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.