• Date: Saturday, March 28, 2015
• Location: Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference at Fairmont Queen Elizabeth in Montréal
• Event: Storming Wikipedia: FemTechNet’s Distributed Pedagogy to Improve the Digital Cultural Archive Workshop
• Workshop Background: In 2013, FemTechNet initiated an alternative genre of MOOC called a DOCC (Distributed Open Collaborative Course) on the topic of “Dialogues in Feminism and Technology.” Among the founding objectives for the 2013 DOCC was the desire to contribute to the archive of early feminist work at the intersections of culture, media and technology. FemTechNet initiated a distributed pedagogical activity called “WikiStorming,” a learning activity that is designed to write women and feminist scholarship of science and technology back into our web-based cultural archives. By editing and revising Wikipedia pages, FemTechNet sought to address the gendered division of labor of online encyclopedia authoring and editing which is skewed now toward male participation. Through the WikiStorming activities DOCC instructors also sought to engage a wider group of participants in the effort of writing and maintaining a digital archive of feminist work in science, technology and media so that the histories of the future will be well populated by the ideas and people that took feminism seriously as a source of inspiration and innovation in the creation of new technocultures. FemTechNet’s WikiStorming activity requires students develop a much deeper understanding of the complex exchanges, protocols and practices that compose Wikipedia, while understanding it as a significant media archive, by now becoming the defacto digital cultural archive across languages and countries.
• Workshop Description: This hands-on workshop will begin with an overview of FemTechNet and the creation of the Distributed Open Collaborative Course. Anne Balsamo and Alex Juhasz will provide context for Wikistorming as a key learning project from its inception. They will address how in the DOCC’s first year, WikiStorming led to teachable moments and opportunities for student leadership in media studies. Liz Losh will explore what the collective has learned and describe how WikiStorming will continue to happen across nodal courses and through organized edit-a-thons. Veronica Paredes will provide instruction on how to develop a WikiStorming module, pointing to available resources to keep track of students’ edits in Wikipedia and to gain help from Wikipedian communities. While we will focus on the topic of “feminism, media and technology” for our WikiStorming demonstration, workshop participants will be encouraged to discuss other topics of interest that might focus WikiStorming activities in their own classrooms.

• Hashtag: #FemTechNet #DOCC14

Preparation: Participants will be encouraged to use laptops and devices they may have with them to start Wikipedia accounts. During the workshop, there will be a limit on how many accounts can be made during the session.

Etherpad notes: Link

Please make sure to RSVP for the workshop. Once you have an account, make sure to add your name below.

Please just add your Wikipedia name to the list below with four tildas (~~~~). If you have comments, insert them after a dash.

• Vaparedes (talk) 14:31, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

List any classes/ workshops imagined or started during this workshop here: