Blog #5 - MOOC idea & my job in my group...

I think that creating a mini MOOC is a great idea. While it seems like a big project, I think we can somehow pull it together. I think it would be a good way to put our class out there. If the thought of a MOOC is too crazy for some of us, maybe we can try to do the mini course site first and start from there. I am not tech savvy at all but I have been taken out of my comfort zone before and in the end I feel great about what I have accomplished. Although, I have no idea how to actually create a MOOC (i.e. would it involve coding…?), I think that we have a lot of people in the class and together and can try to make it happen. With that same thought about having a lot of people in the class, I think that many of us have many different ideas and I’m not sure how that can be beneficial or if that might be counterproductive in the end. When we first spoke about our “digital omnibus” in class, I envisioned a course website where we would all link our work, using for instance, Wix; which is the only platform I’m comfortably familiar with that is capable of doing such thing. Overall, I am open to the idea of a MOOC but being that I think it might be a lot of work and we may struggle with how to manage it, perhaps we can settle for a mini course wed site which might be less daunting.

Now, talking about my particular job in my group project, I have to say that our group sort of has mini groups of two within the group. We decided to break our presentation into basically three parts so we have two members working on each part. As part of our presentation, we’ll be showing a video and asking related questions to generate class discussion. My specific job for my group project is to write out possible questions that we will be asking as part of this. While doing this, I’ll be thinking about when we can fit the question within the video we will be showing. I’ll also pay close attention on how to word the question so that it ties up with what we are trying to say and so that it also matches with a specific time in the video. Hopefully these questions allow us to connect with the stories shared in the video at a closer level. 

Blog # 4

There are countless of reasons why we need to have these conversations about race, but the main one that came to my mind was because of our future generations. Our children, grandchildren and so on, are the voice of tomorrow; it is hugely important for them to know about race for them to build their identity and also to know how to not hurt others with stereotypes that are still going on today. We must teach them not say hurtful things, to be mindful about what they say because it might hurt others.

I think that although the lesson starts at home it is important to have these conversations with members of every community you belong to. We can teach our children at home about their race and ethnicity and about how to talk to others about it but if when they are not at home they encounter racial comments as if they are okay, then they will learn that certain comments are okay elsewhere but just not at home. With home training and having the same conversations with all the communities we belong to, that could be a way I believe that can help when children are exposed to conversations about race or even racial comments.

As I was thinking about how we can make our class project matter outside our classroom, I thought that the use of social media platforms could be a great tool. By posting whatever we end up making online this can grab others’ attention. By also linking these projects to our twitter accounts we can receive feedback and attention from our followers. We could think about Google chatting with other scholars and posting that also on our twitter accounts.  

Blog # 3 - Race, Ethnicity, & Identity

After our conversation/workshop on Tuesday, our group made great progress. We left class feeling like we had a sense of what we wanted to do. We had direction as to what we wanted to focus on for our project. It was suggested by Dr. Zamora to use the show Finding Your Roots as one of our main sources, so we discussed the different ways we could show that to the class. We talked about maybe showing an entire episode or somehow editing parts that we feel have to do more with what we want to say.

Our project will be mostly collaborative, so we didn’t really go over who is doing what in a specific way yet. We discussed that our project will focus on how we perceive/identify ourselves as individuals and then seeing how others perceive us.

We also talked about microaggression and we talked about incorporating that into our project. We briefly brainstormed about some of us sharing personal experiences with microaggression and the possibility of sharing that to the class somehow, but this is an idea that I felt still need to be developed.

Our group homework was to watch a few episodes of Finding Your Roots and throughout the week we have emailed each other and share articles, different texts and ideas that we might use as part of our project. Some of what was shared over the week had to do with microagression, identity and voice. On Tuesday, we’ll talked about how can we link everything and where else do we want to go with this project.

Blog #2 - Project proposal

So, I had to do some more brainstorming about my project but I think I’ve come up with some more specific ideas. My goal for this project is to I'm thinking that I would like to focus on creating a forum where I can post questions and people can share their experiences linked to race and ethnicity. I am hoping that with this I would be able to gather what's going on out there regarding this topic. I would like to also link a blog or webpage to it where I can share my own experiences as a Latin American. Sharing my experiences as a Latina that came to this country when she was 9-years-old would hopefully open doors to the public to share their own experiences. I haven't really experience straight forward discrimination but I've seen particular cases where people have discriminated. I work as a Human Resource Specialist and discrimination and diversity are topic that we deal with on a daily basis. I would like to incorporate experiences and stories I've seen and lived at my workplace (keeping it anonymous, of course. I would have too). 

Create a forum where I can post race and ethnicity question where people can share their experiences/stories regarding this topic. Create a blog/website that I can link to this forum and share my own experiences along with stories I’ve heard and seen from others. Perhaps include stories/interviews from people I know regarding this topic. Linking the forum and website/blog to perhaps my twitter account to bring people’s attention. With this I’ll hopefully find similarities among our differences. 

Blog #1 - Ideas for project...

          As I think about what I would like to do for a project for this class, I envision myself creating some type of social platform when “real world” people can share their thoughts and experiences about their own race and ethnicity. Perhaps it can become a place where people can share positive comments about race and ethnicity. Although I’m still not sure about what exactly I would like to create for this class, I’ve thought about creating a blog, a twitter hashtag, a webpage, or other social media platform where people can find information regarding race and ethnicity and engage in this topic… maybe focusing more in a specific race and ethnicity or simply keeping it open for all. Maybe this way we can find more similarities among our differences… if that makes sense. I’m also thinking about a project where I could maybe include my own personal experiences regarding my own race and ethnicity. This perhaps social media platform could be a place where my classmates could share their own race and ethnicity backgrounds and experiences, this becoming a collaborative project.