Education and Information

Introduction

Education is a service which often involves products delivered to students. For example, an educational video, the transcript of an online discussion, workshop handouts, and activities with followup writings are educational products.

Activism often involves the dissemination of information and activities which educate the public or select groups. The goal of the delivery method, the printed and online communications, and the interactions is to foster learning.

How can education and information be delivered to best educate the intended audience? How can feminist pedagogy be included in the design and help activism plans to succeed?

Many activist groups/projects use web sites of varying kinds to facilitate feminist pedagogy:

• Collaborative wikis, forums, spreadsheets, project management tools, and social bookmarking sites, which provide authenticated interaction (personal accounts, record keeping, democratized interactions).
• Classroom management tools such as Blackboard and webCT, which provide management of students, learning materials, collaborations, assessments, and grades.
• Templates and plugins which provide organization, clarity, and interest.
• Reflective journals/blogs, which combine private with public and often theory with practice.

Web-based technologies often allow linear and non-linear thinkers/learners to communicate more effectively when they can reflect before writing public responses. This provides time to "analyze their own construction of knowledge and power." (Technology and Feminist Pedagogy)

Outcomes and Activities

The Education and Information component of the Activism Plan will allow you to explore feminist pedagogy as well as create a way for you to begin interacting with your audience. Their use of the information, feedback on the learning, assessment scores, and interaction with other members of the audience will tell you whether you've met the Plan's goals.

Add resources to your Database

As a result of the following activity, students will be able to identify sources of education related to their Activism Plan.

1. Find a wide range of educational sources to support your Activism Plan.
2. Add at least 10 resources to the Database.
   • Categorize them according to the type of resource: information, tutorial, workshop, course, conference, etc.

Write and Present

As a result of the following activities, students will be able to construct a web site which 1) declares their feminist theoretical foundation for engaging in activism on behalf of technology for girls and women and 2) include news, information, education, and interactions related to their chosen topic.

1. Research and write an article that introduces your Lesson.
   • Introduce the gap and solutions to close the gap you chose in your Activism Plan.
   • Declare your feminist theoretical foundation for the activism.
     • Women's Studies Spark Chart Barnes & Noble. 2005, notes major theories.
   • Add this article to either:
     • Your current blog, or
     • A new web site that more closely ties your project together for the public.
       • The current blog is for this class, but a new site would focus just on the public project.
2. Develop and produce an online lesson that teaches knowledge and a skill(s) to your audience, which will help close the gap.
• Use one of these delivery methods:
  • Online course management system such as Blackboard
  • Online collaboration tool such as a wiki
  • Web site or blog
  • Audio files, such as a PodCast
  • Movie files, such as Flash saved on YouTube.
  • Presentation, saved as web pages, such as from PowerPoint or Keynote.
  • Any other online method that is accessible to your audience.
3. Provide a mechanism for online interactions, such as chat, discussion forum, comments on blog posts, etc.
• Add components to the site as needed.
  • Wordpress, for example, will allow you to turn on/off the ability for the public to comment on posts. Your Lesson could reside in a post with comment forms turned on.
  • Installing a web application such as Drupal will allow you to turn on/off blogs, chats, and forums as needed for diff rent parts of your site. Use ONID's server space for the installation (free).
4. Report in your blog.
• Create a Page called Education & Information.
  • Describe the process and tools you used to create the Lesson.
  • Display the resources from your Database.
  • Link to the Article that introduces your lesson.
  • Link to the Lesson.

Scoring Criteria

1. At least 10 educational sources are added to the Database and displayed in the Information article.
2. Information about solutions are presented as a formal article online.
3. Feminist theoretical foundation is declared.
4. A lesson teaching knowledge and skills related to student's plan is presented online in the blog or separate web site.
5. The ability for the public to comment/ask questions/provide input is provided.

Examples

Delicious/GenderTechnology/pedagogy

Pam Van Londen and students. 2007. Four-hundred plus resources hosted by Delicious, related to gender and technology. View the list as a cloud or alphabetically. The pedagogy category hosts sources related to gender and technology.

Education and Information Report for Role Models ~ Interviews of Women in Technology

Pam Van Londen. 2007 (outline only; unfinished).

Role Models: Interviews of Women in Technology

Pam Van Londen and Loren Paulson. 2007. Education and Information site providing a searchable database of online video and audio interviews of women technologists. In addition, it teaches videographers how to plan and submit new audio/video materials for inclusion in the database.