Tag: Social media

Social Media In Our Class

Getting a Twitter account and a blog account on the WordPress associated blog was interesting simply because it was related to an academic course. I have never had a twitter before but I understood the format and how to use it since websites that use personal publishing interfaces are mostly similar.


I avoided twitter because I felt that it was an extra internet tool that I did not need because of my facebook, blogspot, deviantart, (soon to come) linkedin, etc… that I’ve already had. But I have wondered about it simply because of the way professionals use it. I like the fact that it promotes quick, casual interaction without knowing someone’s hometown or seeing last night’s party pictures. I know lots of professionals from the animation industry and from film in general who take great advantage of Twitter. For example, for the making of the live action film, The Last Airbender (2010) (and it was terrible, I know), I followed the producer’s feed and his updates on the progress of the film which was a great way to follow the progression of such a project. Thus I was not really bothered by the idea of signing up although I had never sought to do it on my own. I know I’ll definitely keep mine and will likely continue posting with the CHST404 hashtag (if Dr. Perez doesn’t mind!) to interact with future Chicano Studies enthusiasts and bring up related articles, images, etc.
Blogging on the Cited at the Crossroads site was nothing new since I have my own blog (Stef-a-Sketch). As soon as I knew that we would be given the chance to do blogs for the semester, I knew this is what I would want to do. I am a fan of researching, especially when I get to research topics that interest me, so this was the perfect combination of self teaching with the purpose of teaching others. I know when the time comes I’d like to do something similar on my own, e.g. a blog where I post researched info on multiple subjects, including Chicano Studies!
The only drawbacks I saw were my own, in which I deprived myself of enough time to dive in a little more into each subject I posted about. I also would have liked to tie it in to specific readings since most of the ones we read were very inspirational.
The chance to put our class on the internet really excited me. Although I’ve never been good physically in front of an audience, I love going all out behind the scenes. So again, this was an excellent way to do it. And I believe displaying a high level college class to the world wide web was very appropriate, especially since it is a class about culture, and people. The narrow focus on women I think is something that is also necessary. Like we have seen before, people want to know about this stuff, but sometimes the access of it is lacking. Bringing it down to the personal level of a blog instead of a professional website allows those looking into this subject to enter it more comfortably, and leave with legitimate resources as given by our links. All in all, I’d have to say the use of social media made this class and the experience in general, a very pleasant one that I hope to have in future classes.

Social Media: A New Perspective

The term social media is defined as “forms of electronic communication through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages and other content” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). I had used social networking sites such as facebook and myspace but I had never posted up a blog online or had created a twitter account before my Latina feminist traditions class at LMU. It was really a completely different experience and one that definitely made me much more aware of the real meaning behind having such easy access, in a way, to the entire world.
I must admit that at first I was not sure why we had to go through all this trouble of writing out our thoughts online instead of simply typing up a paper and turning that in. Yet ironically enough, I learned in this class not to take such a means of communication for granted. Women way back in the 60’s had to struggle to make their voice be heard. They actually had to work hard and for long hours to make their words, thoughts and opinions available and accessible to a larger public. The Hijas de Cuauhtemoc had to work long hours to make newsletters in an attempt to raise consciousness and publish the issues that they thought were concerning the Latino community. They had to go through the trouble of typing, editing, revising, organizing, designing and then taking them to the printer to then make copies of the newsletters. Once all their copies were done, they had to go out and distribute these all in person to the audience they wanted to target. Every single story that they ever wanted to publish and share with a wider audience had to go through this entire process first.
Today however, everything we wish to share can go online and be viewed and read just a second later by a huge community of internet users. Things can be recorded and downloaded onto the internet instantaneously and while some may still take this for granted I have really learned to appreciate it. The way I think of blogging now is completely different, I cannot control the readers behind my posts, but at least I have the satisfaction that if someone was really interested in learning a little more about any of the topics I have written about, they will at the very least have access to reading more about it. As mentioned in class the other day, what good is your research if only your professor will get to read and learn from your paper, why not share your findings with a greater, broader audience and actually teach them all something new that you may not have known yourself before reading more on it.
We all have a story to share and I think it is important to share some of these because other people might really not be aware of such issues and concerns around the particular community you write about. Even now I type in Chicana feminism on a search engine and not many documents show up, yet amongst the few that come up, Dr. Perez’ CHST 404 class comes up and that alone opens the door to lots of information revolving around Chicana feminism and the issues that women of color have faced or still face today, including some of my pieces. Social media which is so easily accessible to us now is something that we should all take advantage of, we can share the stories and thoughts or concerns that go around our community and make others aware of the issues we face, question or simply want to inform others of or highlight around our community. We all end up reading other someone else’s side of the story, so why not share our own.

You’ve Got Mail

Before this class I don’t think that I would have written and shared. Before this class I never thought about posting any of my topics publically.  Before this class I didn’t want to create or want a Twitter account as I already had a Tumblr account, plus I don’t think I would have tweeted much.  It gives me a sense of pride to see something that I wrote to be on a website where others can view and comment on my writings.   Usually writing things similar to my blog posts would only be written for the teacher to read.  I think that using Twitter to post our thoughts and questions while reading and after reading the different articles and books really allowed for all of us to have a conversations back and fourth as if we were in the class room.  It definitely helped that I could read others thoughts and views on the readings, so that I could get a better understanding of what’s happening in the article that the author is trying to convey before writing a response.

New Message

Thinking back on my posts, I’m glad that I worked on them and allowed myself to post them.  Now that I think on it, hopefully our articles can help anyone else find information on our topics that we choose to write about.  Some of the topics that we wrote about don’t always have a lot of information that comes up when searching, so it good to know that when people are trying to research it, they can always find some information from our blogs.  Another thing that I liked about posting online was that I could get instant responses and feedback on what we wrote.  What we did is a huge contrast of the first article we read about social media. While making the website to try and get the phone back it also caused a lot of problems for the girl that could have ended in her getting seriously hurt.  But the posts that we posted are to inform and expand our knowledge on different subjects that we would otherwise not have heard about.  It’s also good to know that what we wrote can be a resource for other students.

As this class comes to an end, I think I will keep my Twitter account as a way to promote my blog and to see what your new group of students’ thoughts and opinions are about what they are reading in your class.  I would like to continue writing and posting blogs onto our website when I have the free time to do so, as I think the blog is a very good resource.

New Social media life

You probably wouldn’t know it by looking at me because I appear to be your average American that is up to date with the coolest trends, but I have avoided social media. I actually refused to get a myspace, Facebook, twitter, and even linkedIn, because I didn’t think that it fit who I was. It seemed weird to me that random people who I didn’t know could look at my personal information and never actually meet me. I also was rarely on the computer to keep all these social media outlets updated, so everything added up for me that social media wasn’t for me.

When I had my first Chicana Feminism class and Proffessor Perez told us that we HAD to blog and get a twitter account to tweet, I was kind of blown away because I was being forced to break my silent protest against social media. Another huge problem that I had with social media, especially tweeting, is that as soon as you send out a tweet, it is permanently out their in the twitter verse for everyone to see. My worst fear was that I was very worried that I would tweet something that would be taken as offensive to someone, and I wouldn’t be able to take it back! Once you tweet something offensive, it is worse than saying something offensive to someone because if you say something offensive to someone, you can at least say you misspoke and apologize instantly. If you tweet something offensive, so many people can be offended, and seems their is an automatic assumption that you tweeted with malicious intent. Since so many athletes, even in college basketball, have gotten in great trouble because of something offensive they tweeted that they probably didn’t give much thought to, I didn’t want to even put myself at risk of joining such a club since I was a collegiate athlete.

Once I started tweeting and blogging, it turned out to not be bad at all, I was able to get over most of my concerns I had before. I also really liked how the Chicana Feminism class had our own small community when we followed and commented on each others tweets. It was a great way to stay connected with your classmates, especially if you don’t have their numbers. Since you get a chance to see the opinions of your fellow classmates on twitter and on the blog post, you feel more of a familiarity towards them, than you would if you just seen them in class. However, you still have to be extremely cautious as to how you present your information when you blog especially, because it is taken more serious than a tweet, since our blogs for the class is representing basically the views of the class, as well as LMU. I was still also very cautious with my tweets because I don’t know who is looking at my tweets, so it was very important for me to be “politically correct” when I tweeted, so i wouldn’t offend anybody. Overall I thought my tweeting and blogging in the class helped me get introduced to the social media world, and I can see myself using it in the future. Thank you Professor Perez!

Social Media is My New Best Friend

SmallBiz technology
Image from the article Young Women: The Power Users of Social Media

The Academic year is almost coming to an end and so is my junior year. However, my senior year will be filled with memorable moments followed by big decisions to take and more changes in my life. My time at Loyola Marymount University is progressing at a very fast pace but I’m truly enjoying every single moment inside and outside the classroom. Classes are very intimate and students never feel that they are just a number to the professor because they want and hope to get to know every single student by the end of the semester either on a professional or personal level.  However, it always depends on the student and how much they want to invest in the class but also in creating relationships with professors who are always open to students. Further my double major, Spanish and Women’s Studies, has given me a lot of flexibility to take a diverse number of classes but still be able to meet the requirements for the department without having to sacrifice creativity and my own interests.

Reflecting upon my experience in Latina Feminist Traditions, the course I am currently enrolled in and consistently contributing to the blog, has been a very unique and invigorating experience. I’ve never had a class incorporate social media or use it as a teaching tool.  In my opinion, it is a very innovative method and probably predicts what future classes will look like.  Today about the majority of college students own a personal laptop and engage with social media, e.g., Facebook, Twitter, blogs, on a regular basis. I am always on the computer either surfing newspaper columns, on Facebook or reading magazines but prior to the class I had no experience with Twitter or blogs, which were a requirement for the course. When I was informed about it, I was very nervous because it sounded very new and unorthodox. I could not wrap my mind around the idea that school and using the Web could somehow interconnect but in addition be conducive to the learning process. Thinking about it, I was already familiar with technology and possessed the basic skills therefore, doing it would not be an obstacle. Although I did notice the Internet has a language of it’s own and a culture, it’s very learnable especially for college students who were raised around it.

The benefits of using the Internet are that it makes our work more visible, accessible and open to the public. Also it can be disseminated a lot quicker unlike print media that also requires funding and circulation is limited. The word free resonates among college students who are constantly saving or living on a budget. Reading things online are in fact free and don’t require a subscription which most people appreciate. Readers are also free to visit pages on their own without the obligation therefore, making it more enticing for people because they get to choose what they want to read. Plus the Internet makes it possible to build an online community between students and professors, to create more global connections, and to make students feel a sense of ownership about what they are writing or creating. Since students comprehend that their work is out in the open, they become more aware of the audience they are writing to and conscious about their writing. Subsequently, it improves overall reading, writing, and analytical skills, which are crucial for any field of study or profession. On the other hand, like anything else there are some drawbacks to using social media such as being vulnerable to unwanted or offensive comments, privacy issues, etc., because when you put yourself on the Web you create a persona that is subjected to criticism. Also information can be misconstrued by readers, which can cause stress and other related problems. Sometimes it can be very challenging but negative feedback can help the blogger improve their argument and work on their weaknesses because it’s a reality about life that not everyone will share the same views, values, and ideology. However, being part of the online community and our freedom of speech is protected by the 1st amendment therefore, we should utilize the Web responsibly, for a good cause and with good intent.

I have overcome many fears about publishing materials online but I realized I love the autonomy and being part of a movement that’s occurring worldwide. Also it gives me the opportunity to use my voice and to share my story. I get to be the narrator of my own experiences which can possibly help someone who needs it and to build solidarity with others especially with other women. Furthermore my generation depends a lot on the Web thus, using it can only further enhance skills. If used correctly and wisely, social media can be revolutionary in anything that one is trying to achieve. Also it can be useful in creating a space or platform for anyone’s personal causes because as a Women’s Studies major I always want to know what is happening to women in the world and what I can do to reach them. It is a very powerful tool and rather than fearing it I am embracing it as a resource. Maintaining a healthy relationship with the Web is very important because it can be addicting at times. Without a doubt Chicana Feminists could have greatly benefited from using social media, but each generation has its own style and tools of empowerment.