ack! my students are so great! so, in my gender and info tech class we do an exercise where student hypothetically smash a piece of tech (a la the printer in office space). I imagine this was particularly cathartic given our current moment. anyway...

after that I ask them to examine the (hypothetical) wreckage and start documenting what components they see and what those components are made of

and then I ask them to go through their accounting of materials and start bringing the people back in: who made this? how did it get there? etc... we do this in the lead up to the unit where we discuss arbitrary (and classist) ideas of what counts as "tech work" and what doesn't

ANYWAY, in the classroom I have done this via giant post-it sheets on walls and students move around the big lecture hall (~150 students) and draw, write, discuss in waves BUT

this iteration I gave students the option: you can either post an accounting of a "smashed" device or you can reply to a post like detailing the materials/humans involved and OMG this was so much better

I learned SO MUCH today about supply chains, materials manufacturing, labor, etc... lesson: your students have SO MUCH KNOWLEDGE already!

and it is nice when an activity designed to unlock that knowledge actually works. (now my job is just to help them see how that knowledge can tell them something about structural conditions and gender, race, and class in tech................)