Workshops

During THATCamp PNW 2011, there will be four workshops on intersecting new technologies with social justice.

“Serious Play for Social Change” (10:00 – 11:15)
Wanda Gregory and Mike Mulvihill (Center for Serious Play, University of Washington Bothell)

This workshop will look at games from the perspective of how they can be used to support change, with a particular focus on the uses for social action. The participants will learn the basic components of game design and work on examining both paper-based and computer games.

“Close Playing, or, Teaching (with) Video Games” (11:30 – 12:45)
Edmond Chang (English, University of Washington)

Central to this workshop is a definition and demonstration of the pedagogy of “close playing” and “paired playing.” Like close reading, close playing requires careful attention to how the game is played (or not played), to what kind of game it is, to the design and goals of the game, to what choices are offered (or not offered) to the player, to how the game intersects with players and the culture at large. In other words, before we can take video games as serious objects of study, we need to develop ways to frame them, study them, and to seriously play them.

“Fast Mapping: Location Based Services, Google Maps, and #occupywallstreet” (1:30 – 2:45)
Josef Eckert (Geography, Center for Social Science and Computational Research, University of Washington)

Social justice moves quickly, especially for the movements now making use of social media and location based services. In this workshop, we’ll review some emergent location based applications newly available to activists engaged in direct action. The remainder of the time will be spent in a combination narrative-tutorial that will teach you how to deploy a Google map quickly, easily, and collaboratively using the presenter’s recent experience developing an #openwallstreet map in conjunction with developers from Sukey.

“Building Participatory Exhibits with Omeka” (3:00 – 4:15)
Carrie Lanza (Social Welfare, University of Washington) and Jentery Sayers (English, University of Victoria)

This workshop gives people who are unfamiliar with Omeka (a free, flexible, and open source web-publishing platform for the display of scholarly exhibits) an opportunity to survey its potential uses for teaching, learning, and community-based research. Participants will spend roughly thirty minutes exploring the Omeka interface and reviewing example exhibits already published on the platform. They will spend the balance of the workshop considering how to democratically integrate “offline” forms of knowledge production into the design, workflow, and attribution of a digital exhibit.

Unlike THATCamp sessions (which are quite conversational and collaborative), these workshops will be rather instructional in character. Feel free to attend, regardless of your degree of experience. If you are registered for THATCamp PNW 2011, then you do not have to register for these workshops. They are offered on a first-come, first-served basis, and they are conducted in technology-integrated environments.

(Image by Curtis Cronn.)