Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/CSUF/Gendered Techno Culture (Fall 2017)

Two premises inform this class: Technologies have histories. Technologies are gendered.

Historians of science and practitioners of technology studies have recently begun to explore technology’s past. They have demonstrated that personal Computers did not spring, fully formed, from the technological ether; that the internet descends from telegraph lines and that camera phones were preceded by daguerreotypes. In other words, technologies are not timeless. They have histories.

At the same time, scholars of gender and sexuality studies have reminded us that understanding gender is integral to understanding the development of tech. They show us how Alan Turing’s sexuality intersected with his experiences of code-breaking technology; how expectations about masculine forms impacted the genesis of robotics and how women’s labor was essential to the development of early computing.

This class brings together these two disciplinary approaches. In the process, students will become acquainted with foundational texts in the history of science, technology studies and gender and sexuality studies.

Week 3
Welcome to your Wikipedia project's course timeline. This page will guide you through the Wikipedia project for your course. Be sure to check with your instructor to see if there are other pages you should be following as well.

Your course has also been assigned a Wikipedia Expert. Check your Talk page for notes from them. You can also reach them through the &quot;Get Help&quot; button on this page.

To get started, please review the following handouts:


 * Editing Wikipedia pages 1–5
 * Evaluating Wikipedia


 * Create an account and join this course page, using the enrollment link your instructor sent you. (To avoid hitting Wikipedia's account creation limits, this is best done outside of class. Only 6 new accounts may be created per day from the same IP address.)
 * It's time to dive into Wikipedia. Below, you'll find the first set of online trainings you'll need to take. New modules will appear on this timeline as you get to new milestones. Be sure to check back and complete them! Incomplete trainings will be reflected in your grade.
 * When you finish the trainings, practice by introducing yourself to a classmate on that classmate’s Talk page.
 * Finally, select the article you will be working with for this project (only one article/student)

It's time to think critically about Wikipedia articles. You'll evaluate a Wikipedia article related to the course and leave suggestions for improving it on the article's Talk page.


 * Complete the &quot;Evaluating Articles and Sources&quot; training (linked below).
 * Create a section in your sandbox titled &quot;Article evaluation&quot; where you'll leave notes about your observations and learnings.
 * Read and evaluate the article you chose. As you read, consider the following questions (but don't feel limited to these):
 * Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?
 * Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?
 * Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?
 * Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?
 * Check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?
 * Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback with four tildes — Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:46, 14 March 2018 (UTC).

Week 4
First, review your Editing Wikipedia guidebook. Pay particular attention to pages 8 and 9.

Second, read through it, doing an article evaluation like you learned last week. While you read, think about ways to improve the language, such as fixing grammatical mistakes. Then, make the appropriate changes. You don’t need to contribute new information to the article.

Week 5
Continue to familiarize yourself with editing Wikipedia by adding (1) a citation and (2) a substantial paragraph to an article.

There are two ways you can add a citation:


 * Add 1-2 sentences to a course-related article, and cite that statement to a reliable source, as you learned in the online training.
 * The Citation Hunt tool shows unreferenced statements from articles. First, evaluate whether the statement in question is true! An uncited statement could just be lacking a reference or it could be inaccurate or misleading. Reliable sources on the subject will help you choose whether to add it or correct the statement.

There are several ways you can go about adding a substantial paragraph:


 * Identify a gap in the article that requires expansion.
 * At a minimum, you should add 2-5 sentences backed up to 2 citations

As you are getting started on this assignment, I would recommend following these steps:


 * 1) Look over my notes from your article assessment.
 * 2) Go over the readings so far.  Identify important theories or concepts that help us to better understand the intersection of gender and technology.
 * 3) Using your assessment, my notes, and these theories, come up with a plan for one important idea that you think needs to be incorporated into your article.
 * 4) Write out your one important idea in a paragraph of 2-5 sentences, with citations.
 * 5) Read over your article again - where does this idea best fit?
 * 6) Insert your idea into your article.  Do light editing to make sure that the paragraph makes sense within the article.