When I first started learning about digital humanities, I was overwhelmed. By the end of a class, the only thought going through my head was, “What the hell just happened? This is not what I expected from a history class.” I thought I was well over my head. Then I spoke to Alan Levine, a digital humanist, but more importantly a man who loves what he does and enjoys helping others, like me, who are not as familiar with the digital world that we live it. It’s hard enough to find good instructors for any discipline and even more so to find someone who enjoys the work themselves.
Alan Levine is a geology major who originally started studying computer science. He went to school in Arizona to obtain his degree but really had an emphasis digital media. He is self taught for the most part, but ha a few courses focused with digital media, specifically with photography and audio. With the knowledge that he gained in school, he began teaching himself to create stories and perfecting his photography skills to help create, what is now, a work in digital story telling which a great passion of his is now.
Alan is currently an instructor helping people through online courses to better their understanding and perfecting their skills with digital media. He teaches what new media is available and how to use it. His students learn how to manipulate and improve themselves with a language he or she could understand. For example, I told him I am a 25 year old caveman who didn’t know digital humanities existed and have a hard enough time learning how to use my phone and laptop. Alan didn’t see it that way with me. He said that it wasn’t so much as me not having extensive knowledge in the digital world, but rather I know more than I credit myself and that I just need to learn more about manipulating the technology around me.
Alan feels that it is more important to focus on the passion one has rather than the focus of the technology itself. He explained that through law enforcement prospective, the digital world is growing and the greater the quality of the media, the greater one can make a difference. To take a photo of a crime scene now is much more detailed than a few decades ago. The technology of taking a generic snapshot has evolved into fine, hi-resolution photographs that will help solve crimes in the future. Audio is great too. We now have the technology to manipulate the audio that law enforcement receives and use this to helping the community around us in a multitude of areas.
I was so intrigued with his explanations; I had to ask about working for or with him. What would someone have to do to instruct classes and teach other students, like myself, about multimedia? Expecting some great emphasis on communication, technical terminology, or a plethora of computer science classes he simply stated a passion or love for a line of work. Geology major working to aide both students and professionals with bettering the world around us by educating all that he could and his answer was my own personal passion. Alan said that learning some terminology would be good to know and some communication or internet classes might help, but really it just comes down to the person and his or her career emphasis. There is no need to be a computer programmer to learn about multimedia and its capabilities when there are others around the world willing to help aide someone in understanding something new or unfamiliar to him or her.
There is always something new to learn and explore but communication is a big part in learning about technology. Alan has a blog, http://cogdogblog.com/, where he discusses technology on a regular basis. One thing that struck me is that it is his own ideas and he accepts that sometimes he is wrong in some occasions when he posts. He doesn’t mean to be incorrect about some things but thrives on the fact that others around him, who enjoy the work with multimedia as much as he does, corrects him and help both Alan and people that follow his blog to better understand the technology around us. He finds it a real blessing that he can go online with the world, share a few thoughts, and have mature informants educate him and his followers about what the world has to offer. He brought up the fact that sources, such as YouTube, have people showing their experiences, lectures, and demonstrations first hand can help almost anyone with whatever they might be searching for. If you have new hardware or software that you aren’t too sure about and need some instruction, you’re almost guaranteed to find something on YouTube or an article elsewhere to help explain and possibly demonstrate what goal you want to reach.
Alan Levine is a very knowledgeable man with goals to help all people around him. Why even his number one goal has already been met relying that his love with teaching others. Alan lives in Arizona but travels the states constructing new material for both himself and his students he educates passionately on his online classes. Alan wishes to continue his teaching career, helping to educate others through his blog and communication media, and perhaps expand on the digital storytelling and techniques to improve both his writings and the writings of others.