About WS445 Women and Computers Class

I just completed a short slideshow designed to recruit students to the Women and Computers class I teach for Women's Studies. Only 20 slides long, it presents a few snippets of the issues we explore in 3 major aspects of the course:

Gender, Race, and Class Perspectives on the Web and computers
How Feminists and Social Justice Activists use the Web
Hands-on Training with free software and online Web tools

I am using the slideshow to give short speeches in several classes to inspire (I hope) students to enroll. If interested, you can view the show at Slideshare.net

Digital Diversity - Whose Contributions are Recognized?

As part of our unit on the Digital Divide, we are also exploring Digital Diversity. How are women using the Web? What are communities of color contributing to the Web? To what extent are the contributions of women, of people of color, and of other marginalized groups recognized?

We are starting by studying the slide show below and will be exploring the web to assess its accuracy and to see if there are more examples that should be added.

E-cards as Educational Outreach

While studying this week's assignment re Online Activism, I was struck by the blurb I saw at the WWF website in its online activism section. One of the suggestions is "Help spread the word about WWF by sending a free e-card to your friends and family."

Of course many web sites offer free e-cards, but I had never seen one with this explicit suggestion of how to use the e-card to spread the word about your environmental (or other cause) interests. Such a good idea and so easy to implement.