NYU D&T 2020 Extra Credit Options Opportunities [under construction]

If you would like to submit an extra credit “expanded blogging” assignment, please complete it as a blog post and put “Extra Credit” somewhere in the post’s title.

  • Read and blog about a recent article from the Association of Progressive Communications. Article topics include gender and cybersecurity, Kenya’s framework for television spectrum access, and guidelines for social change organization who want to work online.
  • More Work For Mother: If you have not already cited this book in your paper, read 
    • Chapter 1 of this book, with a particular focus on the terms “work process” and “technological system.” 
    • Next, read one of the following sections that may apply to your own work: Food System (p 71), Clothing System (p 74), Health Care System (p 75), Transportation (p 79), Utility Systems (pp 85-89). 
    • Now, write a reflection: How does the author use the concepts of “work process” and “technological system” to examine gender (and any other salient social identities) in the context of home-based work? Do you think this examination still holds up today?
  • Read Contested Relations and write a blog post that reflects on this paragraph, page 84: “American medicine developed under the expansive influence of European scientific racism. As a consequence, early gynecologists demonstrated their medical knowledge through their treatment of and writings about enslaved women as gynecological patients who purportedly felt little or no pain as they underwent invasive surgical procedures. Antebellum-era doctors continued the American tradition of reinforcing prevailing racial stereotypes about “black” women through their writings. These men recognized the importance of medical journals, especially as the field became more legitimized.”
  • You are also welcome use any of the prompts that you may have missed from the “Assignments” section in all previous class posts. I especially recommend the prompts for 
  • Watch episodes of Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj that pertain to our class: Affirmative ActionImmigration EnforcementContent Moderation and Free Speech. Does the use of humor help to explain the issue? How? What are the technologies, SSIs, and biases at play in these segments? 
  • The Field Guide to Human Centered Design: Conduct some research as to who wrote the Field Guide to Human Centered Design. What is the history of this guide? What are the organizations involved in created this guide? How has it been used? Where has it been used? Has it been used effectively?
  • Watch Chancey Fleet’s talk Dark Patterns in Accessibility Tech (11 minutes) and discuss on your blog. What is meant by “ghostwritten code?”
  • Listen to the the NYU Aging Incubator webinar“International Perspectives of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Insights from China, England, and Korea” and discuss on your blog. Here’s the Video Recording.
  • In 20 minutes of overtime Session 20, I (Prof D) gave a short presentation of basic data analysis from my collaboration with Lander and Joshua (a study organized by UN-Habitat). Watch the last 20 minutes from Session 20 and refer to the background reading below. Then discuss the use biometric data to understand vulnerable populations like schoolchildren in Kibera slum. By using Human Subjects protocols and Informed Consent/Assent processes, we did our best to respect the privacy and humanity of participants, but is there anything we missed? Anything we can do better?
  • Listen to and blog about an episode of NYU McSilver Institute’s Podcast, called Black Boys and Men: Changing the Narrative. The podcast is available on  Google PlayApple PodcastsSoundCloud.

NEW: Listen to the Critical Consciousness Reflection audio, recorded last year by Tyrone Bryant. If you’re willing to share some of your own answers to his questions, please do so in an essay that reflects how you will continue to work on diversity, inclusion, and representation in tech beyond the scope of this class.

Opportunities still Under Construction


In addition to expanded blogging, you can create a full web site for your project (if your project is not a web prototype) and/or a submit a paper to a relevant conference. If you’d like to pursue any of these options and have questions about them, please let me know.