fabricated, fictitious names if and when they are referenced.

We will be collecting data on whether or not the Sounds of Music pilot program enriches and enhances the lives of those we are reaching out to, and will be refraining from collecting more than the most general and cursory of information about their personal lives, such as their age.

 

  1. If you allow others to reuse your data, how will the data be accessed and shared?

 

Our data will be shared on a public-facing, freely available website run via WordPress on the CUNY Commons. It will also be made available in PDF format from May 2022 onwards.

We hope to reach schools, daycares, nursing homes, permanent care facilities, rehabilitation facilities, prisons, hospitals, and other public and private institutions. It is our fondest hope that our Sounds of Music workshop will facilitate the creation of a host of musical enrichment experiences for diverse audiences. We hope that this data can be used and updated in the near or further future.

Any Internet-connected device with a web browser should be able to access our data.

 

  1. How will the data be archived for preservation and long-term access?

 

We plan to keep the data accessible indefinitely, or so long as it remains relevant.

We have discussed the longevity of our data, and have decided that we will entrust data management to a partner institution or university. We are still in search of said partner.

We shall be converting our raw data to .csv files, as well as two PDF versions – one in a standard font, another for the visually impaired.

Nelson Jarrin’s Personal Bio

Current Work and Education

Nelson currently works at a philanthropic organization in the area of operations. He works extensively with reports and excel sheets with a plethora of data. He has degrees from CUNY, An AAS in Computer Ops: Network admin and Security and a BA in Intl Studies. He combines them both in his career work.  He will looking to use his new found knowledge of data humanities in order to aid his colleagues with any sort of data reporting.

Responsibilities in “What is a Community Garden in the Digital Age”

Nelson’s main task will be to compile the available data found online, in the group he will help visualize them through Tableau and upload the data visualization model onto an interactive website. He will help find and create a website for the data models and maps. He will also help with any ethnographic work.

Project Work Plan – Mainframe: Present and Past

The Plan: 9 Weeks

Phase 1 (March)

Part A: February 27 – March 12 (Week 1-2)

  • Outreach and Publicity: Consult with Digital Fellows and others before creating a social media plan.
    • Assign: Connie & Kai
    • Deadline(s): March 5
  • Create Data Management Plan
    • Assign: Kai
    • Deadline(s): March 3

Part B: March 13 – March 26 (Week 3-4)

  • Design: Create a visual brand and logo for social media pages
    • Assign: Connie
    • Deadline(s): March 16 (Zoom Presentation)
  • Create Information Architecture for Website Draft
    • Assig: Kai
    • Deadline(s): March 17th

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Raquel Neris personal bio

Work

Raquel Neris has 13 years of experience working in different areas of design, such as UX design, service design, and learning experience design. During this journey, she also had an entrepreneurial experience developing educational games about financial literacy for students in Brazilian schools. Today she works for BMCC as OpenLab Student Engagement Coordinator.

 

Studies and interests

Raquel has a Bachelor’s degree in Social Communication, a Graduate degree in Interaction Design, and a Master’s degree in Communication and Education. In discovering Digital Humanities as a promising pathway to exploring crucial issues in humanities using digital technology, she became curious to know how to use its theories and practices to explore the last mile of technology in cognition and learning. 

 

Responsibilities in Sounds of Music project

Since Raquel has experience working as a product owner of digital solutions, her contributions for the Sounds of Music projects are in project management, research, and UX design.

Benjamin Mørch Personal Bio/Contribution Statement

Benjamin Mørch graduated from Copenhagen University in 2017 with a B.A. in Ethnology and Visual Anthropology. His main academic interest has been working with processes of othering or the figure of ‘the stranger’ in the media and education system often with a feminist scholar framework. During his bachelor’s he focused on ethnographic fieldwork using visual and audio methods, and developed workshops about cultural history for educational use. Since he has used his skills in different settings and worked on documentaries, as a teacher, ethnologist conducting fieldwork and campaign leader for an NGO. His interest in pedagogy using media and digital tools has grown in the last years where he has worked making educational material for high schools students and as a teacher. He is currently in his first semester of a master in Digital Humanities, and he hopes to explore and learn more about digital pedagogy and skills in digital tools for educational use. In the project “What is a Community Garden in the Digital Age” his main task is to design and conduct a smaller ethnographic fieldwork with selected community gardens and work with the user experience and development of the final site.

Faihaa Khan Personal Bio/Contribution Statement

Faihaa Khan graduated from St. John’s University with a B.A in English in 2017. Her bachelor’s education focused on literary studies and journalism. Skills attained in those fields has led her to various job opportunities. In 2015 she worked as a lifestyle blogger and fashion intern at World Bride Magazine and in 2016 she worked as a Corps Member at Jumpstart; an early education program designed to help preschoolers from under resourced communities improve language and literacy skills. Present-day she is working as a typist/desk supervisor at a New York newspaper alongside editors, reporters and writers.

Faihaa is also currently a second year M.A. student in Digital Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center. Throughout her studies she is eager to learn about tech programs and data visualization methods that will expand her arsenal of skills. Aforementioned skills attained will help her find career opportunities in media research-her current dream profession.

Furthermore she is also serving as Project Manager/Documenter on the digital project known as “What is a Community Garden in the Digital Age”. Her contributions to the project will include being the general overseer of the group, keeping track of Google spreadsheets, listing data that has been found thus far, keeping track of all contact info and assisting with collecting, organizing and analyzing data.

 

Personal Bio / Contribution Statement

Kai Prenger graduated from Reed College in 2004 earning a BA in Literature, writing and defending a thesis called The Same But Different, an experiment applying the post-colonial theories of Homi K. Bhabha to 19th century American literature. His academic interests include misuse tools and theoretical frameworks on unexpected topics, using arbitrary process to transform subject matter (deformance)  and exploring areas deemed boring by a plurality of scholars. Previous work for pay includes dry cleaning, construction, social work, financial operations, product management, and data analysis and engineering. As a graduate student, he pursues play as productive strategy in scholarship. His main contributions to the project include development, theoretical and educational context, and shares project management duties with Connie, the co-project leader.