News Back-to-School Edition, Use Omeka in Your Class

It’s that time of year when educators and instructors are planning like mad for the coming semester or quarter, so we are highlighting some resources to help you get started using Omeka in your class.

You might be asking, well, how have others incorporated Omeka into assignments or final student projects? What were the learning objectives and expected outcomes? We know of many instructors using Omeka, these are a few pieces they wrote describing processes involved in launching student-driven digital projects with Omeka:

To see some of the possible uses for Omeka, see, “How Might You Use Omeka” and the growing list of Sites Using Omeka.

Running Omeka on a Server or Omeka.net

Now that you know how some people have used Omeka in their classes, consider your technical abilities and capabilities. Do you have access to a Linux server? Would you need hosting? How much support can you offer students? Do you wish to only use Omeka as a web service?

We recommend folks start in the Getting Started section of the Documentation. You will find detailed information about technical requirements and hosting suggestions.

If you are not interested in setting up a server or in finding outside hosts, you can try the Omeka.net service. See, http://info.omeka.net for more information about signing up for an Omeka.net account and the different plans available (for free and for purchase). Check out this spreadsheet that details the differences in functionality, storage space, plugins, themes: http://bit.ly/compareomekas

Consider contacting your library liaison, department chair, or IT services representative about purchasing an Omeka.net Platinum plan so that everyone at your school has access to Omeka sites and to all of the plugins and themes available on Omeka.net.

Building a Site

You have an Omeka site, now, how do you and your students begin to plan and to add content?

Self-hosted

Omeka.net

General Caution

Building digital projects always takes longer than you think. Be sure to plan enough time for snafus, and warn your students that they need to plan as well.

Take some time to work through the decision-making process on getting Omeka installed or using Omeka.net, before introducing it to students.

We have provided many resources to help users of all technical abilities to get started using Omeka for a class project. We ask that as you are instructing students to build sites together, or individually, that you encourage them to collaborate and problem solve together. Peers should serve as the “first ask” for technical questions before posting to the forums or sending an email.

We do our best to respond to questions on the forums and email, but if you or your students ask a question the night before a project is due, it is possible that you will not get a response before class.

Even with those few cautionary words, we hope that you will dive in and use Omeka this semester or next to help students to learn about the processes of knowledge creation, to work with a digital publishing platform, and to develop a public scholarly voice.

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