Final Overview

Well, it's finals week and I am definitely feeling the pressures to be done and the exhaustion from the recent school year. I have been maintaining this blog, working on a feminist zine and have learned a lot about how be actively involved in changing something you feel strongly about. For example, my feminist theory class is doing an activism project about bringing the truth of what the Pregnancy Resource Center offers to its clients. It claims to be a medical center but it is not licensed as such. The PRC says they offer medical care but they only have a physician's assistant come once a week. They do not advertise that they are a Christian-based organization, that all of the employees who work for them follow Christian beliefs but when you get there to talk about ALL of your options pertaining to pregnancy, they tell you to turn to God and that abortion should be out of the question and they will not make referrals for abortion nor will they even discuss it as an option. If you go in there thinking that you are going to be discussing STDs and your options there, this is true, but they will then start asking you questions about your personal life and try to push their moral/religious views on you by making you feel guilty about the choices you have made. This right here should be obvious that they are not a medical clinic as they claim to be as it well-known that medical clinics do not involve religion nor do they impose moral views on their patients.

The point here is obviously not to criticize Christians or affiliated organizations, the point is to bring awareness to the facts and the real services that this center offers people so that they know going in that they will not be going to a medically licensed facility or seeing licensed staff. It is important for people to know these things because then they don't go in there thinking they are going to get specific services or advice and then come out worse than before.

I have enjoyed working on this zine and acquiring the various skills from my women and computers class and being able to apply those skills to this activism project. I am also excited to graduate this coming Sunday.

danah boyd

I recently had to do an assignment for my Women and Computers class regarding the research of a woman who has contributed to new media. I chose danah boyd as she seemed interesting in that the only information I had about her before my research was that she worked for Microsoft doing research. When I started to read about her through her blog and through her Web site, I was hooked. She is simply fascinating. She is very cut and dry and seems to be of the "no bullshit" type, which is hard to find these days in the time of ass-kissing to get up in the world. I did my multi-media presentation on her which does her no justice, I realize, but gives a brief background about her life, and some of the research she has conducted.

End of the Semester Blues

Now I am not saying that I have the hardest schedule by any means but I am just about exhausted with undergraduate school. I graduate in less than three weeks and still have so much yet to do. Do you ever feel like no matter what you do, you are all caught up on everything and yet still so far behind? It's a never-ending vishish cycle of work but luckily it is almost over. I think what makes it the hardest to deal with is that I have had so much happen to me healthwise this year that one would think that I had to have made it up because it seems like way too much to be happening to one person in such a short period of time. But it's what happened and so I am trying to pull everything back together by trying to make sure that I remain at the very least all caught up on things.

Learning How to Place Videos into Blog from YouTube

I had discussed getting my wisdom teeth out in an earlier post and this is how I felt after I woke up.





I thought this was really cute of the little boy as well. Here is the URL for the video on Youtube as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txqiwrbYGrs

Low-Income Urban High School Students and Financial Aid on the Internet

(http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.jenkinscomputers.com/jenkins%2520computers%2520logo.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.jenkinscomputers.com/&usg=__Dzy5lZf0D88DPNiXghfbCuOftTI=&h=480&w=517&sz=62&hl=en&start=6&tbnid=WDWqU2q9SInRUM:&tbnh=122&tbnw=131&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcomputers%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den)

In summary, the article, "Low-income High School Students' Use of the Internet to Access Financial Aid," by Kristen Venegas, discusses the sturggles and lack of opportunities that prevent students from filling out financial aid forms online which is becoming a much more general common practice. The importance of being able to both access these forms online as well as understanding how to complete them online lies in the fact that, "FAFSA applications completed online receive faster decisions about student aid packages than those that are completed on paper." (http://www.nasfaa.org/Annualpubs/Journal/Vol36N3/KristanVenegas.PDF) The problem does not only lie within the access to Web-linked computers, despite their decreasing numbers in schools with high levels of low-income students, but also in the ability to properly use the Internet, access the proper Web sites, etc. According to the article, "Increased number of computers in low-income schools does not guarantee use: if the students are not given time to use them, if students as well as teachers are not properly trained on how to use them," and end up being considered, "engines of inequality" because of these reasons."

Another reason why it is important for these low-income students to be taught about the financial aid online application process is because the financial aid programs are increasingly choosing to use the Internet more and more for reasons such as: to decrease application mistakes, expidite the review and processing of Web-based forms, save materials, postage and processing costs for government and postsecondary institutions, allowing for more money to be dispersed into the aid. While this is all very good, if not given the same opportunitites, the author argues that this process perpetuates the cycle of lack of access for some people and creates advantages for others. She states that "culture plays a role in the acquisition of financial aid knowledge," and labels such culture as, "influences, resources, and expectations affect students' ability and drive to acquire financial aid."

The author discusses the "cultural framework" that families, home environments, peers, school envrionments, and communities have on students' decisions to enroll in or seek funding for higher education. (For my own personal opinion, those who are around parents who have either been college-educated or educated themselves on the process for their children create environments that encourage such applications to be done. Envrionments play a large role in general on almost everything we do.)

6 Barriers these students face in trying to complete online financial aid applications:

1. "low income" status renders the possibility for not owning a computer or having Internet access at home, and thus only relying purely on school resources.

2. Access to Web-linked computers in general for low-income schools.

3. Cultural frameworks such as school, family, peers, etc.

4. Slow Internet Access/problems with freezing computers.

5. Inability to understand the Web sites when they access them.

6. Not being properly trained to use computers and the Internet, if they are given access to use them.

Blood Clot

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for being so understanding about my recent condition. It has been a long week and a frustrating struggle with multiple doctor's giving multiple opinions and offering differing advice on treatment. I am trying to stay as caught up as I can from my parent's house down in the cities and I am allowed to return to school with some restrictions for walking on Monday. I hope everyone is doing well and thank you again for your kind words and expressions of concern and understanding. I greatly appreciate it. :-) Just to keep people up to date, I have a DVT which is a clot in my leg and it is in the right femoral vein. I was also just recently scanned for a pulmonary embolism which is a clot in the lung. I am waiting for the results of that testing. I am taking two forms of blood thinning medication right now and will need to be getting my blood checked every few days as the dosages of those medications will need to be adjusted accordingly to my INR. That is all the information that I have right now, if you have any questions about my return or need something from me that I am late on or an idea of when I will be getting back on track, please feel free to contact me at any time.

BLog #2 Analysis

In summary, the blog entitled, "Reappropriate: a personal and political blog written by an angry Asian American woman," is very advanced, in my opinion. She offers a variety of topics that are discussed through her blog posts and those contributing authors. She has a tab bar consisting of, "home, About, Ads, Policy, Contact." There is high-quality imagery of animee on the site. ONe can click on links to the most recent posts and see recent comments of those posts. There are ads on the site. For each post she has a link to a printer-friendly version of the post. She offers an "Archives" section as well as a "blogged ratings" section in which her rating as of now is "8.0" and a link to where you can place your own rating. The author also offers a list with links of some of the blogs that she follows and a "directory" of various blogs. She offers lists of blogs that are broken into such categories as: "Random Amusement," "Vagina Revolution," and, "Yellow and Brown." I would say that of the content of the posts, they mostly focus on topics covering issues revolving around women. She also offers a place for people to search for specific posts, a link to her Facebook page and what her current status is, and a section with a topic that is headlined "Spotlight."

Review:

In reference to the content of the blog postings, one of the major strengths of both of the blogs that I have looked at, is that they cover a range of topics and analyze the content differently than what is being done in mainstream media. This means that they are looking at the questions that are not being asked and analyzing why that is and offering suggestions about what should be being asked. I think that a strength of the posts on this site in particular is that each post is clearly authored by the main author and then there is a link to the comments from contributing authors. This helps to clearly strucutre the site and its posts and everyone is given credit whether it is anonymous or not. I like this. I also like that each post is printer-friendly capable and that she has labeled them into categories which can be found under each posting title. For example, a post entitled, "Bobby Jindal Defend Criticism of Obama," has a category label of, "U.S. Politics and Politicians." This can make your searching easier if you are searching for posts that could be found under a certain category. And this same example also shows how she is looking at not only issues of women of color but also men of color, namely, the President of the U.S. and the racial intolerance of our counrty.

In terms of the site's organization and ease of use, I think that it is immaculate. Everything is very clearly organized in to categories as I have mentioned a few times in the above information. I think that another strength of the site is that under the "About" tab, she offers some specific background information about herself such as, "My name is Jenn. I am female. I was born in August of 1982." The reader at least now gets some sort of an idea of the basics about the author. She goes on to offer information about where she's from, where her parents are from, etc., in the form of a question and answer interview, making it easier to see her answers and the questions being asked. I think that the reader also gets an idea about the reasoning for this site's beginning.

Finally, in reference to the site's weaknesses, I honestly did not see any. I liked that there were various topics represented and that the analysis offered questioned what was being said in the mainstream media and voices. I liked the printer-friendly posts. I thought the site was very well organized and offered places for people to contribute their thoughts. If you wanted to contact her directly she offered you information to do so. I really enjoyed this site and the postings that I read. I have no weaknesses to offer.