Category Archives: Social Media

Collaborative Project

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I am sorry I missed this post. I had Veteran’s Day off and I am struggling these days on following the due dates for classes for some reason. I need to get organized. I think our group is doing well. We decided to use group social media: Facebook (I set up), Instagram (Kseniia set up), and TikTok (Zaya set up). That is working out well. Zaya is busy posting on both the blog and on social media while I have been working on bigger projects like the Women’s Panel and my Mental Load video. Kseniia is cleaning up the blog and providing us with ideas for our next panel.

We are working together much better and I think we work well together. Tonight we met and brainstormed ideas for our next panel. We are thinking we will do a similar panel but invite men to come and talk about women’s issues. Zaya is bringing her fiancé and I asked my son. Kseniia will ask a friend to come. This weekend we are going to keep blogging on the group blog and posting on our social media. Our next panel is scheduled for next Thursday at 5:45pm.

Collaborative Project Update

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Our group is working on gender equity issues to include managing women’s mental load, discrimination in pay, gender discrimination and stereotyping, and protecting and advocating for reproductive rights. We have each picked certain topics to concentrate on that we have experience with. We started out using Facebook Messenger but have agreed to use the D2L group box or email to distribute documents to be peer reviewed.

Kseniia agreed to be our group leader and she set up the group blog. This week we met twice and agreed to meet on Thursday evenings. I agreed to meet with Judy to ask her a few questions about the project going forward, and that meeting is Thursday at 1pm. We had good discussions in both our meetings about the project. Both Kseniia and Zaya know quite a bit about blogs and social media and their insight is helpful; they both also know how to make and edit videos. There have been a few items we have not been able to come to agreement; which is frustrating for all of us. I think in time we will work through the items as we talk about them. In the next week, I think our project will come together and we will all have a better idea of our roles in the group and what is expected.

How Do We Bring an Imaginative Dimension to Our Real-World Spaces and Places?

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When we talk about a world that is better for women, we realize a better world for all. Taking on issues regarding the pay gap, education, funding/donations, helping women start and sustain small businesses, and empowering women in today’s world should belong to everyone not just women and it should start with girls. For women to bring this dimension to life they need to talk about gender equality to each other as well as with allies and girls. Women need the care work to be shared, to embrace diverse role models, to empower children to speak out, to stop the body shaming, to listen and learn, and to fight stereotypes. Social media can be used to organize and bring awareness to the issues. Using social media women can tell their stories and send messages of gender equality. Allies of gender equality are important for this movement and mission of inclusion and equality to succeed. Planning a social media campaign to empower women and bring light to gender equality will involve proposing ideas that are dynamic and work in the pandemic environment we are living in. Our real world has been redefined and the social media campaign will reach women and girls. Working with women, women and their allies can reach out to girls and mentor and empower them.

How Do Women Imagine Our Social Connections with a Larger Community?

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The first step in making connections with women who are working toward equality is having conversations. Because of the pandemic and because we have the advantage of the internet, these conversations can take place online through social media. The connections of women and their allies are what they have in common and where the women are in their lives. In the conversations women will discover what they have in common, what is different, and what other experiences women are undergoing. Women all over the country and world are experiencing the pressures of the pandemic whether they are single, married, or if they have kids or not. Equality may look different for certain groups of women but the struggle for and the goal to achieve equality will be the same. Working toward equality will create solidarity for women and women will discover they have more in common than they think.

Introduction to WIFI

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I remember when the terms WIFI or wireless started emerging and although I had an idea of what they meant, I did not fully understand the connection. For Christmas 2008 my husband insisted on getting me an iPod Touch. At the time I was not sure if I would use it enough to warrant the $200 price tag. At that time, it did not have a camera and I had my first smart phone, which was my only android phone. Oddly enough what really sold me on the iPod Touch was that I broke my leg in February 2009 and I was bed-ridden. I managed to keep connected and learn all about wireless. I joined Facebook in January 2009 when my daughter was a year old and between keeping in touch with family and friends throughout my broken leg ordeal, I was also able to keep every one up to date about my baby.

My husband, Paul, and I met and worked together in Germany and we had many friends who we reconnected with and I have stayed in touch with them since then. Now our youngest son is working at a similar place in Germany. Paul is British and his parents are divorced so posting updates and photos once instead of doing it two or three times via the mail or a phone call was really convenient. I was also able to do some of my work from my bed with the wireless connection. When I moved on to an iPhone that had a camera, I really thought I had it made! I no longer needed to carry around my phone, my camera, and my iPod Touch. My daughter takes all this technology for granted because it has always been around her entire life.

Facebook and politics

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At times I would like to expand my social media presence beyond Facebook, but I do not know where to start. I use Facebook to keep in touch with family and friends, mostly people that I have not seen in a while. But I also have my close friends, my immediate family, neighbors, and my kids’ friends’ parents on my friend list. My usual posts are about my family. I post photos of my kids, their accomplishments, our trips, funny experiences, etc. I really try to stay away from getting political because it can get so polarizing. I have some conservative friends—mainly from high school or family friends—that even though I do not agree with them, I’m not willing to take on their beliefs.

 

Not all my liberal friends feel that way. Some of them have told me they have lost friends due to their political posts. I have been known to hide a few conservative friends, so I don’t have to see their posts. Sometimes I feel like that is cheating.

 

My son was home for several weeks over the summer and we talked a lot about the state of politics right now and about how not saying something makes us feel bad, but we don’t know where to begin. I make very light-hearted posts about how we counted 21 Trump signs on our way to the bike path and only one Biden sign, so we decided to stop there, with a photo as proof. I would like to be bolder and say in my posts what I truly believe and stand up for my beliefs. I do not know if I can. We live in such a weird time.

 

Many years ago, maybe in 2002 or 2003, I worked with a women whose son went to St. John’s Prep and chat rooms were new. As a student he wrote to another student something to the effect of “we should maybe get guns and take them out” speaking about other students who didn’t agree with their liberal beliefs. The student who got the message was scared and told the authorities and the student who wrote the phrase was charged with terroristic threats and kicked out of school. At the time I was appalled. I had two young sons and had no idea of what they might get up to in the coming years no matter how much direction I tried to give them. Afterall we were living in the “Jack Ass” age as well. When I was young, kids got a break, whether it was good or bad, and second chances. No tolerance was unheard of.

 

As the election approaches, I do not know what I will do. I will make sure the world knows I did not vote for Trump but whether I will have the nerve to say more, time will tell.

Pre-writing Questions for Technology Literacy Narrative

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I feel as if technology did not exist when I was growing up like it does today. Sure, we had a wall phone with a very long spiral cord, TV, and a stereo phonograph, but compared to today, the gadgets were not as significant in daily life as technology is today, especially while we are in a pandemic. Growing up I can remember my dad playing 8-track tapes of polka music in the garage. TV was limited. We had very basic channels and when cable came along, with MTV, it was a whole new world. The phone is by far the greatest advancement if you ask me. I can remember in 1994 when I moved home from Germany and my parents had a cordless phone. Wow! No cord. I would have done anything when I was a teenager to have a cordless phone.

My parents do not have stories about technology, but I have stories about them and technology. My dad is a smart guy, but he has yet to grasp wireless, Wi-Fi, internet, etc. He uses them but he cannot wrap his mind around how it works. He is 81 and uses his Gmail password to try to get into everything that requires a password. I am his backup security email, so I get notifications at least once a week that he changed his Gmail password, of course accidently. Also, he thinks his Gmail is exclusive to his iPad. He does not grasp that he can sign into it just about anywhere. However, I think that having information at his fingertips has been useful for him. Over social media (that will a different post!) he is able to stay in touch with friends and family all over, and that has been really great. My mom died in 2006, and I often think about how much she would have loved technological advancements like Facetime and being able to see who you are talking to.

I have a MacBook Pro, iPad mini, iPhone 8, and Apple watch. At work I use a desktop PC. I am not too concerned about having the latest and greatest, but I like my technology to be up-to-date. If it slows down or cannot be updated, that’s about the time I start looking for a newer model. In our family we have a system where we pass on our old technology onto the next person. For instance, my husband gets my old phones because he just doesn’t care. I’ve also passed on some phones to my son, Sam, who is 23. He has broken and lost so many phones that he is not concerned about having a new phone. My 12-year-old daughter has the newest phone, surprise, surprise!

I like to learn about new technology, but I need to be in the mood for it. We have a new website at work that I update. I used to use Dreamweaver and now it is web-based through Square Space. I have been dragging my feet and there are so many things I need to update. One day I will get the motivation and I will get it done, but it takes that motivation to get there. It is the similar with iTunes. It changes so often that I have lost interest in keeping up-to-date. But one day I will get the motivation to update my gadgets and I will learn all the new features.

At work we do all of our meetings over Zoom now, and I often witness miscommunications. I have also seen this in the university Town Halls. Someone will have a question in the chat, and it is misinterpreted and they either accept the wrong answer or give up. As a bystander, I can see it happening but I’m not in the position to join in and try to clear it up. I have also seen this happen face-to-face, so I think the questions have to be concise when they are on the spot.

When it comes to social media my technology literacy is somewhat limited or stalled. I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family all over the world, but it stops there. I have Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat accounts but rarely use them or check them. For me it a matter of time. I have made time in my life (usually in the morning over coffee) for Facebook, but after that, I do not find that I have time for it. In the summertime I like to be outside and ride my bike and now I have my classes and very little free time. If I have free time, I like to spend it with my husband or daughter. I would imagine that younger people might have more time to spend time with social media and maybe more interest. Online dating was before my time. I think that would require a lot of time devoted to corresponding online. Both my husband and daughter love YouTube. For me it is a tool to learn how to do something, usually a frustrating experience! I do not care for video instruction. I would prefer to read it.

I don’t know who the most technological person in my life is. I think there are different degrees. My oldest son who is now 27 used to love technology. When he was home this summer, he told me hadn’t updated his MacBook for years. I was a little shocked. My husband is motivated to learn about some technology, for instance he taught himself InDesign watching YouTube videos for a project at work, but he never updates his phone and his Gmail account is where email goes to die. He never checks it. Then there is my daughter Molly, the 12-year-old; she heard me talking on Zoom for work about infographics. None of us knew how to do them and we were discussing our options. When I hung up, she said I should try Google Slides for infographics and sure enough that worked.  She may be the most technologically advanced.

I think technology gets a bad rap. I cannot tell you how many memes talk about how everyone is always on their phone. My son, a history PhD student, told me long ago that the novel when new was like the mobile phone today. It was shunned and criticized if people read in public. People were rotting their minds and turning into antisocial loners. A bell in my head rang when I read our textbook this week and Gutenberg came up. I think that technology is in its heyday with the pandemic. I work online remotely, I order my groceries online, I do my banking online, I read online, I stream TV, I have telemedicine appointments, I am learning online, and if ever there was a time to have technology up-to-date it is now. Thanks to my husband’s time in the military, we have gadgets to keep in touch. Thanks to an employer who let me work at home when my daughter was young, I have a good set up at home. And thanks to being a graduate student, my husband purchased a new wireless printer and office chair for me last fall. I feel for students and for families who do not have technology at this period in time.

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