The Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative at Michigan State University is hosting a field school for Cultural Heritage Informatics (CHI) from May 31st to July 1st, 2011.
The CHI Fieldschool is a unique experience that employs the model of an archaeological fieldschool (in which students come together for a period of 5 or 6 weeks to work on an archaeological site in order to learn how to do archaeology). Instead of working on an archaeological site, however, students in the CHI Fieldschool will come together to collaboratively work on several cultural heritage informatics projects. In the process they will learn a great deal about what it takes to build applications and digital user experiences that serve the domain of cultural heritage – skills such as programming, media design, project management, user centered design, digital storytelling, etc.
Most archaeologists that I know see the end result of their research as a publication. More often we are seeing the integration (or at least the desire of integration) of electronic data into published accounts. Very few see the need to introduce their projects in a user centered design for the presentation of their data. Field schools like this one help us meet in the middle. Knowing what people are doing with the presentation of the data can help create good data collection policies in the field.
Paperless Archaeology 
Thanks much for featuring the fieldschool. We’ve got spots open if there are people in your end of the world interested in attending. We are also not just accepting grad students and undergrads – heritage professionals are just as welcome to apply.