4/25 Post

For my final post, I would like to talk about what i have learned over the course of the semester. I really like this class, it taught me a lot of how teams work together, through Tuckman's Group Development Stages to how people actually collaborate together. I thought it was very interesting how collaboration is basically the root of all social media platforms. Like when we learned about how the Ferguson protest were broadcasted on social media in a practical way. Through many examples throughout the semester, I see social media and working in teams very differently. Even in the daily teams I participate in, I dissect which stage we are on and how this team will ultimately work out. When I worked with my group for the Unit One project, we all worked so well together I was comfortable enough to work with them again for the Unit Two project. Now since I can see what the future of the group may end up to be, any group that I might now feel comfortable to be in, I know when to step out. I think another really important argument I learned in this class was the idea of women as computer programmers. My dream job is to work for as the head of a company's social media. Here's a link of women who made it the work force. I think taking coding classes should be important to my pursuit and I believe that there is not a better time to end the stereotype thinking that programming is a “man’s job.” This idea can involve everything that we learned this semester. Women should have the right to study whatever they want, it will take a team to collaborate and change this idea that society has. It can be supported on social making their effort spreadable for others to see easily. People should be given the right to remix it into voicing how they feel about this issue about equality. We have the ability to connect worldwide in seconds. This class has taught me the tools on how to correctly dissect through platforms and the positives and negatives of online collaboration. So big thanks to Prof Daly !!

2 Best Blogs:
http://delgadoam.blogspot.com/2017/03/327-post.html
http://delgadoam.blogspot.com/2017/03/322-post.html

2 Best Replies:
http://paigemartig.blogspot.com/2017/03/blog-post-7.html?showComment=1490762893300
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Photo from: http://pandawhale.com/post/51891/the-unsafety-net-how-social-media-turned-against-women

4/18 Post

Hello everyone!! The semester is soon coming to an end and we are officially working on our Unit two projects. Last Tuesday we had a speaker who specializes in the Adobe softwares that are free for University of Arizona’s students to use. He explained the software that has pre made videos that incorporates transitions and fun effects. It was a great way to show an example of what is needed for this paper. Thursday we had class online and we incorporated a weekly reading to our Unit Two Project. We explained how the idea of spreadability is was so helpful for people to understand how poorly killer whales are treated in Sea World. Here’s a link briefly explaining what our video is going to roughly about. We had our second response paper due last Friday as well. It was an example of something built off the work of others. I write about how my photography was a source for University of Arizona’s newspaper, The Daily Wildcat. I think it was an interesting way I explained collaborating with different people for an end product. Using this example really helped me understand the concept more. The next project we are working on is finishing the Unit Two Project. I really like my group. We work diligently and have a very good end product. I am excited for my classmates to see our video in class! Till next time!!

Photo from: http://www.magpictures.com/blackfish/

4/12 Post

Hello everyone!! The semester is quickly coming to an end and I can not wrap my head around that I am almost done with my first year of college. Last week we worked heavily with understanding how to form a page on Wikipedia. On Tuesday, we had to go through a tutorial that taught use how to edit a page either with coding or visual effect. I think coding is very interesting, but how they explained it for a person that has not formed a code in their life I was still very confused. When we had class the following day, we had to choose an article that was already made my group chose the page about Oprah Winfrey’s Leadership Academy for Girls. Here’s a link more about the amazing school! Prof Daly wanted us to chose a page that did not have a good amount of information. We added more information we found online to the page. It was easy to do because instead of coding we were able to use the visual effect that showed the same way someone else would see if they would search up the page. It was pretty cool to see that we contributed our knowledge through research to the page. Before we edited that page, I thought it was going to be a hard process, but it makes sense why everyone can so easily edit any page they want.

Photo from: http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/25/business/oprah-winfrey-leadership-academy/

4/3 Post

Hello everyone!! Last week we spoke much about “open culture”. Open culture are softwares that are have free licensing for anyone to use their sources. The four freedoms that are involved are using, studying, sharing, and modifying. All these four freedoms contribute to a public domain making America so successful in public markets. For Thursday’s homework we had to watch a movie called RIP: Remix Manifesto. It is an hour and a half all about how people should have their right to sample parts of audio or video sources to create their own masterpieces. I think copyright laws are outrageous with how much they fine people and other repercussions people face. If people are able to cite articles online written by others to make their essays better, why can not people who want to use audio and video do the same? We are at the day and age that audio and video is what control how we see ads or public service announcements. We also had to watch a ted talk with Lawrence Lessig. Lessig is a major player in the realm of the copyright laws and people’s cases. Here is a link about him. He spoke about laws that choke creativity. He said something that was very interesting remixing videos or audio is not privacy, someone is just saying or doing something differently. He related to how people had to change their thoughts on trespassing as airplanes would fly over head their properties. When new laws were enacted they did not think of airplanes as trespassing anymore. If people would think that others are using their music for good and not to negatively manipulate their songs, this idea of copyright infringement would have a whole other idea behind it.

Photo From: https://clipartfest.com/categories/view/b485b4510a36bbdbe313e06651f95af461b495f8/copyright-infringement.html

3/27 Post

Hello!! Last week we had a great guest speaker come to our class to talk about the women in computing. Her name was Amelia Marsh. I thought her presentation was very interesting teaching the class about how low the percentage is for women working in the computer programming field. There are a couple areas that have a higher percentage, but overall, there needs to be more women working in this area of study. We were asked questions to answer if University of Arizona’s computer programming track does not discriminate towards women wanting to study. I heard my classmates response and I was really astonished at the answers. One women in our class explained that she started with a computer programming major, but changed to ITSA major because the men in her classes did not want to listen to her input since they automatically thought she was wrong since she was a women. The movie I explained in my last post distinctly explained that women and men have the same capacity of learning if they are brought up the same exact way. It really took me by surprise that so many women are intimidated to major in computer programming because of how they are treated in the classes on campus here. Here is a link to basically explain why there are not enough women computer programmers. Another subject we spoke about is the game League of Legends. This game was being researched for having a problem with discouraging new players to play the game.  Older users were using abusive language based on having a bad day. Researchers attempted to fix the problem with pop ups, or nudges, to influence behavior change. This lead to new and older players being more successful in the game. I think it was very interesting how they had to choose specific colors to correlate towards less abusive language being said.

Photo from: http://www.businessinsider.com/more-evidence-of-sexism-on-github-2016-2

3/22 Post

Hello again!! Just got back from my spring break it was very fun and relaxing. Over the break, we had to watch a movie called Code: Debugging The Gender Gap. Honestly, I loved the movie, I think it really spoke out to one of the many gender inequality workforces’ problems we have in this society. The movie started with a percentage about how many women in the future are going to be working as computer programmers and that was only 3% out of the 29% increase. Most computer programmers will be from outside of the US. Would that percentage increase if there would be more girls as programmers since the beginning? In the movie, they showed a perfect example of why there is a need of more women programmers. In the beginning of vehicle air bags being implemented into cars, many women and children were being killed rather than saved when getting into an accident. What was the main cause to this problem? The fact that there were only white men on the team making these airbags. They only thought of their body size, shape, and weight. When the airbags would deploy it would basically only save the men. If there were women on that team, there would have been a lot less deaths because their size, shape, and weight would have been incorporated into the making of the air bags. The need for better representation of both genders is crucial, but also there is a need for diverse ethnicities to be on the team as well. Our future is computer programming and our future will still need both men and women to come up with deciding factors for important problems needed to be resolved. Here's a link for the trailer.

Photo from: http://www.geekwire.com/2015/godaddy-ceo-helps-produce-code-a-documentary-about-the-gender-gap/

3/5 Post

Hello everyone!! Presentations went very well last week. I learned a lot of new information through different social movements. My group presented on Thursday and I think we did pretty well. We had so much information we lost track of time, but I would rather be over time than under time. At the end of our presentation, someone was still a little confused about the overall goal Free the Nipple aspires to do. Basically to put it into a smaller concept, it is for women to feel okay with being topless if wanted to be. It is for women to not feel what their body is not equal to a man’s body on a hot summer’s day walking around. I think the best group of Tuesday’s presentations was Caitlyn Jenner’s transformation starting the movement of people to be open to transgenders. I think they had great explanations and examples of how much social media was involved with her change. Overall, everyone’s websites were very interesting to hear how much social media molded the path of interaction of users to advocate their issue. After all the presentations were presented on Thursday, Prof Daly announced to us that our midterm is this upcoming Tuesday instead of Thursday. I wished we had that extra day to work together in class with questions in the quizzes we were confused about. Anyways, time to study up! Hope everyone has a fun and safe spring break! Here’s a couple tips on how to stay safe during your week off!! Till next time..

Gif from: https://clipartfox.com/categories/view/9244c05c985e14da8f015633374315545789165f/spring-break-graphics-clip-art.html

2/28 Post

Hello everyone!! Over this past week my group and I worked on our website explaining our chosen movement Free the Nipple. I am really happy I got to meet new people in the classroom and chose a topic we all felt so serious about. After a lot of research Free the Nipple is a great sub platform of feminism promoting gender equality. On the website we have a timeline showing how Free the Nipple was established to present day, another page about each contributor, the players that impacted the movement, and the background of the campaign.  After meeting with the three other girls outside of class, we divided each of the website’s pages into which part we wanted to speak about. I think we had pretty good team work together. After going through the five stages of development for a team, we accomplished a good website advocating women to feel okay to show a part of their body that seems very taboo to our society. Throughout the week we also read about new generation political advocacy groups. We outlines the three important claims of online organizations that have changed politics. The demand for all of these online organizations really helped with the latest campaign last year. Overall, this week we are presenting our Unit One projects and I am very excited to show everyone our hard work !! Till next time!

Photo from: https://www.theodysseyonline.com/should-free-nipple

2/21 Post

Hello again. Over last week’s class we started to talk about a social movement that is very active in today’s society, the Black Lives Matter movement. For Tuesday’s reading we read about where the black lives matter is headed and how it has impacted our society as a whole. With all the outcomes to generate the BLM movement, the social media platforms gave advocates a collective and decentralized place to collaborate about their issues or triumphs. Another reading we spoke about in class is the overabundant amount of contributions people collaborated with the establishments of hashtags. I think the idea of using hashtags to get a point across over a mass media is the best way to quickly spread information for people to stay in touch with the national collaboration. Hashtags are currently the mechanisms that create either havoc or positive upheavals. It is up to the contributors if they want to use the hashtag for good or bad use. What was very interesting for the BLM activism hashtags they created words to focus on location and specific crowds they want to address. On another note, the project my group and I are working on for this class is in the process. Currently we are making the timeline for when the social movement of Free the Nipple was officially established. I watched a movie on Netflix that is based on the movement of Free the Nipple, I highly recommend everyone to watch it. It is only an hour and eighteen minutes, but filled with such powerful statements maybe making you want to become a serious advocate in this movement. Here is a link (http://freethenipple.com/) of their official website explain more about what Free the Nipple really means. I am very excited to see how the website is going to end up. Until next time !!

Post 2/13

Hello again!! This past week we learned a very different aspect of the culture of Reddit and started brainstorming about our Unit One Project. I did not know much about Reddit before reading the article so before I explain this online community I want to explain Reddit. Reddit is an online collaboration website based on people submitting content related to a specific topic. People may “upvote” or “downvote” content if users want other viewers to see the same post. The topic explain in our weekly reading was about Reddit’s suicide prevention communities. We had a guest speaker in Tuesday’s class named Lili Steffen who is doing here senior paper on the same idea of community, but on Tumblr. It was a pro-anorexia blog promoting views to restricting eating habits.In relation to the Reddit’s suicide prevention both platforms were safe spaces online helping each other share their stories for others to relate. Both of the online communities are very accessible for users to have their voice be heard. Since people are always on the go, logging into the websites on their phone may help more than setting aside time to physically deal with their issues. Another pro to both of these platforms is they are receiving real and genuine advice and stories from people who are struggling with the same problem. On the other hand, it is very easy for users to be a negative stigma throwing people over the edge of giving either suicidal thoughts or finding anorexia is healthy. During Thursday’s class we held a mockup of what or unit project will be graded on. We are getting into groups and choosing a social movement that we support. I chose the social movement of “freeing the nipple” Next week’s class will be based on more research about social movements and our personal projects. Here is a link from Reddit’s suicide prevention sub platform. Till next time!!

1/6 Post

Last week's class we reviewed what defines Group Dynamics by Donelson Forsyth. In the first chapter, it explains his definition of what a group is and how they communicate towards each other depending on the circumstances. For example, intimacy groups are known as more personal relationships. There is a high level of interaction in those groups. On the other hand, task groups are groups which are formed in an employment setting. Group members are all striving to pursue one shared goal. Every individual has a role which is “a coherent set of expected behaviors of people who occupy specific positions within a group” (Forsyth 11). Every group has a leader and its followers. Every role is specified to how the person reacts and interacts with others. For example, the leader has more of a guidance type of role. Followers can be defined as other roles such as “information giver or information seeker.” Having a norm in the group is very important as well. It often is describes as how each leader or follow should behave within each group. With each position following their roles and norms, group cohesion is easily made. Group cohesion is the backbone forming through great affiliation between group members. In class on Tuesday we visited last semester's knowledge of group dynamics. Also, we fixed up our activity with group development on Prezi. Lastly, since we did not have class on Thursday we participated in an online quiz talking about everyone’s Prezi and the reading explaining how women can read someone else better in a group discussion than men. Till next week !!

1/30 Post

Hello again! This past week’s lectures we spoke about communities of practice, group development, and what really makes a team work. All of the information we learned about how to cultivate teamwork correctly were different ways of how knowledge is managed. Community of Practice is people who chose to come together with special knowledge. Everyone has a common sense of identity. After looking at the YouTube video Cultivating Communities of Practice: Making them Grow it really explained how a group of people interact with each other individually and as a team all resulting in better work than one person working on a project. It is very important for people to want to work together sharing ideas. Also the need for everyone’s own identity defines how strong a group can be. An excerpt from Geoff Colvin explaining What Really Makes Teams Work, more contributions from others will result in best outcome which is shown through the three effective ways for a group is a majority of ideas, dense interactions, and contribution. In his article he explained how the best ideas come from face to face interaction. Digital media can sustain, but not create powerful relationships. That is why Steve Jobs promoted great teamwork interaction in his company Pixar making people work together in big spaces. Another reading we spoke about was Tuckman’s explanation on group development. This was my favorite part of the week because we learned about the basic explanation of how many movies are thought of before hitting the big screens. Forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning are the five stages of group development. We used the example of the movie Finding Nemo to explain each stage. Till next time !!

First Post 1/22

Hello all !! My name is Amanda Delgado. I am a freshmen here at University of Arizona studying Communications and most likely Esociety! In the beginning of our course, we spoke about "What is Collaboration Anyways." The pdf I read for class mostly spoke about how collaboration is shown through "sharing, openness, and/or participation." I believe those terms are explained perfectly. We dissected three different ways of collaboration through ideas of a social network, online communities, and a political social talk about Ferguson. In Levy's article, it was a little harder to grasp the concept well, but I think overall understandable. His idea on collective intelligence is that no one knows everything, but everyone knows something. Meaning if people all work together, their knowledge will be far more useful than only one person thinking of ideas. In Tina Fey's Bossypants, she explained that improvisation is the best way to explain collective intelligence. People rely on others if you keep going with improvisation, there is never a mistake. Aggregation, technical coordination mechanics, and social coordination mechanics all require intentional shared goals. The Continum explains the three major points of collaboration. The weaker, stronger, and intense. This was the hardest concept to understand this week, but after learning more information about each, I think it will make more sense. Some examples we learned about each point are captchas, music sharing, and Wikipedia. When we had to explain our own type of weak, strong, or intense collaboration, that is when I found it hard to understand the concept. I'm very excited to learn more on how people collaborate through social networks and online communities impacting how we interact with each other on a daily basis.