Blog #5 A MOOC?

Focus on project identity! There was a lot of  collaborative work taking place last Tuesday within our group. We are a large group and we really spent our time focusing on getting the job done. Splitting ourselves up into three groups to tackle the different parts of our presentation proved to be successful. Maria and I really honed in on the first part of our presentation, how we come to terms with defining our identity. We feel we selected an amazing Finding Your Roots episode to share with the class that pinpoints several important topics when discussing identity. The episode brings up many talking points. It made us think us think about how we/society define(s) identity, and how we are effected by external factors in our lives that may make us question who we are. It has been awesome working with Maria, doing a close reading of the video, and developing discussion questions that we feel the class will really appreciate and that will allow for some true moments of expression and sharing. We hope it is enlightening and that some people may find themselves connecting with the presentation. 

Now onto the MOOC. I never heard of a MOOC before. I was curious about what it was when it was brought up in class on Tuesday. Thank you Dr. Zamora for providing a link so we can see what an actual MOOC looks like. It seems like a great way to serve the needs for our class. I spent some time perusing the site.  I even watched a few of the webinars. One webinar allowed the panel to reflect upon their experiences engaging in a MOOC, and their feedback was extremely positive. Those who were invited on the panel shared about the connections made between people involved and the positive energy they felt throughout their experience. I know this was an example of quite an extensive MOOC that was more "involved" for lack of a better word, than ours may be, but I really liked that people felt connected. That was the key word for me. It definitely seems like a way to reach out to others who may be invested in our class, and maybe don't it yet. However, being a tech spaz I would like to know more about how to construct a MOOC site and upload our work onto it. How does it all come together? 

Blog #4 Reaching Others

Every week I am moved by the honesty of my classmate's stories shared either through their blogs or "share outs" in class. I mentioned last week how I really haven't had many moments in my life where I felt singled out negatively for who I am, and that the few times I have really sucked. Those moments made me feel small or angry. Being looked at, judged, valued or not, based on one's race or ethnicity day in and day out, and to constantly feel that small or angry feeling that I have felt only a few times in my life, must be challenging. Sharing is powerful. It creates awareness and knowledge. I'm sure there are many people in our school community who would want to share their stories and bring about awareness to the important issues we have been discussing. Is there a way for us to create a safe place for people to do so????

We are definitely not alone. There are other classrooms on many other college campuses where important conversations like ours are taking place. There is advocacy happening. How can we join in the conversation is the question? How do we get our voices heard? One way can be through the use of social media. Social media is lie a living-breathing entity. Everybody uses it. Think about all of the resources we have been finding and sharing in class. How can we open this up so more people are aware of our work?

  One really cool place in the cyber-world I stumbled across was a Facebook page that is raising awareness about microaggressions in our society: The Microaggressions Project  https://www.facebook.com/microaggressions (check it out). This made me think that maybe we could create our own group page and share it out to all of our FB friends and watch it explode. We can update items that we find even after our semester is over. It is an easy and connected way to allow us to keep doing this work and get our voices heard even when we are no longer together on a regular weekly basis. 

Blog #3 Putting It All Together

It was great coming together with my group, Race/Ethnicity and Identity, last Tuesday. When we started we were a bit undefined, but together and with the help of Dr. Zamora, we left feeling as if we had a stronger sense of direction and purpose for our group presentation and final project. We want to divide our presentation into two parts. The first dealing with the issue of how we define/perceive ourselves/our identities and the second dealing more with how society defines/perceives us. We identified resources and activities that will help us put our ideas all together.

Over the weekend, I found some wonderful resources on microaggression. What it is. When the term was coined. Examples. Advocacy. I also watched several episodes of Finding Your Roots and feel that I have identified a few that will open the doors to a great classroom discussion.

I don't feel that we hashed out individual roles or tasks yet within the group as this week was more of a finding mission. I feel once we all bring our resources to the table on Tuesday and organize our plan, we will each have a more clearly defined role within the group. I feel like we are extremely collaborative as there has been some great sharing over the week. I'm looking forward to sitting down and putting everything into place!

Project Proposal Blog #2

In my first blog I mentioned the idea of wanting to conduct interviews with people of diverse backgrounds and report on the findings. After our class on Tuesday, I know that I would really like to follow through on this project.

I am a reader. I always have been and assume I always will be. I love stories, especially memoirs. There is something special about knowing that a story I am about to sit down and read is true. This even connects to movies. When I sit down to watch a movie and if before it starts, the opening credits inform- Based on True Events- I instantly know that I am going to like the movie better than if it were a fictionalized story. People have amazing stories to tell. Just listening to my classmates in class on Tuesday, I felt great emotion to their very honest and personal accounts. I think it is important to hear from people, people who come from different places in the world, who have different experiences, and who may view themselves or their lives as unique or even as simplistic. There are stories to be told. Stories that will teach wonderful lessons. Stories that celebrate. Stories that inspire. I would like to find and to share some of the stories that are out there.

For my project I would interview perhaps 5-6 people who fit the above description. I would create interview questions that range from: How do you feel you are viewed by others in society? to How do you celebrate your ethnicity? The questions I would create would open a dialogue for the purpose of the project: Is how we view ourselves different from how others/society view us and what impact has that had on us? I would figure out how to put my interviews together in a "documentary " fashion. I have an iPad that I can use to record the interviews, and iMovie on my computer, but am very unclear how to go from one to the other as I am not very hands on tech wise, but I will figure it out. I would like to really focus on common themes that the interviews showed (if there are any) and create some type of narrative about those findings. I also feel that I would need to create a release as the interviews would end up on our class website??? The point of my interviews, the focus, is to celebrate race and ethnicity, but also to look for commonalities that our society has imposed upon people. 

Starting Out on Our #WritingRace Journey Blog #1

I found it interesting this week that after our class my eyes and ears became mission seeking devices used to obtain information about race and ethnicity. Were people talking about it? How present is it in our society? On TV? In the news? On Facebook even? And what I discovered was that people were discussing race and ethnicity everywhere! There was evidence from watching John Stewart making Jewish grandma jokes, to an article I found on Facebook from the NY Times about a fascinating new book that takes on an anthropological view about how children are raised all over the world, to a great story on CNN about young Native Americans celebrating their culture and discussing the balance between keeping true to their native identities and wanting/needing to blend into American culture (the portrait series "Red Road" that inspired the story includes beautiful and conversational photos). 

So what do all of my thinking and findings mean? Well it means that if anyone didn't think our course was important before, they should now, as conversation about race and ethnicity is happening everywhere. Also, it means that I've been thinking. And thinking. And thinking...about what I would really like to create for this course. In all actuality, I know that I am nowhere near being called tech savvy, more like tech spazzy. This is the first time I am really utilizing Twitter. I don't think I'm the person who is going to make a webcast or even create a movie as that will be crazy challenging for me, but that doesn't mean I do not want to do something important and meaningful for both myself and my own learning process and for the class and my peers. I feel that my short observations and findings this week as well as my love of reading personal narratives over the years shows that people have stories to tell and they want to tell them. They want to be heard. I was thinking of creating a possible project based on interview sessions I would hold with people of diverse backgrounds. After conducting the interviews, I would compare/analyze the findings. In addition, I think as a class I would love to find essays or short personal narratives to read and discuss over the course of the semester. I think this would be engaging and lead to memorable discussions. Finally, perhaps we can create some sort of culminating project at the end where we tell our own stories, an online narrative. Perhaps it can come across as a collection of essays or personal narratives of our own inspired by those that we've read???? We can include photos or artwork to enhance our stories.

I'm sure I will be inspired by others as the class shares out ideas. There is, in the back of my  mind, a possible desire to pursue something in the educational field as well. I just haven't really come up with a concrete idea. However, wanting to push myself a bit out of my comfort zone towards a project that interests me (like the interviews) feels a little exciting (as it is only a thought right now). I am very curious to see what others are thinking up in their heads as we seem to have many wonderful minds at work in our class. Until Tuesday...