Monday, March 23: Anthropology of Networks, Part II: Moving from Consumers to Producers: Community Engagement and Doing-It-Ourselves – Transition Week

Via Wired

In accordance with The New School’s COVID-19 response, we’ll be meeting online through the end of the semester. We are working hard to collaboratively build innovative ways for the class to move forward and explore networked learning in line with the class theme.

This week is dedicated to acclimating ourselves to the online environment. In order to help us plan, we ask you to do the following:

  • By Friday, 3/27, please review our update email, if you haven’t done so already; and complete this Google Survey regarding your tech access. We’ll need this information to help us plan our subsequent classes!
  • Before class next week, please join our class Slack channel. We’ve created an account for each of you using your New School email addresses; you should’ve received a confirmation email from Slack. And if you’re new to the platform, please check out the Slack Help Center and watch this tutorial video.
  • Please sign up here for a time to meet virtually with Shannon and Greta April 13 or 14 to discuss your final project!
  • There’s no reading for today, but if you want to see what to expect for the second half of the semester, check the class website page for Monday, March 30!
  • And please reach out to us if you have any questions or concerns. We’re happy to chat over email or schedule a phone or Skype call!

We were originally planning to host a Build-It-Ourselves networking workshop today. Instead, we hope to make the workshop available as a video recording, and will possibly also hold video-based FAQ sessions for anyone who wants to try building one. Could DIY networks be an effective way to share bandwidth and help isolated people get online during the COVID crisis?

 

OUR ORIGINAL PLAN:

Guests: Raul Enriquez, Community Tech NY

This class will be a hands-on workshop. Raul Enriquez will lead us through the process of building and configuring our own Portable Network Kit. To wrap up, we’ll have a Skype conversation with Vasilis Chryssos about how getting hands-on with community networking has made a difference for Santaporo.gr member communities in rural Greece.

We’ll consider: how does going DIY change your relationship with technology and networking? Can we imagine a process that might similarly change the dynamic of “master planning” to follow the lead community-led, grassroots organizing processes?

Supplemental Resources (which, according to our original plan, we would’ve read for today):

 

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