Category Archives: Discussion

On The One Hand Anyone Can Edit, On The Other Hand Anyone Can Edit

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My interest in Wikipedia is truly growing, to my own surprise. The series of articles about Wikipedia assigned this week further contextualize/illuminate this growing interest in the medium-platform-community that is Wikipedia. Most people that I know believe that Wikipedia is not a good source of information or knowledge because it is TOO democratic, TOO open, and teachers + professors always caution against its use in academic work. I’ve never held this belief strictly, but I also did not realize that behind the front-end of a page is a back-end where information and knowledge are critically negotiated, contested and mediated by a diverse (?) community of people who spend unpaid time building the informationscape in piecemeal.

What quickly came to the forefront for me is the problem of the shape and color of that landscape, as well as the diversity of the community that constructs it. Specifically, while barriers to entry to Wikipedia as a contributor/editor is theoretically low, the space is still predominantly white and male. As such, the informationscape tends to reflect that, and emerges as a reflection of the power dynamics within a larger social context. This is one entry into the conversation about why edit on Wikipedia.

The precursor to this conversation is to contextualize Wikipedia within a political economy of ideas and principals about who we are as a society. The issue of democracy, openness and value/validity is essential to theorizing this space in relation to our conceptualization of civil society. It isn’t an accident that resistance to Wikipedia often comes in the forms mentioned above (ie. that it is overly democratic, overly open and not a great source for information). With relation to democracy and openness I will make the argument that mainstream social values, relations and practices are actually not built on democratic principles or principals of openness as one might venture to think within the parameters of discourse around American civil society. Our legal system and constitutional infrastructure is built on principals of individuality and private property as shaped by political modernity. Encoded into our subject-position in relation to the law and to ideologies of citizenship is the idea of a sovereign self and the sanctity of private property. What that looks like in reality is far from this blanket statement I’ve made. We are not all positioned, from the get-go, as equals. Some sovereignties are protected more than that of others, and are conceptualized by different terms (think of same-sex relationships, alternative family structures, immigration regulations, criminality etc). However, the concept of a ‘free’ individual and private property are basic elements/components of how we organize ourselves in the social-political-economic sphere for better or for worse. For example, the values and social system as they relate to community organization and land use for Native Americans were not conceptualized and constituted in the same way that they were for the settlers. However, we now know whose conceptualization of communal/social organization and land/property prevailed. While this seems like an antiquated example (and I am sure there are more contemporary examples to engage), it most starkly highlights the point that the concept of private property and individuality became coded into our legal, political and social institutions over time. This code privileges one group over another, one ideology over another, and essentially one way of being over the other. Principals held by Native Americans were displaced by Settler principals and became the foundation of our legal and our social and economic institutions.

Therefore, it is quite understandable to perceive something like Wikipedia as too democratic and too open. It operationalizes concepts that are ubiquitous in rhetoric but missing from the actual practices of the nation, both on legal-institutional levels as well as the cultural forms that develop around them. I argue then that Wikipedia resists and challenges our basic ideologies about how society and citizenship works, and tests how democratic principles and openness (open and free to utilize and or participate) would look like. As some of the examples from the readings demonstrate (Hurricane Sandy, Gamegate etc), these ideals are not entirely ideal, even or clean cut. Democracy in action turns out to be a contested space that is messy and ridden with power and hierarchy, but also a space that is open to and inviting of a (re)negotiation of those things.

It is only fitting then that negotiation happens around information. The Wikipedia project can then be conceptualized as an epistemic struggle; a political and ontological activity in shaping what we know, and how we know it. The issue of validity and value are especially pertinent in this case. Academia has largely functioned as an institution that acts as the arbiter/gate-keeper and producer of knowledge (within a particular sphere that is distinct from the media or think tanks, both that may have a more direct relationship to public policy but for the sake of the argument we shall leave this aside for now). Academic institutions self-validate through constructing an economy of value and validity about truth claims that are engaged in questions and concerns around methodology, source and disciplinary codes of conduct. Epistomology becomes the domain of a few specialized spaces where the construction and circulation of knowledge is managed, policed and guarded. These spaces are also largely homogenous. Academic institutions encode within their practices a self-referential mechanism where only the knowledge produced within their own domain is valuable and valid. While Wikepedia does  not move too far from this model (that is its concern with methodology, source and codes of conduct) it is though more open (accessible to greater amounts of people as participants and as users). Again, this statement is an over-generalization that too conveniently places these spaces in a binary. But there is some truth to it. The fact is that authentic participation and co-construction of knowledge challenges an institution like academia in similar ways that I’ve asserted that it challenges principals of private property and individuality.

Against this brief and brutish backdrop, I return to the conversation on why edit on Wikipedia?

 

 

 

 

Safiya Noble’s Article on Google Search and Black Girls/Women

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Hi everyone, thanks for a great discussion in class today (and thanks for posting Jade’s Medium essay, Sara). Here’s that article that I mentioned by Safiya Umoja Noble:

http://ivc.lib.rochester.edu/google-search-hyper-visibility-as-a-means-of-rendering-black-women-and-girls-invisible/

And a proper citation, because I’m a librarian:

Noble, S. U. (2013). Google Search: Hyper-visibility as a Means of Rendering Black Women and Girls Invisible. InVisible Culture: Issue 19.

Hashtag feminism

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A theme running through the readings this week is how identities are forged, represented, negotiated, and contested through and with the digital technology we use. Despite the anonymity one might enjoy in certain spaces on the internet, as we know from reading Nakamura, Hayles and Haraway, our bodies matter. Technologies can be used to subvert power structures and inequality, though more often digital media is used to amplify and reproduce them.

Loza describes how the #FemFuture initiative and its defenders silenced the women of color who have used platforms such as Twitter to call attention to their exclusion and to the ways they experience patriarchy differently from the middle / upper middle class white women who have powerful positions as bloggers and pundits in online feminist movements. When Black scientist and writer DNLee wrote a blog post about her experience being demeaned for her gender and race in an email exchange, Scientific American removed her blog post — ostensibly to “verify” facts, but a Tweet from Sci Am’s editor said that the post was “not appropriate for this area.” That justification makes little sense, given, as Hess from Slate writes “Lee’s blog is specifically dedicated to diversity issues; the business of how science is made, disseminated, and funded is crucial to its very existence.”

Many are using the internet to unite, heal, and raise awareness (the women using  #NotYourAsianSidekick and #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, for example). But most of the examples in the readings demonstrate how digital media is used to entrench oppression.

Citing Nguyen, Loza writes: Feminists of the digital age must refuse the nostalgic discourse of authentic selves, of natural bodies, of fixed communities and instead attend to the “structures and relations that produce different kinds of subjects in position with different kinds of technologies” (Nguyen 2003, 302).

Haraway, in Cyborg Feminism (1991) asks a similar question: What kind of politics could embrace partial, contradictory, permanently unclosed constructions of personal and collective selves and still be faithful, effective, and ironically socialist-feminist?

Provocation: The readings this week have shown us many non-examples of the quotes above. What does the above look like in practice? What examples that you’ve come across demonstrate how digital interactions can build effective coalitions across identity groups that go beyond the “add-and-stir” model of diversity (Bailey, 2011)? How can we recognize, embrace, and attend to the role of intersectionality in our teaching and scholarship with digital media?

Teaching, Learning, Technology & You

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This week we read a range of texts focusing on the issues facing education within a digital context. From the qualitative multi-year study conducted by our very own Prof. Smale, we read about the circumstances that many CUNY students face when confronted with coursework. While indeed many students these days are extremely tech-savvy, in some situations, the availability of technology may not meet the growing need. Further, many students are capable of navigating online resources and doing research using mobile devices such as smartphones, e-readers, or tablets. Instructors can learn to maximize the utility and availability of these resources by guiding students through searches to find valid resources to contribute to their research and classroom-based activities and discussions. One such initiative to improve the accessibility of resources is the OpenLab at City Tech as described by Rosen and Smale.

 

In terms of online pedagogy, the presentation of instructional materials is an important consideration because it creates a platform for learning. Based on his own experience, Pelz describes three principles based on experience with online learning. The first principle states that “students should do (most of) the work.” Describing different types of online tasks, such as virtual ice-breakers and discussions of online resources, Pelz convincingly shows how online forums can be used to continue a conversation between students about course material and learning outside the confines of the classroom. Principle 2 emphasizes the importance of interactivity in learning and provides examples for creating collaborative writing activities online. Much like GoogleDocs or Social Paper, the advantages of both writing within a quiet space that free of distractions as much as possible combined with the benefits of receiving feedback from peers and instructors can be set-up online. The third and final principle stress the need for presence in online education. Presence, according to Pelz, in an online environment comes in three distinct forms: affective, interactive, and cohesive. Just as disappointing as it is finding a blog that hasn’t been updated in years, seeing that a course site is out of date is probably similarly upsetting to a student who attempts to use it as a means to access resources and communicate with others in the course.

 

While not evident in Pelz’s piece, Ugoretz brings light to a different aspect of online discussion forums in particular, highlighting the creative potential that forums have for generating digressions. Whereas in a classroom setting, the digressions can consume a large amount of class time and may not always be to the benefit of each student, digressions in an online forum can invite all students to participate in the conversation allowing it to err in any direction that the participants see fit. For those who are not interested in the digression, they may contribute to another conversation or create their own. Ugoretz provides some recommendations for setting up productive digressions – for one, by establishing very clear goals for the discussion forum.

 

If anything, access to technology and information has created a meta-space for learning that extends beyond the classroom and as educators and students, we should try to maximize this potential.

 

Motivation: React to one or more of the following

 

In line with the empirical tradition, no significant statistical difference merely indicates that you have failed to demonstrate of an effect of one variable in relation to another. That is to say, that you have not proven a relationship does or does not exist. One can neither really prove nor disprove anything. Occasionally, errors can occur where an effect is not detected and this outcome, known as a Type II error can stem from multiple issues, including faulty experimental design or simply not having sufficient power as a result of a small sample size. With that said, do you believe that there is sufficient reason to call into the question the studies in No Significant Difference?

 

How is the need for the Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age (BRPLDR) self-evident? Who is primarily responsible for ensuring that they are adhered to?

 

What were your reactions to the BRPLDR? If you were to amend the bill, what principle would you include or change?

 

The article by Pelz attempts to establish very concise principles of online learning. Do you think that they are comprehensive enough to lay the foundation for a good online discussion?

 

Digressions in an online setting can beneficial for students, according to Ugoretz, but need to be set-up by the instructor in such a way the objectives of the discussion are clear. In what other ways can an instructor enhance the productivity of a digression by setting it up?

 

React to your own experience in online education.

Class Notes from Past ITP Students’ Visit

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I took some notes during our visit from past ITP students Pamela Thielman and Christina Shane-Simpson on 2/22, and thought it might be useful to share them:

Pamela:
– Think broadly about who you might collaborate with, both inside ITP and at the GC more broadly (and even beyond)
– She was looking for a project that incorporated giving back to her community of Theatre scholars, wasn’t teaching at the time so felt like she wanted to do something less explicitly pedagogical
– Be careful what you wish for! She’s administering the theatre images site now
– Useful learning through the project, e.g. now knows not to clean data by hand
– Also engaged her in a larger conversation about digital projects and sustainability of them, working with the GC Library currently
– Omeka is what Pamela used for her project, ask her if you have questions

Christina:
– Really wanted to have a project that could be used for her own scholarship as well as the IS course
– Implemented a summer transition program for students on the autism spectrum at CSI
– Part of this was social and advocacy skills for the students, but tech skills were huge as well
– Learned when they interviewed on intake that there was a big range of student skill levels
– Weren’t really using social media so shrunk that, kept the emailing your professor module
– Then ran the program again this past summer and had a totally different cohort, had to make a bunch of changes both times
– Also tried to incorporate some of those tech skills into other modules if necessary
– She’s written up the project as an article, but she’s also benefited from the theory from ITP courses too
– She’s also implemented a Wikipedia assignment, used it with a class of 100, too big! But would’ve been fine with smaller class, also more challenging with early career students than later

General discussion:
– Don’t forget about the evaluation of whatever you build/do for the IS. Sometimes the evaluation is does it work when you plug it in?
– Check mydigitalfootprint.org for an example of a digital dissertation from Greg Donovan, former GC student

Pamela also sent these resources for working with Omeka:

Omeka.org is the source for basic info on the platform and Omeka.net hosts the free sites. Both have links to examples of interest.
http://omeka.org/
http://www.omeka.net/

Here are two of Kimon Keramidas’ class sites (he is the GC/ITP alum who oversaw my capstone). He uses Omeka as a base and then some intermediate level coding to create themes that allow for more interactivity and flexibility. These are Omeka.org sites, so anyone wanting to get this fancy will need server space.
http://www.bgccraftartdesign.org/
http://physical-electrical-digital.nyufasedtech.com/

Week 3/Feb 22: Let’s all get it done together

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What does what OR How to get things done OR Let’s all get it done together

As Sara notes, 37 Signals, Getting Real (2009) definitely operates in the discourse of start-up. The text is snappy and feels like a pitch. It certainly presents an image and tone for agile development. While I appreciate many of the strategic impulses (not tying yourself down to padded check ins, establishing a minimum version for the sake of getting things done and testing them, finding a common “enemy”, and making things in a spirit of passion not tedium), I find the flashy presentation a bit off-putting. The fact that they preemptively address this potential resistance in the caveats does not, in my mind, let them off the hook.  I think Sara is onto something when she raises the concern about what people this approach may or may not encourage. The in-and-out quick model is easier to support if you are more accustomed to fallback securities — it’s easier to fail from a place of privilege. I would also argue that letting the users have a say is a way of outsourcing focus-groups. The way statistics and feedback are built into tools is a personal pet peeve. I once received a promotional email that claimed “people need to hear what YOU think”…on clothes?  The way the burden of feedback is put on the user strikes me as a devious redistribution of labor. I am now responsible for improving the tools I use? I can’t just pick out my tool at the store and consider the transaction finished? The app after app after app culture with constantly evolving features promotes this “user-oriented” development that seems to displace a lot of assessment, much the way we are the product in the free tools we use, we are the developers in the tools we comment on.

In academic development, I feel less cynical about the shared responsibility of use and revision. Without the paranoia about who is profiting from my feedback (because education as profit seems to me universally worthwhile), I am more forgiving in academic loops. Miriam Posner’s digest of digital tools, How did they make that?, is an amazing resource. The question of what to learn to make the things you want is persistent in Digital Humanities. When I revisited Bamboo DiRT, I revisited my sense of possibility and subsequent panic. I have poked around DiRT many times and I am continually overwhelmed by the breadth of tools and the degrees of use and disrepair of certain projects. DiRT is looking much better than when I first went on a year and a half ago, and the Assignment-in-a-box demonstrates a reciprocal action of use and evaluation that might be dubbed agile development in 37Signals. Are these built-in measures which invest students in the outcomes of their tools part of what we were talking about in terms of dynamic teaching last semester? Or is just a productive way to get conscientious feedback?

I find that these catalogs can be less terrifying when you start to meet people at events like Media Res (1&2), last week’s NYCDH events, and the GC Digital Research Bootcamp (everyone should apply for June). The community in NYC is remarkably open and encouraging, and the GC is such a vibrant part of that. I’m really looking forward to hearing former ITP students  Sarah Litvin, Christina Shane-Simpson, and Pamela Thielman talk about their Independent study projects!

Response and motivating thought:

I would like to sound a rallying call for us to work together!

I think the working group evenings (Mondays (2/29) and (3/21) 6:30-8:30, (4/18, 2-4pm NOTE TIME CHANGE)) are going to be a really excellent way for us to share our learning and build our projects. I also figured I would bookmark the remaining Digital Fellows Office Hours:

Mondays in the Digital Scholarship Lab, Room 7414

  • February 22 (2:00): Michelle & Patrick Sweeney
  • February 29 (5:30): Mary Catherine & Ian
  • March 7 (2:00): Michelle & Jen
  • March 14 (5:30): Ian & Jeremy
  • March 21 (2:00): Patrick Sweeney & Keith
  • March 28 (5:30): Mary Catherine & Jeremy
  • April 4 (2:00): Jen & Keith
  • April 11 (5:30): Hannah & Jeremy
  • April 18 (2:00): Patrick Sweeney & Ian
  • April 25: Spring Break – No office hours
  • May 2 (5:30): Hannah & Jeff
  • May 9 (2:00): Michelle & Keith
  • May 16 (5:30): Hannah & Jeff

 

 

 

Stay lean, scale back…

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Since the late 2000s boom in Silicon Valley, self-help style mantras for start-ups have truly proliferated and seeped into business and popular culture. I am thinking about this scene in HBO’s Silicon Valley where it is proclaimed, satirically, that “Failure = Success.” And the “Move fast and break things” posters hanging up at the Facebook headquarters.

But if you can get past the catchy slogans, “Getting Real” does seem to offer us budding creators some important advice. I have worked for most of my career in educational organizations where long meetings and consensus building are part of the culture. We are probably less efficient than we could be, but when the goal is to build knowledge and supportive communities with diverse groups of people and constituencies — that approach makes sense. If the goal is to make a product, however, I see the wisdom in following some of the mantras about scaling back, staying lean, reducing the number of meetings, launching on time no matter what, and prioritizing.

At the same time, I wonder if any of the values implied by the advice in the Getting Real text contribute to the dismal statistics on diversity in the tech industry. In a recent episode of the Reply All podcast, the reporters interviewed Leslie Miley, who was the only Black engineer at Twitter for a number of years, as a platform for discussing the differences between how diverse and non-diverse teams operate in workplace settings. They talk about how many start-ups have low diversity stats because company heads make assumptions similar to those in the text about how communication should be free-flowing and teams should be lean — which leads them to hire people who share similar backgrounds and cultures to themselves. Research discussed in the podcast suggested that even if diverse teams take longer to build trust, they are consistently better at solving problems because they come at challenges from many different angles. I only read the assigned pages, but up to there, diverse thinking was not a consideration in the Getting Real text.

Of course, as we all know from the campus protests this year, and statistics and accounts from students and professors of color in higher education, academia struggles with inclusion and diversity as well — so its values don’t always correspond either… but I still wonder…

Provocation 1: As you begin brainstorming your project ideas, how do you reconcile the different / incompatible seeming cultures/values of education/humanities fields and the start-up world? What can/should educators and academics learn from start-up culture and vice versa?

Also —

The juxtaposition of the “Getting Real” text with the readings about specific projects and tools seemed very appropriate. On the one hand, “Getting Real” urges us to keep our ideas focused, and to deliver something limited in scope and simple, but powerful and functional. In browsing through all of the project examples (especially the 1989 feature and the Green Book mapping project), however, my mind started racing from idea to idea, and I felt a case of “scope creep” coming on.

Provocation 2: How, practically, can we keep our visions simple, especially in this exploratory stage? I feel like there’s something useful about a “sky’s the limit brainstorm” which then gets paired down. At this point in the game, if I think too small, I think I limit myself. As my writing teachers have said, it’s easier to cut than to add more stuff… How do we balance both kinds of thinking  — feasible and idealistic?

Intro and Project Idea (?)

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Hello!

My name is Sakina and I am now in my second year as a Doctoral student in the Urban Education program. I was initially interested in this certificate program/area of study because of an academic background in media studies and teaching experience in online education and education technology. It has taken me some time to articulate and think about where all this might be going, so I am not entirely sure what might be most suitable for me as a project. I am only now in the process of defining a dissertation topic, which is still in it’s most embryonic phase. I would ideally like the work I do in this class to dovetail with my thinking and research in my dissertation area. I’ve always been painfully-interdisciplinary in the least productive way possible, and I am now trying to be more cautious and strategic in the decisions I make about what to pursue and how that speaks to future academic/professional aspirations (and what those are!). In the interim, I am enjoying being exposed to more tools and ideas in this program, and hope to be able to refine something out of these opportunities moving forward.

My interests lie (broadly) at the intersection of education (especially higher education), pedagogy, media and information technologies, cultural studies, marxist and feminist frameworks of analysis, and post-colonial discourse. I hope that this will be a productive semester in figuring out where these things can speak to one another in a project in ITP and beyond.

 

Project Idea

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Final Project Idea (Anders): For my final project, I would like to build an interactive website for my digital dissertation research using Scalar. My dissertation research in cultural anthropology examines the production of masculinity and the phenomenon of “seduction communities,” including dating coaches and their followers, who train each other in interpersonal skills and ‘charm’ to attract women. This website would act as an interactive online ‘museum’, and a public portal through which to present some digital data (as well as results of my dissertation research), and to connect my work with audiences beyond academia. In many cases, this digital data takes the form of pedagogical media produced by dating coaches and designed to inculcate particular understandings of self and other. Using Scalar (http://scalar.usc.edu/scalar/), this project will invite readers to navigate open-ended, inverted, and non-linear pathways through multimedia archives of data including textual, video, and audio-based media gathered over the course of my research. Specifically, the site would be designed to allow readers to explore connections among—and discover new relations within—ethnographic data (text, video, audio and photography) that will be annotated, tagged, indexed, and deposited in the website. Text-based captions can accompany the multimedia ‘objects’ to explain, contextualize, or critique the objects. By allowing users to create divergent pathways through the archived materials, interact with and comment on pages, as well as to connect and dialogue with other users, the site will hopefully create an online safe space for community building around progressive and inclusive gender identities.