A Late Blog About My Bio

It's All About Me

I've found that in making my bio, 6 word memoir, and especially my final project that I have actually learned so much about computers. Initially, I did not think that I would learn to much in the class. I am no computer wiz, but I thought that the class would be moderately easy leading up to the final and then I would completely fall apart when creating the final project. Instead, you used each module to create what would be our final project. Not only did this help us in the end, but took so much stress off of finals. As the Lego Movie would say, "Everything is awesome!" 

As I was saying, creating the bio was quite easy. This is likely because I did it after I created most of my final project. By the time I created my bio I had a clear understanding of thimble and how to manipulate the codes. It was just a matter a putting it together.

Screencasts are fun!

Last week we were challenged to create a screencast or live video teaching someone something. I chose a screencast because of my lack of free time. I also have no one to help me demonstrate blocking footwork as everyone is swamped with finals (though I think the real reason everyone said no is because they didn't want to put up the net). Either way, I decided I would set sail on the voyage to create a screencast.
I thought that I would have a lot harder time creating the screencast, I spent nearly thirty minutes just picking which one I wanted to download. Eventually I chose screencastify due to the reviews and the screencasts of the screencast app they had presented. It looked fairly easy to manage and not too complicated. I then began to walk through the steps in creating a google blogger blog account. But because I did these steps in my head I forgot a few minor details. I decided that I would use my old gmail account from my previous school to create a blog, just so that the viewer could see it on a fresh platform. This seemed to be a great idea, except I could not remember my previous password. I spent twenty seconds alone typing in different variations of passwords. Once I was in, I did a much better job at navigating. Sometimes I got a little distracted by the different tools available to me in the corner, and for some reason I had the urge to use them all. My next hurdle came in the form of tabs. Screencast only records the tab you're in, or at least the version I decided to record it in did. So i was forced to copy and paste my links back into the tab to open something new. That wasn't really challenging, it was just time consuming. I also struggled with personalizing the templates offered. I couldn't remember all of the different customization it offered because when I was doing mine, I just experimented. I found that making a screencast does not just entail knowing the app and software, but knowing the steps in what you are doing as well. If only I could think of something else to screencast, they're actually a lot of fun!

6Words

My freshmen year of college I attended a small Christian university in my home state of Arizona. That year all freshmen were required to take a class called "Spiritual Life in the Community" or SPLC. This class could be compared to an inquiry class at Southern. However, SPLC had a few major differences. First of all we spent a lot of time talking about our relationship with God, how to pray, and how to spread the word through loving others and speaking to everyone. But what I really kept from this class is how we got to know ourselves.

Each class began with a journal topic or question. From there we would delve into class about the previous subjects noted before. At least once a week we would do some kind of quiz that would allow us to learn more about ourselves. Whether it was the way we accepted love or the way that we learned. What was specifically useful for me in this six word memoir was an Enneagram quiz where we deciphered what our personality was based on a number scale. I used these descriptors to help me make my six word memoir. 

From there I had some difficulty getting my hands on the template for the six word memoir. I started one when I was in class that day, however I exited the tab and was not able to find it in my account. I was forced to remix someone else's remix which I found pretty funny. 

This six word memoir is one that I especially liked because I had to realy think about who I was. When I recovered the Enneagram test, I not only was able to rediscover my number, but I could compare to who I was three years ago; in conclusion I have not changed. But it's always important to self reflect, especially in college where we are given loads of information, surrounded by tons of different people, and are constantly exposed to new ideas; re-rooting yourself allows you to maintain who you are at your core.

You can view my 6 word memoir here.

Gender Bender

The other day I read an online stream about gender. I see myself as pretty liberal in terms of gender and sex. I fully accept gay people and the gay community, I understand that people can be confused. However, in this new politically correct era were everyone feels the need to be noticed in a way in which comforts them, I get a little confused.

So once again, I read an online stream about gender. The woman seemed to be in her mid twenties, had black hair cut in a punk rock style and wore heavy liner. Not that I'm judging her based on her style, but it seems that she already fits the visual descriptors that society has set for her. She may be trying to tell me "screw the man," but all I see is a woman molded by societies perception of punks. But as I was saying, this woman had a stream of about twenty tweets informing the masses of the differences between sex and gender and all of the different gender forms that fit under gender. There was cis-gender, and gender neutral, and fluid gender; I could not keep up. But then I thought to myself: What is gender? We live in an ever-changing world, with new ideas and people born into it everyday. The increasing amount of knowledge that becomes available to us everyday is incomprehensible. It seems that because there are so many people and so many ideas, people feel the need to label themselves or they'll get lost. Maybe it's our loosening ideas and acceptance of others, but fifty years ago no one had any idea what a demi-gender, pangender, or intergender person was. Society shapes who we are. Intolerance fifty years ago and the belief that there are only two genders led to the acceptance and knowledge of only two genders. But because of the openness to different people, new genders are being born everyday. While I do not believe in some of the antic and ideas of all the genders, and whether or not I believe they are valid is something else all together. But I accept their uniqueness and the interesting way in which they are conceived.

Okay Google...

I have a serious bone to pick with Google. Just recently, Google paid tribute to Lucy, one of our first ancestors by displaying a lapse of our evolution in a similar form of the word "Google." This same image of evolution is the one that is seen everywhere. That being said I want to say thank you to Google for recognizing Lucy's discovery date (not that it's anything special, Google finds all the interesting lesser known dates and recognizes them), but I'm seriously irritated with this display. 

Google, did you hire an artist and let them interpret the theory of evolution? We humans are not evolved from apes as it is shown in the image. You would think the all knowing Google would have at least known this. Homo sapiens sapiens link our ancestry back to a common cousin of the knuckle walker, but studies have shown that our chimp like ancestors were not as chimp like as we think. They were likely not knuckle walkers. So Google, by showing that Lucy came from a knuckle walker, you are implying that we too come from knuckle walkers (knuckle walkers that look like chimps). Everyone knows that we did not evolve from the chimp we see today.

Okay Google, now that we've discussed the faultiness in your first link in the chain evolution; lets take a look at Lucy. Lucy is a species known as Australopithecus Afarensis, and she would have walked upright. We know this because of her bone structure, and how similar it is to our own. While Lucy did have some anatomical differences like a thinner pelvic bone and longer arms, she was in fact a bipedal female. But Google depicts her as a hunched over creature. There is no in between stage of knuckle walking and upright walking, you either do it full time or you don't. Lucy also has a cone like head in her depiction. However Lucy's skull was actually quite flt, she did not have much of a forehead, so why she is depicted as having an awkwardly shaped head is unknown to me.

Google, for the first time ever you have failed me. The amount of traffic you get a day is insurmountable. The people who see your image and what it denotes is unfathomable. Displaying human beings as a descendants of chimps is false and sets back so many years. As if there were not already enough people believing that science is telling us we evolve from apes, now we have Google telling people too. Because Google is such a prominent search engine, what they do matters. People believe so much of what they see on the internet and for a credible and knowledgeable company to botch the theory of evolution is pretty dumbfounding.

Cultural Evolution

Are we, or are we not evolving?

Something I always think about is how well I would do in school if not for the internet and the advancement of technology. It was not until 1974 that the first personal computer was born, and even then it had no keyboard or screen. It was not until 1977 that a computer anything like the one we know today was used. Say I was born in the forties like my grandmother and had to lug around 6 different books for college classes instead of an ipad full of ebooks. Even my mother had to rely on an encyclopedia to acquire information.
Today we have a vast amount of information under our fingertips, in our pockets, or on our desktop at any given time during the day. This leads me to a question I have asked and that I think have answered. Our humans done evolving?

In my cultural and linguistic anthropology class we discussed the topic of evolution shortly, only to lay the foundation of the class. But an interesting idea stuck with me; that being the idea of cultural evolution. People, biologically may be done evolving; but our technology has brought us much further than our bodies may be able to sustain. This is not to decline the amazement of the human brain, but to expound on all of the incredible things the human brain was able to accomplish. If it were not for cultural evolution we would not have coats, umbrellas, shoes, and cups. All of these creations were birthed because of the human need for it. In my opinion, we as humans are constantly evolving to fit our needs. We as a species are ever-changing, and adapting our environment and our technology to be more useful to us. In a way the homo sapien sapien species will never stop evolving because it will never stop challenging old ideas and technologies; that concept in itself is truly beautiful to me. 

Synthesizing, Analyzing, Understanding

Exposing Students to More Challenging Subject Matter: 

A Response to Small Differences Matter

Everyday in school from the time of first grade to twelfth was spent summarizing something, comprehension skills, and the ability to regurgitate the information that had been forced down my throat the whole semester. Often times I spent nights reviewing information on a subject only to forget it a few months later. There are very few teachers who had the ability to give us a knowledge that would actually be retained, as opposed to those who just gave us knowledge without actually challenging us. And while, at that time I was thankful for my short term memory skills, I look back at some of time in school and think how wasteful it is.

I think it is important to change our school system to more effectively challenge the student in a way that will be beneficial to them and the world in the future. Like in Small Differences Matter: The DNA of Online Reading Comprehension, I think it is important to instill valuable tools in students that go beyond the seat of a high school desk and to a career. In Small Differences Matter, Mcverry mentions skills like analyzing and synthesizing and how those who have attained those skills do much better at online reading comprehension. I believe that these skills go beyond online reading comprehension and can be used in just about anywhere. Look at the recent South Park episode that pertains to ads. Most of the people can not decipher the difference between pertinent information and an ad. The ability to find information and determine its credibility is vital to success, whether you be looking for an online recipe or researching the American Revolution. Exposing the next generation of learner and doers to more challenging ideas of learning and using information allows them to be better tools in the world.

Worldview

Worldview, Culture and Other Ramblings

While reading Gunther Kress's  Multimodality, Representation and New Media, one thing stuck out to me. Kress used the example of a girl's drawing to express both meaning and perspective. "The difference in meaning depends on the relation of the depicted entities to each other in the frame of the picture-space: the resultant difference in Georgia’s sense of herself and her family is an effect of these spatial relations. In drawing the materiality of sound is not available for making, to indicate just how ‘being’ Georgia’s parents seem to her, instead the affordance of space is used – making things taller or shorter, broader or thinner." Essentially, Georgia's drawing was effected by the relationship she had with her parents and the relationship her parents had with each other. Georgia depicted herself much smaller, because of the dependency she had on her parents and the role they played in her life. She also made her father taller than he actually is, possibly to show the equality between both of her parents.

This idea of worldview effecting our perspectives of ourselves and our culture is carried over in to history. If you look at the people in Mesopotamia, you can see that their world view was troubled. Because of their location between two unpredictable and violent rivers, they too became violent; often making human sacrifices and being involved in wars. Even their religion relied on the mercy of their Gods. These people highly contrast those of the Egyptians, who also lived by a river. However the people of Egypt were much more peaceful. Because of their location and worldview they not only had the free time to develop complicated writing systems and create some of the largest structures of the old world, but they were also able to develop a positive view of the afterlife and their Gods. All of this because of worldview (and perhaps location).

Fast forward to the indigenous people of the Arctic. These people have a multitude of words for just one substance; snow. Their interaction with the environment around has gone so far as to effect their communication and language. Worldview, inner reflection and outward perspective play a huge role in culture, communication and language. Look at society today. Our language is shaped by our values. We are constantly abbreviating words, shortening sentences, and eliminating grammar; all to get our point across in the timeliest manner. We create words that mean the most to our culture, and often times more than just one (the word "butt" is a great example of this). Understanding the way worldview effects our perspective is important in understanding other cultures and people.

This concept can stretch as far as the classroom. I'm not a major in education, but I know that understanding a student and their background can aid in teaching them. In programs like TESOL, it is important to understand where the students come from and their culture in order to help them learn the language of English.

J.K. Rowling and the Ministry of Magic

J.K. Rowling and the Ministry of Magic

J.K. Rowling's Biography

Initially, when I first began remixing biographies I was doing it the wrong way. What I thought was going to be a remix of whoever's biography I chose, whether it be a roster biography or the review of a doctor was actually wrong. While I was remixing everything I could, my website kept refreshing itself, removing all of my work and causing me to start all over. I began to get lazy and started using biographies that were more aligned to people I knew. My plan was to replace a high paid coach with a friend of mine. First I was going to use my friend Haley as the US coach for the volleyball team. That website had a video of the coach and highlights, so I changed my idea to making my friend Haley into a criminal. Finding old criminal news and trying to replace her name in everything. That took a long time, and when I had finally finished the webpage it refreshed itself. I then decided to use Haley as the coach at USC who's last also happens to be Haley. This made changing the biography much easier, limiting it to just pronouns. Just when I thought I was done and in the clear, I came to class only to find out that I had done it wrong and had to make a whole new biography remix.

Playing with Pixlr

   In high school I took a class called digital photography. In this class we were given the opportunity to walk around campus and take pictures of the things that visually excited us. We learned about shutter speed, aperture, and a lot of other things that I never truly and fully grasped. All of these things did not matter though, as long as you had an understanding of the "digital" photography part. While our cameras had the function to automatically take pictures, we were forced to do everything manually. This often times left us with awful pictures. How did I pass this class if I had no idea what aperture and shutter speeds actually did? I used the computer!
   After our day of taking pictures, we would come inside, upload pictures, and begin playing with them online. The photoshop editor is very similar to the pixlr editor. This made making this project slightly easier. Obviously I have forgotten plenty of tools and trades in the four years since I have take digital photography, but surprisingly enough; some things actually stuck with me. I was able to blend the rose in more effectively because of the blurring tolls I had learned in that class. While it was also nice to have taken that class, I found myself searching for buttons and shortcuts that I did not remember, which ended up taking up a lot of time. 
   This is my favorite project thus far.

Haiti's Grim Past and Present

Ignite It

Haiti has had an increasingly difficult time economically and socially. Because of this children are found without homes every day. 

Public Opinion

A response to Working in/at Public

On the first day of pre-season all of the fall athletes had a mandatory meeting about conduct and the NCAA. It went over all of the things you could not do as a student athlete like do drugs, take money or special treatment from someone, and never letting your credits fall below 12. But one of the things I found most interesting was how we were told to run our social media accounts. "Be careful of what you post. Every year I have a situation where a student posts something questionable on their social media account, and must be reprimanded." 

Just like the professor at Wisconsin, student athletes are held to higher standards. Normal students are never told that their institution may punish them for posting a drunk selfie on their Instagram or having a nude photo of them floating around. But because NCAA has higher standards, those who play NCAA sports are expected to be near perfect. 

Social media brings a lot of restraints to those who are in a sort of limelight. Expressing your opinion on politics and religion becomes frowned upon and even punishable. While there are differences between professors and student athletes the difficulty remains the same. Are overlying institutions taking away the freedom of speech for those who are within the system? It seems everyday someone is getting in trouble for something posted on a Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram account; seemingly making social media an unsafe place for those with an opinion or a lapse in judgement. While it is necessary to have some online patrolling happening, I think that it should be limited to online bullying and not necessarily someone's wrong opinion. 

The Art of the Starving Artist

Redefining Starving

WomenFreelancer Chat

On Wednesday September 23rd I was involved in a twitter chat by the @WomenFreelancer (or rather witnessed one because I had no idea what to ask), initially I assumed the stream would be about marketing. There would be some tips sprinkled in about how to better market yourself and developing a brand name and defining yourself; things that would apply to me getting a job.

I was completely wrong.

I found the holy mecca of "words of positivity." The twitter chat was filled with inspirational stories and women who had struggled trying to find themselves but prevailed and have gone on to be successful self bosses. There was one woman who I found really interesting as she was a book illustrator. I myself looked into being an artist but found that being a starving artist was not how I wanted to live my life. But if you really look at the idea of starving artist, it is one that is outdated. Now artists can market themselves online, sell their goods and ideas after hours; allowing them to both follow their passion and have stable job. The book illustrator, Emmeline, has her own blog(http://emmelineillustration.blogspot.co.uk/) dedicated to her illustrations, both commissioned and freelanced. There potential clients can go to see her work and even read blog posts about her though process and the way she goes about her work. Furthermore, Emmeline has a tab for those who are also artists dubbed creative tips. Her blog has made me rethink the direction of not only my own blog, but my career. I can market my own work online while still having a professional degree driven career which opens up my possibilities to the fullest.

The twitter chat was so much more than I expected. I thought that it would be boring and dry, but at the end of the chat it opened my horizons to so many more possibilities.

Making a Name in Ballet

     Andile Ndlovu is an African man from the Soweto townships, making a name for himself in the world of ballet in South Africa. What is assumed to be an elitist art form is being turned on its' head by a man with a passion for the art of dance. Ndlovu said it was difficult at first but was completely worth it, as he has now gone on to win prestigious awards in Boston and in Cape Town. 
     I find it interesting that ballet, a french art form has traveled all over the world to be enjoyed by everyone. And what was once an elitist form of art and entertainment has reconstructed itself to include anyone who has the passion and work ethic to achieve their dreams. 

The Evolution of Literacy- semi out of order

The Dysevolution of Man

Has culture and technology changed us?

       

Just last week, what is considered to be a human ancestor of ours was unearthed, Homo Naledi. Homo Naledi was discovered in a South African cave called Rising Star. The genus stands at an average of five feet and its brain no larger than an orange. Now of course there's the debate that people did not evolve from apes, but I think another interesting argument about human life itself is whether or not we are regressing or we can use the term dysevolution.
       In the early stages of human life some 2.6-3 million years ago, people were using basic stone tools to accomplish day to day tasks. Now in today's society we have the ability to find information in 0.21 seconds thanks to google and other search engines. But, has the availability of abundant information slowed our evolution? 
       A question posed by a peer of mine peeked my interest. While discussing H. Naledi's brain size he asked me if I thought human brains and skulls would ever grow to be bigger. This was a question I had never asked myself, but it is hard to believe that the human brain will ever need to be bigger when we have all the information we need at our fingertips. Whereas millions of years ago, the vast majority had to use their brains to problem solve and adapt to their surroundings, our culture today has made it unnecessary to change our bio functions. Take a look at some of the reasons people needed bigger brains: to track food patterns, to create tools, to understand weather patterns. But as culture as developed, the human race no longer needs to do these things. 
       Technology has seemed to halt our learning process. If we are cold we no longer need to find shelter or create it we can simply put on a jacket or go inside. I think a pivotal question to think about is what would happen if our modern technology and luxuries were taken from us?

No Time to Waste

No Time to Waste

Impatience 

Everything today is instant. We have become so accustomed to receiving the things we want in a short amount of time that when things lag we get frustrated. Instant gratification has done us an injustice. When the computer does not load at the speed I think it should or my phone does not refresh my twitter feed in under 2 seconds I begin to lose my patience. I bang the keys and tap the phone, I groan and roll my eyes; nothing is fast enough today. This feeling translates to everything we do today. People want to get their paychecks instantly, shorten their schooling, and have their food done in under two minutes or it's free. 

Is it really so complicated?

Its Complicated...

Has social media really changed our generation?

In the reading "It's Complicated" the author compared the technology of today with the technology of the past and in doing so noted the differences that arose in communication, high school life and social dynamics. Everyday we are flooded with articles, books and opinions about the heavy impact new social media has made on today's teens. But what most people forget to notice are all the similarities that have withstood this drastic communication change. Teens still face anxiety, still feel pressured to do well in class, and still feel it necessary to own the newest and coolest gadgets clothing and shoes. I am not saying that we have with gone the increase social media usage unscathed and unchanged, but there's a reason that so many 80's and 90's teen angst movies still resonate with us; we are not that far removed. Yes, many words have taken on slightly new meaning in today's young adults like the term creep (a person who looks at all of your posts-yes, even your first selfie from 4 years ago!) The feeling you get from a creep today and a creep thirty years ago is the same. So before we go talking about the major differences between today's youth and the youth of the past, let's remember how similar we really are.