My Overall Experience at iTecGDA

--Originally published at The  tech

After a few weeks from the last day of my Semana i Course, iTec, I can say that it was interesting the way internet and our presence on it was explained to us. Nowadays, being present on the internet isn’t an option whether we want or not and the option here is deciding how do we want to be present on it. Each one of us is the owner of what we think and what we experience, but when we let these thoughts go online, everyone will be capable of knowing that stuff about us and that ownership might not be there anymore.

At the iTec course, we were thought many concepts of how to be present in the way we would like to be, and this ended up with the development of an individual blog where we could express ourselves as we would prefer. This was where each one of those tips or concepts were stablished since we were blogging about what we wanted to be shown from us to the world and with this, our digital identity would more likely be as we would want it to be.

It was really nice knowing that @daveowhite liked my tweet on my #VandR tweet as well as @Autumm, but also @sundilu who liked the way I use my iPad. This tweet showed my personal diagram on how I interact with the different platforms.

Overall, my experience at the iTec course was enriching, since I realized that my presence at the internet depends a lot on what I want it to be.


Empathy 140 characters at a time

--Originally published at kimberlyuribe.wordpress.com

If you’ve ever felt victimize by your social networks asking “What’s happening?” or “What’s on your mind?” is either because you’re an independent strong user who needs no interface to ask you anything about your day or because you can’t actually reduce your “complicated millennial mind” to fit a text box. Ok, or maybe you don’t care at all. Whichever the answer is, what those boxes ask us is way deeper than we think.

This boxes challenge us in different ways according to the nature of the platform. While Facebook’s phrase addresses our own thoughts, Twitter asks about facts, about things happening in that moment. Of course we skip all of this interaction and just tweet about how hungry we are (as if spending all of our money in pizza isn’t enough). According to “Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope“; a study that explores the relation between followers, followees and friends, networks that matter in social media are those that are made out of patterns of interaction between people rather than those made of people the user claim to be friends with (like adding someone to the friend’s list in Facebook). As a reflection of the findings, to figure out the size of a network that matters, one must consider users who actually communicate through direct messages with each other.  This research found out that people using Twitter only keep in touch with a small number of the people they follow. As a conclusion, it questions the point of view of scholars, advertisers and political activists who believe that online social networks help as a propagation of ideas and formation of social bonds.

Although(thru a basic and lame skimming of the paper and a fast Adobe pdf highlighter tool) mathematically the study makes sense, some educators have a different point of view. Social networks including Twitter, make a great difference in how we perceive the place were we live (hello! mother earth, duh) and people whom we read have an important role for us to build an opinion and impress your crush with facts and knowledge.

New generations are most likely to get informed by social media (Facebook, Twitter or even Snapchat visiting the discovery section) than what they are from other “oficial” media. Information we take from social networks stays in our brains all day long (including all of those memes from 9gag). We can actually know how many people have seen our tweet complaining about traffic jam (omg, never ever go out by 8:00 a.m.). So, how could we change the world if we consider the content we post every day? One brain-full woman and cute mother called Maha Bali (Long Story Short I met her thanks to a cool Google Hangout session you can watch here. She’s a Professor at the American University in Cairo, passionate on the process of learning and teaching and is one of the co-funders of Virtually Connecting. Oh, and a blogger). In one of her posts she talks about promoting empathy and social justice online. Some of the most important things I read in her post where that:

  • Some of the most important works from people who want to achieve this social justice state that raising consciousness about oppressive conditions may actually cause freedom.
  • Question power structures!
  • Social media empowers people to stand up for their opinions and believes
  • Make people aware of what’s happening thru social media
  • Share virtual space with others, regardless of geography

After reading her article two things popped out in my head: being and feminists and a vegetarian. These are two things I’m passionate of talking about. Nevertheless, sometimes I remind silent because most of the time people will only react with things such as this:

24003366

Ok, sometimes those jokes are funny, I have to admit. But my point is that, I don’t want to change people’s habits one talk at a time, but if people ask my reasons on why am I vegetarian, I want to raise awareness on topics such as food ethics or animal cruelty. I really don’t want to have a beef with no one (ah ja ja! see what I did there?). Just when I was about to give up on giving my opinion whenever I feel like, something happened. I’m fan #1 of making remarks and jokes about “The Patriarchy” or heteronormativity. You know, those things you can actually hear like “Doing [whatever] is boy’s stuff” that men tend to ignore or categorize as offensive. I’m so triggered and pissed when these phrases catch my ear. And my friends know it. Almost all of my friends are men, which is great because I think there’s a big learning process between me learning what is like to be a boy, and them learning what is like to be a girl. So after a month or so of hearing my constantly complains about the topic, what surprised me the most happened one lovely Friday afternoon: “Ok, so can you actually explain to us what do to mean by  <<The Patriarchy>>?”

This is not a drill people! A group of men actually where interested in feminism! The Suffragettes would be so proud of me! 

After explaining what all of those terms mean, and giving examples on how we see things as normal when they are not (making “You kick like a girl” offensive when it shouldn’t), my friends had bunches of questions. I was surprised. Sometimes when we hear all of these anti-feminist comments or when someone says we are Femi Nazis, we get so pissed off that we actually ignore ignorance. I got surprised to realize that maybe, just maybe, most of the times people say something against feminism is because people actually don’t know what it stands for. How did I know my little conference about “The Patriarchy” worked? (If after 3 times that you just read the term “The Patriarchy” you aren’t reading it in a gloomy and scary voice, you’re doing it wrong and start over reading this). I knew it worked because my friends now point out any anti-feminist comment. They start to realize which comments where heteronormative; from zero to hero. The moral of the story is that now I feel like I actually made a difference on how people (coff coff men) see feminism and understand them.

Going back to the social empathy, justice  and social media, Social Networks that matter are not those whose interactions are made from people talking to each other, but those who speak to the world. This type of networks aren’t exclusive of the XXI Century, the rise of social awareness thru what we write has been popular since… ever. Virginia Woolf, a writer, essayist, editor and feminist is considered one of the most outstanding figures of Modern Literature and of course, Feminism of XX Century. Virginia aside from writting novels, wrote some damn good essays like “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” which is one of the most quoted texts in the Feminist movement. Nowadays, Virginia Woolf’s works is on point, thanks to a couple of blank pages filled with the voice of the oppressed. New generations have easier ways to communicate with each other. We don’t have to wait for someone to publish our books in order for people to read what we are up to. Twitter is a great tool not only to complain or retweet Tumblr quotes, is a way to talk about What’s Happening?, give your opinion in 140 characters and why not? making someone think about your tweet and create reflexive content online. Sometimes, people just need a little bit of information to change how they see things. I wish Virginia Woolf to be alive, her tweets would be LIT.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Thank You

--Originally published at Digital Identity

There’s not much more to say about this workshop. Thank you Ken for all the effort you put into this, for making me interested in something I used to think was useless. I take something for the rest of my life from each of the people we spoke to. Maha, Ken, Diego, Laura, Lee, Dave, Alan, Amy, Autumn, Bonnie, Sundi, Rebecca and Helen, I have nothing else to say that thank you so much for giving me tools that I’m sure I will use the rest of my life.

Unfortunately, I don’t see myself blogging in the near future. I’m convinced it has a lot of benefits to spread your thoughts, your ideas and your feelings to an audience you may not even know, but right now I just don’t think I have enough time. Besides, I prefer other types of media to express how I feel, like pics, GIFs and videos, and my Tumblr blog did, does, and will always suit me for that purpose. But who knows? Maybe a year from now I will be a superstar blogger.

I didn’t make any friends. But that’s cool. I found out more about myself, and God knows I’ve been trying to make progress in my self-knowledge and self-acceptance.

I will close this chapter of my life with my video. I’m sorry for the nasty watermark, I just spent so much time in it that I couldn’t spend more hours of my life trying to find another tool. I’m very satisfied with the result, so here it is:

’till the next time.


Last of the week

--Originally published at Digital Identity

The End by aftab., on Flickr
The End” (CC BY-NC 2.0) by aftab.

So before getting into my final thoughts of the course I would like to thank the teacher that made this course posible, Ken Bauer. I quite enjoyed the whole experience, and I feel it actually made a difference on me. I also want to thank Dave Cormier, Laura GogiaLee Skallerup, Alan LevineAmy Burvall, Autumm Caines , Bonnie StewartSundi RichardMaha BaliDiego ZavalaRebecca Hogue and Helen DeWaard for sharing their views on the subject at matter. I really appreciate that you took time of your day to talk with us. You helped build a really great experience, so thank you for that.

Now, into the reflection. The reason that I like this subject is because my digital identity has been cut into two since I started leaving stuff in the internet. Recently, I decided to continue on in the internet with only one persona. This course helped me notice what I really wanted, how to do it, and what would imply to me, and the people around me. It also made me think about stuff that never came across my mind. Like when Ken mentioned that it’s okay to use your laptop on your lap, because after all, it is called a LAPtop. That completely blew my mind. In a more serious note, the course made me notice how important it is to be aware of what is said or posted about you in the web. To a certain point I thought that keeping a different personas would make things all good, but in reality I don’t actually want that. I want for people to know who I am and make sure they know what my work is.

This course helped me decide that I want to keep blogging. I want to get my weird thoughts out there, because maybe someone will be able to get something out of it. It also helps me keeping myself as sane as I can. I’ve always loved writing. It’s even therapeutic. Now, I’ll just post a selective few and share it with others.

I will probable keep updating this blog ever so often, but there’s only so much that I can talk about the subject without just getting out of subject.

So, yeah. Thank you for reading.

 


Last day of iWeek but we are just getting started.

--Originally published at iTecGda – Code With Charlie

Today Friday was my favorite day, we took a introduction in video edition and creation with a lot of examples, sadly I had a lot of material so I still editing, later I will update it so you all can see it.

Thanks to Diego Zavala for the edition and creation course, go and visit his webpage for Diego).

Later we had another conference. Rebecca J. Hogue and Helen DeWaard talked to us about Digital Identity and things to do to keep safe all your data, I recommend you to watch the conference and remember guys if you want to build a web site buy your own Domain like me :).

Persona

--Originally published at Digital Identity

Today was the last of day of the digital identity course with Ken Bauer at the Tec de Monterrey Campus Guadalajara. Today we were lucky to half a talk with Rebecca Hogue and Helen J. DeWaard. They were nice enough to answer a question related to one of the main concepts of which I wanted to get into the course. Anonymity, and alterante internet personas. You can check out that whole thing right here:

So, as you can see because of my nickname, and also I’ve mentioned it in another post; I didn’t always went by as my real name in the internet. When I started to be more active in the way I preferred to create a different identity for myself. An alter ego even. That’s when Drag was born. At the time, Drag represented who I wanted to be, but this idea was really far from my actual personality in real life. In high school, as I started to become friends with people that heavily used social media my internet persona started to mix with my personal life. It even got to the point in which my friends started to call me Drag instead of Alex, and to this date my closest friends still do.

It wasn’t until recently that I had my digital life pretty much really far apart from my physical life. Now, the only disadvantage that I find of having a different identity out there is that I will probably not get as much recognition for the work that I do publish out in the web. Another reason is because it started to affect my mental health. It got to the point that I would sometimes identify as Drag, and other times as Alex. Because of this reasons and others I decided to get this two entities together. Hence the full name Alejandro “Drag” Güereca.

In its self it’s not wrong to try to be anonymous or have another persona in the internet. But whatever you do, no matter by what name you go through, be proud of your work. Because if you think that it should be out there, chances are at least a few people are going to feel identified with your thoughts.

Also today we did a cool exercise with video editing. So we goofed around a little bit and pulled this gem:

So that’s it for the week. However I do plan on posting tomorrow what I learned, and final thoughts of the stuff that we looked at. So be on the look out for that.


Dawn of The Final Day -The Rest of the Semester Remains-

--Originally published at Site Title 2

Semana i has finally finished and with it so does this Digital Identity workshop. I will start today’s blog by saying that I really enjoyed the course. My only complaint is that it felt a bit repetitive on some topics. Other than that, I really took somethings from it. Being able to interact with people who play a large role on the Internet felt very special. Some of the things we discussed taught me stuff I’ll hopefully never forget. Moving forward I’m the one who has the task of applying what I learned. I know I probably won’t put everything I learned in practice, but I’ll do some of them at least.

Friday started with  a very different activity from what we are used to. We had a quick class about storytelling through video with Diego Zavala. He talked about how film used to be much more about the technical aspect, but, as technology made it more accessible, storytelling became the factor to push productions apart from others. We looked at various examples of different techniques that can be used to easily achieve successful storytelling. As an assignment we were asked to create a video that managed to tell a simple story, which led to this beauty:

It was a funny activity and I know I’ll regret posting this video publicly someday.

For the second half, we had another video conversation. This time we talked with Rebecca J. Hogue and Helen DeWaard. The video can be found here. Blogging was, once again, a very important topic and the reason for many questions. On the blogging side of things, I really liked the way they talked about how you can have different blogs and how, over time, they you may join different blogs. Rebecca’s cancer example was a great example of different blogging personas becoming one. Each of her blogs had a purpose but, as time passed, they started helping achieve the same goals. Another point showed clearly by Rebecca was about how blogging and storytelling can work together. Rebecca’s blog wasn’t a simple diary to record her activities during her disease. She was able to tell others what she was going through, her story, but, at the same time, she was able to help numerous cancer patients and survivors.

While no readily apparent, blogging has great potential, almost like a superpower. I hope if I ever become a regular blogger I’ll try to use that opportunity to do something good with my words.


Dawn of The Final Day -The Rest of the Semester Remains-

--Originally published at Site Title 2

Semana i has finally finished and with it so does this Digital Identity workshop. I will start today’s blog by saying that I really enjoyed the course. My only complaint is that it felt a bit repetitive on some topics. Other than that, I really took somethings from it. Being able to interact with people who play a large role on the Internet felt very special. Some of the things we discussed taught me stuff I’ll hopefully never forget. Moving forward I’m the one who has the task of applying what I learned. I know I probably won’t put everything I learned in practice, but I’ll do some of them at least.

Friday started with  a very different activity from what we are used to. We had a quick class about storytelling through video with Diego Zavala. He talked about how film used to be much more about the technical aspect, but, as technology made it more accessible, storytelling became the factor to push productions apart from others. We looked at various examples of different techniques that can be used to easily achieve successful storytelling. As an assignment we were asked to create a video that managed to tell a simple story, which led to this beauty:

It was a funny activity and I know I’ll regret posting this video publicly someday.

For the second half, we had another video conversation. This time we talked with Rebecca J. Hogue and Helen DeWaard. The video can be found here. Blogging was, once again, a very important topic and the reason for many questions. On the blogging side of things, I really liked the way they talked about how you can have different blogs and how, over time, they you may join different blogs. Rebecca’s cancer example was a great example of different blogging personas becoming one. Each of her blogs had a purpose but, as time passed, they started helping achieve the same goals. Another point showed clearly by Rebecca was about how blogging and storytelling can work together. Rebecca’s blog wasn’t a simple diary to record her activities during her disease. She was able to tell others what she was going through, her story, but, at the same time, she was able to help numerous cancer patients and survivors.

While no readily apparent, blogging has great potential, almost like a superpower. I hope if I ever become a regular blogger I’ll try to use that opportunity to do something good with my words.


The end…

--Originally published at MY BLOG

Como lo especifica el titulo de i blog… llego el final de esta semana i, creo que que no pude haberme inscrito a un mejor curso que a este, ya que en lo personal a mi me gustan mucho las aplicaciones y diferentes herramientas tecnologicas con las que nos podemos llegar a topar en el internet… realmente estoy agradecido con el profesor Ken por las ensenanzas a lo largo de la semana y espero poder a llegar a tener otro curso similar a este!