[LINK] FemTechNet

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

> From:   Melissa Gregg <melissa.gregg at sydney.edu.au>
> Date:   Fri, 14 Sep 2012 02:36:27 +0000 
> Subject:  FemTechNet - new network and teaching initiative 
 

FemTechNet - new network and teaching initiative

Colleagues:
 
I am writing to introduce you to FemTechNet*, an international network of 
scholars and artists who are conceptualizing, designing, building and 
implementing the world's first DOCC* (Distributed Online Collaborative 
Course), a feminist rethinking and redoing of the unidirectional, 
massive, somewhat imperialist MOOC* (Massively Open Online Course). 
(* Please see definitions of our terms below).
 
Our DOCC, Feminist Dialogues on Technology, will be offered September-
December 2013, on fifteen campuses around the world, at least one each 
per continent.

Members of our network who do not take or teach the course can follow and 
participate in this pedagogic experiment in a variety of voluntary 
capacities, small and large.
 
First step: we request that you join our network!

(To learn more, see these interviews published on Digital Media and 
Learning: Bodies in Classrooms <http://dmlcentral.net/blog/liz-
losh/bodies-classrooms-feminist-dialogues-technology-part-i> and Learning 
from Failure <http://dmlcentral.net/blog/liz-losh/learning-failure-
feminist-dialogues-technology-part-ii> or sign up for our upcoming NITLE 
<http://www.nitle.org/help/digital_humanities_events.php> seminar: 
October 4, 4pm EST.)
 
Our current home (under development) is located on the 
fembotcollective.org <http://fembotcollective.org/> website one of our 
many institutional collaborators.

(Using the Pull-Down menu "Participate"): here you can join our listserv 
to become part of the conversation, and to stay informed about our 
progress and needs.
 
In the next few weeks, we will be finalizing the list of schools that 
will offer the course next year, and you are hereby invited to offer the 
course at your institution.
 
By signing on to teach one of our nodal courses, you receive an 
adaptable, customizable set of learning objects, BOLs*, created and 
evaluated by the network, as well as fifteen other colleagues and 
classrooms with which to interact. Of course, you also will get to teach 
our Dialogues: 10 recorded conversations with pre-eminent feminist 
scholars and artists working about and with technology (the list of 
speakers will be announced shortly on the listserv).
 
Please communicate directly with me if teaching the course at your 
institution and to your students seems of any interest to you: 
alexandra_juhasz at pitzer.edu.
 
We are also particularly eager to network the course to colleagues 
outside of Europe and North America, so if you can forward this 
announcement to appropriate international feminist colleagues, that would 
be very helpful.
 
Thanks for your interest and please see terms below.
 
Alex Juhasz, Media Studies, Pitzer College
Anne Balsamo, Media Studies, The New School for Public Engagement in New 
York
 
*Terms:
 
FemTechNet is a network of hundreds of international scholars and artists 
who work on or with technology in a variety of fields including STS, 
Media and Visual Studies, Art, Women's, Queer and Ethnic Studies. 

Activated by Alexandra Juhasz <http://pzacad.pitzer.edu/~ajuhasz> and 
Anne Balsamo <http://www.designingculture.org/release-
0711/CommercialAbout.html> , the network will design, implement, and 
teach the first DOCC (Distributed Online Collaborative Course), a 
feminist rethinking of the MOOC. 

Our course, Feminist Dialogues on Technology, will be offered in fifteen 
classrooms, at least one in every continent, in the Fall of 2013. 

Our project uses technology to enable interdisciplinary and international 
conversation while privileging situated diversity and networked agency. 

Building the course from a shared set of recorded dialogues with the 
world's pre-eminent thinkers and artists who consider technology through 
a feminist lens, the rest of the course will be built, and customized for 
the network's local classrooms and communities, by network members who 
submit and evaluate Boundary Object that Learn—the course's basic 
pedagogic instruments. 
 
DOCC: Produced collectively by FemTechNet, Dialogues in Feminism and 
Technology delivers (and grows) ten weeks of course content covering both 
the histories and cutting edge scholarship on technology produced through 
art, science, and visual studies. Recorded conversations between 
luminaries in these fields will anchor each of ten weeks of themed 
content, but from there, each professor will tailor a course best-suited 
to her students, institution, locale, and discipline from a diverse, 
robust, and growing database of “Boundary Objects that Learn.” 

Shared assignments will link learners around the globe as their own 
efforts become part of the feminist database and dialogue.
 
Boundary Objects that Learn: Readings, media, web-resources, and 
conversations that have been both submitted to and evaluated for teaching 
by the network. A feminist rethinking and remaking of the boundary 
object, our network will together create situated, variable, responsive 
teaching tools best suited for particular learning communities and 
environments.
 
“A boundary object <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_object> is a 
concept in sociology <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology> to describe 
information used in different ways by different communities. They are 
plastic, interpreted differently across communities but with enough 
immutable content to maintain integrity. The concept was introduced by 
Susan Leigh Star <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Leigh_Star> and 
James R. Griesemer <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Griesemer> in a 
1989 publication (p.393):[1] 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_object#cite_note-Star1989-0> ””

MOOC: Massively Open Online Course 
<https://sites.google.com/site/themoocguide/> .
 

MELISSA GREGG | Senior Lecturer
Gender and Cultural Studies | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
J406, Quadrangle A14 | The University of Sydney | NSW | 2006
T +61 2 9351 3657 | F +61 2 9351 3918 | M +61 408 599 359
E melissa.gregg at sydney.edu.au | W http://sydney.edu.au

New book: Work’s Intimacy 
http://www..politybooks.com/book.asp?ref=0745650279 

Also out: The Affect Theory Reader (edited with Gregory J Seigworth)
http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid=17901
--

Cheers,
Stephen