Unleashing the Power of the Digital Pen

For years anthropologists have used pen, pencil and paper to conduct interviews and write observational notes. Those notes later needed to be transcribed. In the late 2000s, however, the digital pen entered the market and has had a profound impact on how I conduct my ethnographic work. Using a digital pen I can store my notes like any other digital file, share them online, and convert them into text using handwriting recognition technology. While this tool does not change what I write, it does affect how I write, save, organize and share the notes I make during interviews and observations. A number of manufacturers offer a variety of digital pens, all of which basically do the same thing: digitize handwriting. One additional feature is what concerns me in this brief piece and is why I chose, use, and recommend the Livescribe Smartpen: the addition of audio to my notes. This feature sets the Livescribe pen apart, especially for anthropologists.

Livescribe Pen Photo courtesy Jerome Crowder

There are two basic designs of digital pen. The simplest (such as those offered by Logitec and Iogear) triangulate the movements of the pen’s nib on a sheet of paper and then turn those data into a digital facsimile of the written page. This is excellent for capturing notes or drawings on whatever paper you have at hand. The more unique offering, by Livescribe, uses a small camera buried in the tip of the implement to capture the pen strokes on special dot paper, which it then uses to reproduce the handwritten set of notes. But as one writes, the pen simultaneously captures the sounds taking place (like voices in an interview, class, or meeting), allowing you to capture every word said, whether you write it down or not. Livescribe calls their pen a densely-packed, lightweight, multi-modal computer, or Smartpen—I call it indispensable.

I first became familiar with the Smartpen during the 2008 AAA annual meeting in San Francisco when I noticed an audience member using a larger sized pen to write in a notebook that had various icons in the lower gutter of the page. After the panel I approached him to ask about the gadget in his hand. He demonstrated what can be called a “Swiss-army knife of pens”, a gadget that combines the two most important tools for ethnographic research into one rather slick implement, the pen and audio recorder. He went back to his notes and tapped the nib on a word he had written during the panel. Instantly, the sound of voices from the panel emanated from the small speaker in the pen—the captured audio from the moment he had written those specific notes. His quick demo inspired me to inquire further when I returned home, and I purchased a similar pen directly from the company. From that moment on, I keep a pen and notebook in my satchel, always ready and available for meetings, interviews, or general note-taking.

The Pen Itself

My first Livescribe pen is called the PULSE and has 2 GB of memory on board (current pens boast up to 8GB). It is about the same length as a normal pen, but the smooth barrel’s girth is twice that of a pencil. Along the barrel is a small speaker and the narrow window for the OLED display (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) allows for one line of text. Two small microphones are buried on either side of the window and near the top-end is the power button, recessed to the body’s surface level to prevent accidental powering on/off. At the top-end is a headphone socket. The Smartpen’s ball-point nib is off-center (like a fountain pen) to allow for the camera to capture the ink’s placement on the blue-dot paper, but can otherwise be held in any orientation.

New pens come with tutorials and a starter notebook. Located inside the front cover of all notebooks are universal controls, which, when tapped with the nib, access features like setting the date/time, checking battery life and storage availability, setting audio recording sensitivity, display brightness, and playback variables as well as navigating the main menus of the pen. There are even calculator buttons printed on the paper, for use like any other calculator, except the results appear on the pen’s display. For immediate writing controls, there are different icons printed at the bottom of each page for record and playback, jumping through notes, placing bookmarks, as well as adjusting playback speed and volume output. Most important are the main menu cross-hairs, which you tap to navigate the menus seen on the pen’s display. Besides these basic features, you can also accesses specific applications (which you can download separately) such as language translators, dictionaries, and other applications developed by the company (although as of July 2012 Livescribe no longer develops applications, but allows third-parties to do so).

Using the Pen

At its simplest, the pen records audio while I take notes, allowing me to concentrate on the interview’s overall content and not worry about capturing sentences verbatim. It’s a liberating feeling to maintain eye contact with an interviewee and not continually glance down at my notes as we talk. If my participant says something I think is important at that time, I can tap the star button, which bookmarks that moment in my notes for later review. The advantages are that there is not a visible voice recorder on the table to make my participant feel self-conscious, I have fewer gadgets to carry, and my notes and audio record are consolidated into a single synchronized file. At the end of the session I stop the recording and simply put the pen and notebook away.

Once at my computer, I dock the pen and synchronize the files with the Livescribe desktop application (Mac and PC compatible). The Livescribe desktop (now tablet friendly) allows me to manage my notebooks, share my files, review my notes, and playback the audio. The application’s dashboard has modes for reviewing the pages by number (literally, a small facsimile of each page of a notebook appears in a grid) or sorting the notes based on time/date. Clicking on an individual session initiates audio playback. The digital script darkens as the synchronized audio plays back, matching what I wrote with what I was hearing. Through the desktop I can also upload to Livescribe’s online community (or to Evernote, Facebook, Google Docs, and the like.) where I can (a) share my “pencasts” publically, or (b) direct individuals to secure files via specific links or emails. As of this printing, the latest release from LIVESCRIBE, the SKY, uses wi-fi technology to directly connect the pen to an Evernote account (initiated with the purchase of the pen) without the intermediary computer interface.

My PULSE replaced the regular notepads and pens I used in meetings and interviews. Of course, I let my colleagues know if I was audio recording before we began (there are options to capturing just handwriting or just audio), and was then able to review both notes and audio for later clarification on tasks or comments. If I thought it was important enough, I shared the notes with colleagues via Livescribe-Connect, sending them a direct link to that specific session, which they could download as a PDF with audio capability, and replay the entire session for themselves. Both the original notes and those converted to PDF are searchable, and Livescribe’s search feature is rather robust and successful at finding words that I have written throughout my documents regardless of penmanship.

Attending monthly meetings of a local civic association, the Livescribe pen was invaluable, as I saved, filed, and backed-up each session for future use. I also shared the files with my team, as well as the civic association’s board members. Since I kept all of those notes in the same notebook, if there was ever a question about previous decisions in a meeting, I could refer to my notes and play the audio for all to hear. Plus, the notes helped the board’s secretary write the minutes.

Livescribe produces proprietary blue-dot paper in a variety of sizes and formats. Each sheet is perforated so it can be removed from the notebook and physically stored separately, but if you remove the audio file from the pen, it will no longer be able to read the document. Depending upon the memory capacity of the pen, you can store notes from multiple notebooks, allowing electronic review of your notes on the desktop without having the notebooks at hand. All digital files can be archived for security purposes, too. Although the notebooks are reasonably priced for their paper quality and build, with a color Laser Jet printer (Adobe PostScript compatible) you can print your own paper as necessary. Additionally, Vision Objects has developed a handwriting recognition technology called “My Script” that will convert your ink into text (a free trial download is available) making your drawings and handwriting readable in MS WORD or other word processors.

Some Caveats

As with any emerging technology there will be problems, and the Livescribe pen has its share. Common complaints about the PULSE include its bulky size which caused some users hand strain. Newer pens are more ergonomic, but still thicker than a normal pencil. Lack of variety in ink colors, quantities and types (ball-point, gel, felt tip) also register complaints on the Livescribe website as users find the quality of the inks poor and their delivery “scratchy,” with the audio picking-up the actual sound of the pen writing on the paper (which may be distracting when listening for subtle details). A higher quality, third-party ink made by Starminen delivers more smoothly/quietly. Furthermore, the small cartridges do not last as long as a cheap ball-point, so have back-ups ready! In both public and private situations, I found that the illuminated display panel distracts people. For example, during a focus group, one of the participants stopped and asked me about my digital pen and wanted a full demo before we continued. He immediately saw the implications for such a pen in his children’s education and wanted me to give him one. I then figured out how to turn the panel off, to be more discreet. With that in mind, recognize that for students who are not already comfortable in the interview situation, the Smartpen may make them more self-conscious because of its display and the unique appearance of the pen and notebook.

Conclusion

Although tablets and the cloud are the immediate future of computing, the pen and paper will probably remain staples of the anthropologist’s toolkit. The digital pen bridges these media nicely, providing an analog way to write while offering a digital means for saving and sharing notes. The Livescribe pen completes the basic toolkit by combining audio with note taking so we have a more complete record which is easily reviewable, sharable, and archivable.

Jerome Crowder is assistant professor in the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston. His research interests include medical anthropology and Latin American studies, and he has done long-term fieldwork in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes.

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2013/02/06/unleashing-the-power-of-the-digital-pen/

Fieldwork

A Life Lesson in Ambiguity

This month marks my 30 year anniversary with the Department of Veterans Affairs. I never thought that I would remain with the VA; however, the joys of being a public servant cannot be matched. My career has been fun, varied, and never boring, with many opportunities to do good work. I have been a researcher, an educator, and an organizational development consultant, focusing on teams, conflict and communication, and leadership. It has been a great pleasure in recent years to see more and more anthropologists come into the public sector. As I thought about what makes us successful as facilitators and brokers between government and the people it serves, it was fieldwork that came to mind.

Anthropological fieldwork is a unique and strange experience that has the capability to challenge and change expectations. In many ways, it is a rite of passage but it has more than a symbolic function as a gateway to being a scholar. Fieldwork is both an exploration of your subjects and yourself.

My first fieldwork experience was for my dissertation. This experience gave me the understanding of how to work with people on their terms in their environment and how to match seemingly unrelated pieces to make a whole. This method of interaction is part of everything I have done in the VA from research to organizational development.

Getting to this understanding, however, involved a great deal of distress. My dissertation did not start off as a traumatic experience. I (thought that I) knew what fieldwork would be like. I had followed the rules and I knew what was expected of me. To this point, my life was planned and structured. My fieldwork site was only three miles from my house, in an older revitalizing neighborhood in downtown St. Louis. I had been invited into the neighborhood by one of the neighborhood associations, composed of young people moving back into the inner city, to work with the older residents who had remained in the neighborhood after “white flight” occurred several decades earlier.

What could be easier? And yet, my first feeling on encountering my fieldwork site was sheer unmitigated terror. Suddenly, I was on my own. After a month, my fear had been replaced by depression. I was truly a failure – possibly the worst researcher in the history of science. No one wanted to talk to me. I could think of hundreds of other careers I could have and should have pursued.

What could happen that would change my views so drastically? Was my experience unique? My difficulties were basically the same as those faced by all new researchers (and by most of us as we continue research). Researchers go from a planned environment with specific expectations and feedback determined by others to a totally unstructured environment. Research is supposed to be straight, coherent, measurable, linear. Things do proceed, but not always in an orderly fashion. Neat timetables, dear to the hearts of committees and funding agencies, are usually the first things to be tossed out. The research experience is carefully described in the research proposal, but reality changes or perhaps proposed reality never exists.

Like many young researchers, one is overwhelmed with feelings of helplessness, anxiety, and a profound sense of being unworthy. Surely, no other scholar has ever floundered like this: not enough articles, not enough research, something missed, bad hypotheses, unfit to be a scientist. These thoughts become unwelcome but constant bosom companions.

Mastering these feelings involves learning to live with ambiguity. You can attempt constantly to restructure your internal map of what should be happening, you can push facts into your pattern, or you can resign yourself to some loss of control. Letting go of our rigid preconceived ideas of what we will find enables us to make discoveries that are often much more exciting.

My initial disappointment and failure to gain entry to the group were very discouraging but very valuable. I eventually did find a sponsor who gave me entrée to the older population and credibility, but giving up the official pathway caused me to find different things, re-think my expectations, and ultimately understand my results.

I realized that my expectations about these older persons and my view of their interactions were wrong. I expected to find a geriatric population that had not been able to leave when their neighbors had. I believed that only by clinging together in community could such a group survive in the relatively hostile urban environment. I did not find a single, closed and static community, fighting for survival. Instead, I found dynamic and inter-woven groups. As members and/or institutions left, networks were called into play and other institutions and leaders were available to take over their functions.

I discovered that for Hyde Park’s older residents, their ability to change and their linkages were major factors in their strength and their neighborhood’s survival. These were exciting findings and their importance went beyond both Hyde Park and my dissertation. I realized that they were also important factors in my strength and survival as a scholar. Like Hyde Park’s residents, I, too, became flexible. I gave up my preconceived biases and my need for absolute structure. I became confident that I could handle problems and accept ambiguity.

This moment in field research happens to all anthropologists. It is what separates us academically, methodologically, and personally from other academic disciplines. Unlike the bench researcher or the clinical scientist, our whole orientation points us toward the ability to reframe and reformulate our hypotheses when our preconceived ideas don’t fit reality. This training and expertise makes anthropologists perfectly suited to work in the public sector, where each stakeholder has a different view of what is happening and what should be happening.

Treating each of our experiences and interactions as anthropological fieldwork gives us the ability to enter into new situations with open eyes and open hands, and makes us valuable in helping to foster understanding and find solutions for those we serve.

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States government.

Linda Nichols is a health services researcher at the Memphis Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Professor, Departments of Preventive and Internal Medicine, University of Tennessee Health Science Center at Memphis. She is a medical anthropologist with interests in dementia caregiving, family caregiving for military personnel, and organizational development. One special area of focus is how generational, cultural and regional differences affect leadership, organizations and health care behaviors. She is the Co-Director of the Caregiver Center at the Memphis VA Medical Center. As part of VA’s national caregiver program, the Center provides training to VA staff across the country to work with dementia, SCI and TBI caregivers and with spouses of Veterans.

Sarah Ono, Heather Schacht Reisinger, and Samantha L. Solimeo are contributing editors of Anthropology in the Public Sector.

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2013/02/04/fieldwork/

Last Neanderthals of Southern Iberia did not coexist with modern humans

The last Neanderthals had passed by southern Iberia quite earlier than previously thought, approximately 45,000 years ago and not 30,000 years ago as it has been estimated until recently. Researchers dated samples from two archaeological sites of central and southern Iberia. The new data casts doubt on the theory that sapiens and Neanderthals coexisted in Iberia during the Upper Pleistocene.



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Discovery of remains of England's King Richard III confirmed

The University of Leicester has confirmed that it has discovered the remains of England's King Richard III. At a specially convened media conference, experts unanimously identified the remains discovered in Leicester city center as being those of the last Plantagenet king who died in 1485. Rigorous scientific investigations confirmed the strong circumstantial evidence that the skeleton found at the site of the Grey Friars church in Leicester was indeed that of King Richard III.



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World's first image of Grey Friars skull unveiled

Did this head once bear the English Crown? Researchers have just unveiled the world's first photograph of the human remains found at the Grey Friars church -- which could be that of King Richard III.



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Submission Information for 2013 Annual Meeting

It’s that time of year to think about submissions for the 2013 AAA meeting. As always, we encourage anyone submitting a paper, poster, or session dealing with Africa to do so through AfAA. The deadline for general submissions for the 2013 meetings is April 15. However, the deadline for invited sessions is March 15 to give us extra time to negotiate co-sponsorship with other sections. Co-sponsorship is important because it enables us to turn our allotted two invited slots into four co-sponsored ones listed in the program. As always, submissions that are clearly written, timely, relevant, and which speak to the theme of the meetings are given priority. The theme this year is “future publics, current engagements,” and is meant to encourage explorations of struggles for justice and equality into the 21st century. Please visit the AAA website for a full discussion of this year’s theme. If you have any questions, please contact AfAA Program Co-editors David Turkon and Mary Sundal at dturkon@ithaca.edu or mary.sundal@washburn.edu.

AfAA Night in San Francisco

AfAA President Mwenda Ntarangwi poses with the 2012 Bennetta Jules-Rosette Graduate Paper Award winner George Paul Meiu (Department of Anthropology, U Chicago) at the AfAA reception during the AAA meeting in San Francisco. Meiu won for his paper “Beach-Boy Elders and Young Big Men: Queering the Temporalities of Aging in Kenya’s Ethno-Erotic Economies.” Photo courtesy Jennifer Coffman

AfAA evening events at the 2012 AAA Annual Meeting included a busy reception with AfAA members and friends, seasoned and new, exchanging tales from the field, among other topics. Gene Perry once again provided the soundtrack to the evening. Drawing heavily on his vast experience in southern Africa, Distinguished Lecturer Richard Werbner (U Manchester) regaled the audience with his discussion of ritual, narrative and anthropological ancestors.

Send Us Your Book!

The Skinner Book Award committee is seeking submissions for consideration. If you have published a book in 2010, 2011 or 2012, please ask your publisher to submit it to the award committee (chaired by Betty Harris, bharris@ou.edu). To all readers, we welcome your suggestions for books you regard as especially worthy of consideration.

To learn more about AfAA and to find more details about the annual awards, please visit our website.

Please send photos and column ideas to Jennifer Coffman, James Madison University, coffmaje@jmu.edu.

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2013/02/01/submission-information-for-2013-annual-meeting/

Letter from ABA President

It is a privilege to bring greetings as the incoming president of the ABA. We have had a tremendous year, an enduring tribute to the exceptional leadership and dedicated efforts of our officers and members. Raymond Codrington, as our outgoing president, has done an excellent job in steering this great ship­—casting vision, establishing goals, working diligently and checking on progress. Over the past year we have updated our website, launched a new membership initiative, awarded several prizes, continued a stellar AAA program lineup, extended our Legacy Scholars program, enhanced Transforming Anthropology (our flagship journal), and continued our mentoring program.

Certainly all of these efforts could not have been done without a team of dedicated ABA members and officers! I would like to thank our board for going above and beyond the call of duty: Willie McKether (secretary/treasurer); Dawn-Elissa Fischer (general editor); Aimee Cox and Dana-Ain Davis (co-editors, TA); Karen G Williams (contributing editor, ABA AN column); Oneka LaBennett (membership chair); Kimberly Eison Simmons (member-at-large and Legacy Scholars chair); Melanie EL Bush (John L Gwaltney scholarship chair); Aimee Cox (Vera Green Award chair); Riche Daniel Barnes (works in progress mentoring program chair) and Alisha Winn (archivist). It has been a pleasure to serve alongside you. Your tireless efforts have made this an amazing year. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

The AAA meeting in San Francisco afforded us an opportunity to acknowledge important achievements, showcase critical research and build upon the legacy of the ABA. Continuing our efforts to support future generations of scholars, our very first Johnnetta B Cole student travel awardee was named, Vanessa Agard-Jones. In addition, Melanie A Medeiros received the John L Gwaltney Scholarship, dedicated to early career anthropologists whose scholarship bridges the divide between research and activism. Congratulations to these two young scholars! Our Legacy Scholars program, established as a means of honoring and gleaning wisdom from our elders, in 2012 affirmed the importance of the ABA through challenging and inspiring remarks by Johnnetta B Cole, Ira Harrison and Faye Harrison. In addition, an executive session entitled, Crossing Borders: The On-going Work and Legacy of Johnnetta Betsch Cole, organized by Riche Daniel Barnes, paid tribute to Cole as scholar, teacher, college president and mentor extraordinaire. Our entire lineup of panels included invited and volunteered sessions, which covered a range of critical topics from the prison industrial complex to Haitian Protestantism, gender and multi-raciality, archeology and emancipation, mapping, Black community research and youth performance in the African diaspora. Indeed, it was an incredible year for Crossing Borders! Thank you, again, Andrea Abrams, for your hard work in pulling together our 2012 AAA program.

On schedule and in exemplary fashion Transforming Anthropology published two issues in 2012. The first was Black Queer Anthropology (20[1]); and the second, Reading Race Now (20[2]). In addition, Transforming Anthropology established the use of online supplemental material as a way to distinguish this editorship. For example in volume 20(1) the supplemental material was a photo montage accompanying Winn’s article and the volume 20(2) issue, the supplemental material was a videotaped interview with the subject of the article by Charles Townsend. Dana-Ain Davis and Aimee Cox have done tremendous work as co-editors of TA and will complete two more issues, volume 21(1) slated for April publication and vo1ume 21 (2) slated for October 2013, before turning the reigns over to new editorship. Added to the publishing of TA, our column in AN has provided a wealth of up-to-date information and thoughtful commentary thanks to the consistent efforts of our column editor, Karen G Williams.

In addition to these accomplishments, we would like to thank Orisanmi Burton for all of his work in helping to revamp our ABA website and Oneka LaBennett for launching our membership drive. Please check out our swanky new look at www.aaanet.org/sections/aba. Thanks again to Raymond Codrington for spearheading this effort. These changes are all the more important as we look forward to watching our numbers grow under our innovative membership drive. ABA members stay tuned for more details on how you can help.

We anticipate the year ahead with excitement as new members join the board and help to advance the work of the ABA. David Simmons is our incoming, already-hard-at-work president-elect, Angela Howell is our phenomenally diligent secretary/treasurer, and the ever astute Michael Ralph will assume the editorship of Transforming Anthropology by year’s end. Joining his team as associate editors are two outstanding scholars in their own right, Elizabeth Chin and Laurence Ralph.

We would like to commend Carolyn Rouse for an exceptional AAA program in 2012. And, we extend congratulations to our very own Dana-Ain Davis for being selected as co-chair of the AAA’s 2013 program with Alaka Wali. Be sure to submit your proposals for Chicago under the theme “Current Engagements, Future Publics.” We also extend a hearty thank you to our AAA President (and ABA member) Leith Mullings for all that she does to make us better anthropologists, invested in rigorous scholarship and advancing the common good.

In the year ahead we look forward to building upon the great foundation that has already been laid in the ABA. To that end, we have some important initiatives underway, including an innovative mapping project and new efforts to bolster graduate student involvement. We also invite young scholars to apply for the Gwaltney, Green and Cole awards (seek guidelines and due dates online). For further updates and exciting news be sure to check us out on our website or join us via email and Facebook as we walk together into our bright future.

Marla Frederick is a professor of African and African American studies and of the study of religion at Harvard University. Contributions to this column can be sent to karen g williams (kwilliams2@gc.cuny.edu).

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2013/02/01/letter-from-aba-president/