A Sad Commentary on our Schools

This poster from The Jose Vilson Blog dramatizes the lock-step, rote education that is only being made worse by No Child Left Behind.

A third grade teacher from Oregon explains in detail why all the recent budget cuts, teach to test pressures, etc. have driven her to retire. This article, while long, explains clearly the evolution of her creative, learning-inspiring, classroom to the daily drudgery of rote learning and how are schools are becoming even worse, educationally speaking.

Why Women Don't Write for Wikipedia, etc.

Last week's assignment on the Digital Divide focused on exploring alternative search engines by entering the same search term in each.  One student, using the search term  digital divide gender  at the social bookmarking site Delicious.com uncovered a Jan. 31, 2011 New York Times article "Wikipedia Ponders Its Gender-Skewed Contributions."  The article reported that less than 15% of the contributors to Wikipedia are women and explored possible explanations.  The author interviewed Jane Margolis (who has done wonderful work on institutional sexism and racism in computer science classes) who opined that women are less willing to assert their opinions in public. 

Little mention was made of WHY women might be less willing to assert their opinions in public.  The cartoonist Gabby fills in some of these blanks.  In the excerpt below from Gabby's much longer cartoon, we see the all-too-common reaction women experience when they do assert their opinions in a male dominated blogosphere.

See also the post "I’m a woman, and I’ve edited Wikipedia" on the Geek Feminism blog of 2/11/11 and the many comments by women who formerly contributed to Wikipedia but left in response to what they perceived as an unwelcoming environment.

A full size wall poster of Gabby's entire cartoon (6.75″ wide by 43″ long on rich matte cardstock) can be ordered here.  Gabby's comic books (written under the name Ken Dahl) can be purchased from Microcosm Publishing.

Using Cartoons/Graphics to Convey Info

I've always been struck with some of the creative uses of graphics to convey information. I was particularly impressed by the way Global Kids at Holy Meatballs used graphics to present qualitative research data. The teens had conducted an open-ended survey of other youth about how they use and relate to digital media. Instead of a text only summary of replies, the Global Kids prepared a much more interesting results report by using illustrative graphics to accompany each survey answer. Kept me reading in a way that text-only reports might not have.

I assigned my students to experiment with similar graphical approaches when summarizing an article about the obstacles facing inner-city teens trying to navigate the online financial aid application process. (See “Low-Income Urban High School Students’ Use of the Internet to Access Financial Aid" by Kristan Venegas)

I suggested the students might try using PowerPoint in a graphically intensive manner (not the traditional bullet points) or they might try making a "comic book" using the ready made cartoon elements at Toondoo.com.



Above is the first panel of one student's cartoon rendition. Check out the complete cartoon/comic book on our class wiki.

The Internet and Sexual Exploitation of Women

We had a good discussion in class of Donna Hughes’ article "Use of the Internet for Global Sexual Exploitation of Women and Children" (1998) in which she describes very clearly how the web is used to perpetuate prostitution and sexual trafficking of women.

• Web sites where men can exchange info about “desirable” prostitutes and where to find them
• The promotion of sex tourism
• Mail order bride web sites (cheaper on web than old fashioned print catalogs) and concomitant “X-Rated Escorted Tours”
• Live sex shows via video conferencing

A student raised a concern that Hughes’ seemed overly focused on regulating the Internet, ignoring the dangers that over-regulation might bring (like filtering software that prevents students from doing research on breast cancer or possible censorship of sites run by human rights advocates attempting to stop international trafficking). I was pleased to see the student related her concern to Patricia Hill Collin’s concept that we must analyze both the oppressive and the liberatory aspects of an institution. While the Internet can certainly be used to oppress women via forced prostitution, it can also be a powerful tool to resist the sexual exploitation of women.