• Feminist Culture in Cyberspace
  
• Getting Educated on the Net
  
• Kids' Sites
  
• Games for Girlz
  
• "Welcome To Atlantic View Elementary School!"
  
• Doreen Paris:
  Making Diversity Work
  
  Volume 1 #3 Part Two

There is a spirit of generosity amongst sisters in cyberspace which reminds us of the early days of the Women's Liberation Movement. Networking, activism and support are interwoven as we push ourselves to learn to work with the new electronic tools we are encountering. Together we anticipate a future where growing numbers of women can access and use the global connections to promote women's equality. The challenges encountered are met with enthusiasm, and hope. The efforts can be frustrating, but they are followed by a sense of achievement. This virtual world is exciting, and fun.

It's been a long time. We acknowledge that times have changed since those heady days of feminist re-awakening and growth. The anti-feminist backlash, the rise of the Right, the economic hardships, the wear and tear of activist work, the divisions and conflicts, the prejudiced behaviours - all are truths which have led us towards gloom and despair.

Maybe it simply takes a jolt as powerful as this new technology to alert us. It's difficult to analyze something which is developing so rapidly. Yet there is reason to hope, to raise our expectations, and to get involved.

Democracy

The essence of Internet technology is its potential for democracy. This is a grassroots medium which gives equal voice to the many, which enables the exchange of views, and which promotes support networks. While we are likely to see attempts to control who uses the Internet and how they use it, it is in fact difficult to control. The ease with which so many are engaged in discussion with each other across the world, and are able to make their lives and views known, is a nightmare to those who would censor it.

Women on the 'Net are fighting for our place in cyberspace. There are intrusions by men in 'chat' places particularly which are a form of sexual harassment, and there is pornography for those who go looking for it. But there are other forums to attend, moderated mailing lists which are able to exclude offensive messages, creative Web sites, and exchanges of information vital to our global understanding of equality. Women are able to see and be seen for the issues we ourselves choose to present to the world.

Diversity

Diverse groups of women are included in exchanges in cyberspace. In fact, it is often hard to know the age, ethnicity, colour, ability or sexual orientation of a person unless she chooses to inform you. People are, in general, taken seriously for the concerns they raise. Of course, sensitivity, is also required and there are issues to address. For example, some genuine efforts are being made to extend the languages/translations available. Some mailing lists are closed, and those who are not of the designated social group are asked to respect this intended privacy.

Accessibility

At this stage, the major networking issue is how to extend accessibility to women globally. This means taking into account the need for public access points such as schools, libraries and community centres, and the availability of community freenets. It also involves a recognition of the need for information to be made available in a form which can be accessed by basic computers, for example files can be obtained by e-mail as well as visited by browser-capable computers. Recycling old computers, mentoring new users, extending support networks, putting out newsletters, linking to each other's WWW sites, are a few of the projects which we can all become a part of in this women's Internet movement.

Organizing

This is where co-operation, imagination and developing new ideas is really taking off. The first part is the organization of the information. Turning information into knowledge takes databases and search tools. Then comes using the knowledge to network between groups covering similar issues, both to prevent "re-inventing the wheel", and to further develop ideas by such methods as brainstorming. Third comes sharing the information to build and add to our communities, and to further develop our political work. And fourth is the co-operation between activist groups to increase our impact, increase our speed, reduce our communication costs and thereby make ourselves more effective.

First you need to learn how to use the Net. Then you will be able to find these incredible, numerous, and engrossing resources. We liked the ROADMAP series, covering tools like telnet, e-mail, listservs, ftp, gopher, archie, veronica, and offering lessons on netiquette, spamming, etc. This was sent out one lesson at a time five days a week for five weeks in the Spring of '95. 80,000 people received the daily mailing, many passing it on to their friends. Some people did their lessons daily, others waited until the evening, or did all five at the weekend - or even saved them until they had the time, maybe weeks later. The Internet gives the flexibility to learn at your convenience. You can still do these lessons by going to Roadmap

Distance learning is increasing rapidly. You can follow a course step by step, or tailor it according to your own needs and abilities. Every individual can have their own course, mixing and matching from a vast range of sources all over the world. Our local children's hospital has hooked up kids who are in long term care to schools and their peers, so that they are less isolated, from school, friends and others in the same situation as themselves.

You can also take specific courses from places such as the Left On-line University (LOLU). Lolu's third semester is just coming to a close, but there will be a fourth. We were particularly attracted to the course in Electronic Activism, which says that "students will use the Internet as a communication and information resource generally, and as a tool for electronic activism in particular". There is optional homework so that the course becomes a hands on experience. "Concrete examples illustrating electronic activism in practice will include anti-Gulf War organizing and recent anti-Contract with America coalitions. We will compare and discuss the relative advantages and disadvantages of on-line activist tools for everything from coalition -building to electronic leafleting, and explore the online culture, especially the quasi-anarchic UseNet, including how some online projects provided living proof of the power of co-operative economics." The course outline includes Using Email for activism, the Future - Democracy through Information Access?, Information Liberation: Various examples of Online Projects, Progressive Student/Community Newspaper Networks, and Virtual Broadcasting. You can find out more about LOLU, and the courses offered, by sending a blank message,
email LOLU

Maybe you want to improve or test your knowledge on health. Try The Virtual Nursing College where you can try a nursing practice seminar, or learn about nursing research, or nursing education, or you can follow the links to specialties in psychiatry, epidemiology, pharmacology and many more. You can even be pointed to lessons in writing your own HTML for your own Web site.

A little learning, anyone?

If you've ever had doubts about whether it's worthwhile to get on the Internet bandwagon, these sites will be more than convincing. They are dynamite! Packed full of ideas, resources and geared to extend your global knowledge horizons, they will knock you flat. Not generally being the types to be effusive, we humbly say "Oh, Wow!"

Canada's Schoolnet welcomes you to the CyberSchool virtual learning environment! There are some fascinating projects here. Try following Geography, then the National Atlas for interactive learning about Canada and its communities.

The Kids on the Web covers a wide-ranging list of sites including adventure and word games, environmental projects, books, artwork and the cyberspace aquarium. The site offers information for and about kids that people can use either to let kids play with stuff on the Internet, or to find the things they need for their work related to the care and education of children:

Follow some of the links to educational sites, such as the World Wide Web Digital Library for Schoolkids at Kids Web. Or try Kidcafe which exists to promote a global dialog among 10 to 15-year-old kids all over the world. It is intended to encourage both discussion among groups of kids and the building of individual friendships, as part of Kidlink.

Deaf CyberKids page is for school-age deaf kids worldwide. Parents, teachers, and kids are encouraged to participate in the Deaf World Web, sharing kids' writings and creative arts with other kids worldwide. The Deaf World Web has pages of countries, containing information about the deaf in their own nations. The purpose of the DWW is to educate people, especially the hearing, about the deaf and deaf communities, to gain deaf awareness, and to maintain the pride and spirit of the deaf people.

Indian Schools, Colleges, Tribes is prepared by Paula Giese to assist Indian schools, colleges, or native students' groups coming onto the Web, and non-Indian schools with large populations of Indian students. Indian kids are helped to get in touch with each other, and indigenous young people in other parts of the world. Includes a Web Maker Tutorials page. These school pages can also be found linked from Paula's WWW Site Canadian First Nations: Native and Inuit InterNet Resources.
[Editor's Note: These pages are not maintained as the author passed away summer 1997.]

Here's an interesting site that promises to get you off the computer! The Children's Literature Web Guide includes recommended books and bestsellers, online children's stories, reviews and discussion groups, resources for parents, children's writings and drawings. Subject Bibliographies help to focus your search. For example, you can choose Brave, Active & Resourceful Females in Picture Books; Books With Artistic Protagonists; Drum Stories - folktales involving drums and other percussion instruments; Favorite Teenage Angst Books; Gay Characters and Themes in Children's Books; Native American Coming-of-Age Novels. Favorite Books and Must-Reads is compiled by contributors to the Rec.arts.books.childrens newsgroup. "If you have read everything on this list, you can consider yourself truly kid-lit-erate. And you will be too old to be considered a child."

The internet-women-info mailing list had a recent discussion in response to a software company's views on developing 'games for girls'. The company contends that "girls" don't like to play for scores. They also believe that "girls" prefer "relationship" rather than action games. Gretchen Brewer has a different view.

Gretchen Brewer writes:

The idea of making games for girls is well taken, but the idea that 'not violence = quiet reflective or sweet and dainty focus on relationships' sucks. 'Not violence' can mean that the girl: goes on kayaking expedition; mountaineering expedition; strategizes a chess game, optionally where the players are the chess pieces; flies different kinds of imaginative rube-goldberg airplanes (that btw behave aerodynamically accurately); builds a car from parts of 'real' cars, and then races it in baja-buggy conditions; puts together a dog team and races the iditarod; designs mad-scientist space research (or undersea research) crafts and attempts to explore planets or the ocean with them..

'Relationship games' could, hey, get really wild and consider that maybe boys aren't necessarily the center of all girls' universes -- often even among straight girls! How about some problem-solving games with un-idealized solutions: ethics problems that have consequences like the real world. e.g., doing the 'right thing' generally has mixed results, and it's more useful to learn that than to have an idea that doing the right thing makes everything just peachy for everyone. Problems and solutions generally have more complex dynamics which wouldn't be all that hard to at least sketch out in a computer game.

Or, maybe the girl is a budding tycoon, er, entrepreneur, and can build her business using hierarchical and non-hierarchical models or hybrids. Then she gets to see the results of her fantasy management decisions.

I personally think it would be pretty funny to see a game where the main character, a girl, is a schlemiel and gets to bumble around trying to get through life or whatever. I could write the script for that."

You'll hear this cheerful greeting from the students of my grade 3/4 class if you click on the sound icon on the Atlantic View Elementary School class' home page on the World Wide Web.

Last year we tried different projects using the Internet. Some were simple email connections from school to school:

A class from Texas asked students from around the world to send 'hello' email messages. They marked the locations of classes who responded on a map of the world.

A class held a 'Ground Hog Day' prediction accuracy test. They asked for our Ground Hog Day reports in February and contacted us in mid-March to see if the predictions had been accurate. (BTW, do YOU know where our 'local' ground hog resides? Hint, it isn't in Canada!) Readers Theatre scripts, drafts of to-be-published works are distributed for classes to try, evaluate and give feedback to the author.

Some individual student to student email exchanges. Initially exciting, lack of response from the other end can be very disheartening for eager communicators.

Then, over the Christmas break, I was introduced to the power of the World Wide Web. By means of a software program available for Macs and PCs both, files that are posted on Internet accessible computer servers anywhere in the world can be viewed on your own computer. These files are much more than what email can deliver. They can include text in various sizes, graphics, borders, sounds, background colours or patterns and even multimedia movies. Want to see a frog dissection? There's a choice of at least 2. Click on Frog A or Frog B.

Developing Our Web Page

I decided to have my students develop a Web page. At times they worked independently, in pairs, small groups and as a class. Some articles involved research from traditional sources, such as background for the Piping Plover article. The local people articles (writer Lesley Choyce, musician Gordon Stobbe) were researched by interviews conducted by the students in the classroom with the subjects as guests.

From January to May students worked every day on some aspect of this electronic publishing venture. Motivation was very high - especially for their individual autobiographies. For some students, these brief entries were their best efforts all year. They understood exactly what it meant to have this info posted on a Web server - reinforced by numerous email letters from readers throughout the world. Any person who visited our room was directed to our wall of fame (bulletin board with articles in draft form as well as email correspondence.)

They achieved tremendous satisfaction from being acknowledged as the first elementary in Nova Scotia (and one of the first in Canada) to have a Web page. Future classes will add to this site. The medium offers the ability to have clickable maps of Canada. One click and students could be linked to the material on each Province they would cover in their Social Studies program. In Health class a clickable human body could reveal the mysteries of the heart, liver, brain, etc.

As transmission speeds increase, possibly via cable delivery, my students would develop multimedia presentations via a product such as Hyperstudio. These could be shared with other students around the globe.

This Web project developed a sense of pioneering as well as pride of accomplishment in my students. They knew they were learning along with me (which probably increased my enthusiasm as well).

Computers engage children like no other teaching tool. To create something that is on their computer and shared by others is a uniquely empowering sensation.

By e-mail, you can contact Nancy Barkhouse P.O. Box 202 Dartmouth, NS, Canada B2Y 3Y3

Lobby the Department of the Environment for a Canadian groundhog!

Doreen is our representative on the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women for the Highland Region. She keeps us up to date with information and takes our suggestions to Advisory Council meetings.

Doreen was born and brought up in Gibson Woods, King's County, where she attended a segregated school, until the de-segregation process took place, after which she attended Kings Rural High School and Cornwallis District High School. She graduated from Mack Business College in Kentville and went on to work for the Department of Education, Adult Education Department in Halifax. When she married she moved to New Glasgow where she still lives and works in the Extension Department of St. Francis Xavier University. She is Vice-President of the African United Baptist Women's Institute, a past-chair and present board member of our local women's shelter, a past member of the board of New Leaf (a support program for men to change their abusive behaviour), and was one of the founding members of the local women's centre. Doreen also coordinated the pilot project "Barriers" , a project addressing the barriers faced by black women dealing with violence in their everday lives.

Doreen writes:

When the provincial Liberal government announced the policy to stop patronage appointments, the Advisory Council saw an opportunity to attempt to diversify the Council and advertised for applications to fill vacant positions with priority given to minority women. During consultations with women's groups it was learned that minority women did not feel the Advisory Council was representing their voices. In a lot of cases, minority women were not even aware the Advisory Council was in existence, or were not clear what the purpose of the Advisory Council was. This application process gave all women the opportunity to apply to serve on the Council.

I believe that all women should have a chance to be involved in the issues and to make sure their voices are being heard. As a Council member, I am not here solely to represent black women, but all women from every race and culture can work harmoniously together. Although there are similarities in issues, the impact violence has in black women's lives is coupled with the oppression and racism we as black women have faced in the past. Oppression, racism, language are important factors that have to be considered when looking at issues that face black women, as well as taking into consideration issues faced by other minority women as situations arise.

This past year has been a challenge as well as a learning experience for me, as I was able to learn from my fellow members and became more sensitive to the needs of women in general whether it be disabled women, lesbian women, first nations women, or single parent women. Each one of us learns from the other and tries to represent and be sensitive to every issue that faces us as well as to respect each other and be receptive to one another's opinions.

The Advisory Council is an independent agency at arms-length from the Provincial government. Our mandate is to advise the government on issues of concern facing all women in Nova Scotia as well as being a voice for all women.

Our office is located on the 2nd floor of Quinpool Centre, Quinpool Road, Halifax. We have a resource library including newspaper clippings, books and videos. Dependable and friendly staff are always willing to assist visitors who are researching topics or looking for information. You can also visit our home page for the NSACSW.

By e-mail, you can contact Doreen or the NSACSW office.

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