During my Masters degree, I began looking into a PhD. I needed a wider range of opportunity and consideration. I wanted to look at media that is more than broadcast, and that doesn’t pretend to be objective.

So I ventured forth to the ATLAS building on campus and annoyed/asked people there for guidance and advice.

First I joined the Doctoral Seminar group at ATLAS. A 1-hour, 1-credit required class for ATLAS PhD students that is as much about giving them a sense of community as it is about content delivery. My idea behind it was to ‘suck it and see’ – I wanted to see what the students were like, what ATLAS was like, what their idea of ‘multidisciplinary’ really was, and how they all worked together to find out if it was a fit for me. In that class I met the amazing students who became good friends, and were interested in the same broad things as I was.

Me in pre-school. Amazing. So much, yet so little has changed.

Big kudos to Jill Van Matre, Associate Director at ATLAS who put up with me not knowing who I was; and the instructor for seminar that semester, Mark Winokur – both of whom cleared my acceptance even though I was not part of the PhD program and I was the first to ask them to take me. They took a risk. The type of risk that sees the future rather than the present. A good risk.

Through the rest of the Masters, I unliaterally took classes that would assist in my application for the ATLAS PhD program. I stressed over my GPA when many were past that phase. I was told repeatedly variations of ‘nobody’s ever gotten in from the SJMC before’, ‘funding is a real issue’, and even ‘ATLAS might not be taking any new PhD students at all, you know’.

I opened metaphorical doors and windows for funding opportunities and alternatives in case it didn’t work out. I stopped talking about my plans with people without vision, and I wrote a thesis on online communities. I ignored the fact we have no money.

I applied

ATLAS accepted four new PhD students this year. All four are women. I’m one.

I’m working in the ConnectivIT lab with my advisor, Leysia Palen. The lab looks at human centred computing (HCC). In particular, Project EPIC (Empowering People in Crisis) seeks to understand how people use technology when there are heightened areas of fear and personal loss at stake – in disasters such as Haiti, bushfires and floods. Far from just using social media to organise a Happy Hour meetup, I’ll be helping produce work that aids emergency personnel and individuals save lives.

However, there is math. But I have lots of friends who will help me understand it, or at least pour the wine when it all gets a little much. Statistics for Dummies is online. I found it

Lessons learned

This is just the beginning of this part of the journey, but I learned a lot in getting to this point. I thought you’d like to hear some things:

* Don’t look for reasons ‘why you should not do it’ – there is no need to look for those – everyone will throw them at you. There are plenty. Look inside for your own reasons ‘why you should do it’. There are fewer of them, and they might not make sense to some people, but they’re way more important.

* Listen to the warnings/negatives of everyone, and use them to prepare and plan for ways around issues. Be conscious of things like you have no money. Work out ways around the money thing. Clip coupons. Get used to free things. Don’t be too proud.

* Make strong connections. From the admin person through to the Dean. Everyone is important. It’s not strategic. It’s just being a nice human being. It will pay you back. Just don’t expect it to, and it will. (Does that make sense?)

* Don’t get angry. Many times people say you can’t. That’s because they’re not willing to. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean it’s the same for you.

* Finally, don’t worry about how you’ll manage next year (time, kids, money etc). Just eat that elephant a bite at a time, and worry about it as it happens. Every journey is different, and for women who wear so many hats, we are the essence of innovation. Keep stumbling forward.

* Smile, laugh and love every step. Lots. See the funny side. Sure, it shows you are a little bit crazy. Crazy’s good.

Related posts:

1. Do online communities pretend to care?
2. Disrupting the barriers of media in the 21st Century
3. What kind of Twitter identity do you seek?

A few months after we moved to Boulder, I was informed by sage, experienced people of the wonders of dumpster diving at the end of Spring semester. When all the students go back to their moms and dads for the summer. I heard fanciful stories that instead of giving stuff away or selling it, students just put all their things in the dumpsters, including unused detergent, soap, lightbulbs, etc.

At first I thought eww. Because dumpsters in Australia are so filthy even the most hardened drunk won’t venture into them. And I’m not ‘that’ person.

But as time wore on, and I guess as I saw more and more of the type of behaviour the students here have, I thought it would be worth ‘having a look’. And now we’re moving to a larger place (yay) where nothing other than the house is rented (fail), it’s time I got stuff like bookcases, desks, cutlery, linen and stuff. (Please note: most some of these I would not get from a dumpster. Even I have limits.)

Giving the coathangers a second chance. Life's tough.

So last weekend Elisabeth and I went out. For a drive. Down some alleys. To sight see. (This may or may not be related to the fact that the local newspaper ran a story on how it is illegal to take things from dumpsters. So we were ensuring we weren’t going to do anything illegal – like recycling stuff people were throwing into landfill – because that would be bad. You’re welcome, Boulder sheriffs.)

Coathanger rescue is socially responsible

Funnily enough, on our sightseeing tour of the alleys of Boulder, we came across a mass of coathangers. Just sitting next to a dumpster. That’s totally NOT dumpster diving, and coathangers appear to eat each other in our houses, so we liberated these from the alley. You’re welcome, alley.

Whoops! Elisabeth nearly falling into a dumpster. (Yes, this was posed, officer. But it's okay because it's awesome.)

And then we continued our sightseeing (because you know, it’s a side of Boulder I had not seen yet and as a startup mum I’m always one step away from living in an alley), and before I could warn her of it being directly in her way, and possibly because she was distracted by her constant talking, Elisabeth tripped and nearly fell into a dumpster. It was just craziness – how irresponsible, leaving the dumpster right where anyone could just trip into it. What is this world coming to? I was very worried, so I got up there too – but I didn’t fall in. Because I’m smart. I held onto the edge. And guess what? Insanely, someone had obviously accidentally thrown out about 50 brand new tshirts all still in their folded sizes, 10 XBox front covers (still in packaging), 6 very nice yellow satchels still in their brand new packaging, hundreds of packaged EA sponsored CU Buffs banners and about two billion brand new library bags – all branded EA Sports.

So we liberated this brand new, still in its original packaging stuff. It literally filled my (rental) car boot. Did I already say it was brand new? We kept a few for personal use, and put the rest into a donation bin for abused and neglected children – which is where they should have been put in the first place. You can see about half of it (yes, just half of it) in the featured pic. Jed asked me why I did this. I told him I kind of have an issue with people not recycling, but I have an even bigger issue with things going straight from the factory line into landfill.

I’m sure the person who put them in the dumpster probably was on their way to one of the many donation bins around Boulder, but fell into the dangerously placed dumpster with them, just like Elisabeth did, and needed to let all this brand new stuff go so the person could scramble to safety. That’s totally understandable. (Oh, and there was also a small black coffee table in there. So we liberated that too. It now is in our little loungeroom and holds all our game gear.)

Nice coffee table that someone accidentally left in the same dumpster. (Picture entirely posed, officer. I swear.)

We were invigorated outraged by this experience, so we thought we’d check to see if other dumpsters or things around them looked dangerous. So we could warn people or fix it. Because we are nice people and that’s just how we roll.

Why Craigslist is helping the world be socially responsible

I’d seen an ad in the Free section on Craigslist (which is like the Trading Post for Aussies, but it’s entirely online, and in fact Craigslist exists in Australia but nobody really knows about it) for a couch someone was throwing out, so we used the reliable GPS (rather than the unreliable Elisabeth’s memory for directions to streets – it’s Pearl, then Spruce, then Pine, woman!) to find out whether the couch was liberated or not. It had been so we were happy, thinking of the couch being set free, loved, somewhere. But right near where the couch had been (and totally not in a dumpster because they were too big) were a very nice large IKEA bookcase, and a tv set with remote taped to the top, and a sign that said “Free. Still working well.” (The sign was on the TV, because of course the bookcase didn’t need a sign. It was obvious that it worked. Maybe you don’t need this kind of explanation.) Well, to leave them behind was inhumane. So then the car was full.

Then I came home and got a little itchy which could totally have been my brain working overtime thinking of little things you need a microscope to see that bite a lot and leave you with an illness, which might explain the big headache I had this week. But I had a shower and washed my clothes and now I wasn’t itchy any more. So maybe the headache is an aneurysm after all, because I had that all week. But I don’t have it now. So maybe it’s only an aneurysm from Monday to Friday. I don’t know. I’ll have to think that through a some more.

Where are they now?

The TV. Which is obviously not in a dumpster.

Until we move next month, the tv is sitting on the floor in the middle of our little loungeroom. Which is not ideal, but in another way it kind of is. Because it is in the way of the tv we currently use and the signal from the remote doesn’t read if you’re sitting on the couch. Which of course, you always are if you’re watching tv. But I’m not moving it because it’s fun to watch family members try to make the signal reach the tv without getting off their butts, by waving their arms around and swearing a lot. It’s better than the show they’re trying to tune to. And that crap’s why I know God exists.

By the way, on a serious note: If you are Electronic Arts, then you should know that someone who obviously worked for you, probably in promotions, and lived in Boulder threw a mass load of your branded stuff into landfill. That’s a freaking massive fail. And if you’re that person, you should be banned from living in Boulder. You’re anti-Boulder. And, by the way, so is the ridiculous rule of Boulder authorities that says we can’t recycle other people’s things. It’s anti-everything good. You might want to rethink that.

No related posts.

Sometimes something in your daily routine can remind you of how connected we can be.

This semester I’ve caught the bus to campus on monday afternoons, on my way to my Human Computer Interaction class. When you catch the bus on a regular basis at a regular time, you’re quite often joined by a few others who have the same schedule.

And so I was joined on Mondays by a beautiful young girl – I’m guessing she was about 10 or 11. She was always on the bus already when I got on, and rode past my stop. But every time she was there, she made me smile.

This wonderful young lady was equipped with a CD player. And big headphones. She had a penchant for the Spice Girls.

How do I know?

She sang at the top of her lungs, along with the CD that nobody else could hear. Some people pretended not to hear her. Others grinned and went on with their newspapers. But most people really enjoyed listening to this singing that had absolutely no tune, and no back beat to drum out the bum notes. Everyone was grinning. With her, not at her.

On my last Monday of class, our nightingale was there. And this time the bus driver (who wasn’t the same person every time), kept turning his head to look at the young girl. I wasn’t sure if he was going to ask her to stop – she was really making quite a bit of noise. I couldn’t read his expression when he turned his head.

But after a couple of miles, he turned, looked at her, and began to click his fingers along with the beat.

We couldn’t hear the same music as the girl. But we all left the bus with her song, and were reminded to feel free in finding our own.

Happy Holidays.

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This pre-internet installation was and remains a vital consideration in the future of media. It has been supposed for a long time that communication and media technologies allowed people who already knew each other to improve existing relationships. Alternatively, broadcast media were used to send corporate-owned messages to the ‘masses’. There has been very little in the understanding of communities and how they are built and morph through media. To date, due to the expense of entry to creating content for media communication technology, most middle class people have been limited to the telephone – and that form is one-to-one rather than the one-to-many formats offered by social media. This installation’s first day shows how people who did not know each other were able to create conversations and relationships – even for a short time.

People in the video respond a certain way because they realize people in the other location can actually see them. This created an ‘event’. In the 21^st Century, when everything that happens in public locations could readily and easily be posted to the web, are we seeing a change in everyday public behaviors due to the fact that we are aware, more than ever before, that someone might be posting our actions? From music concerts to classrooms, from traffic accidents to natural environments, people are creating ‘events’. The greater questions are how have we as a community become the public entity we are creating, and what impact does this have on how we relate to each other. What has made people immediately reach for their cell phone to take a picture when something happens? This is a stage of history we’ve never faced before.

While we have come through an era where “the medium is the message,” we have moved on from this. The medium is still the technology. The message today is found in the resonance of community. One is not the other. In fact, the irony as stated by Steve Harrison in his essay on this particular video (found in HCI Remixed), is key. Separation does in fact, invite a connection. If we believe that human beings seek resonance with each other, eliminating some of the barriers to finding that resonance through disrupting the accepted norms of relationships and community will in fact deliver us to new ways of ‘seeing’ each other. Through these new ways of discovering resonance we will be able to grow an international array of communities. The international would relate not just to geographical space, but also class space. We have a media which will offer everyone an opportunity to find resonance of community with the homeless, the traditional-media famous, and their neighbor.

Related posts:

1. More than deputies: A definition of journalism for the 21st Century
2. Don't think influence, think resonance
3. Why I Stopped Following Guy Kawasaki

I am fortunate enough to have been invited to attend IMSI, the Invitational Masters Student Invitational, to be held at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, the weekend of October 16-18. Given Rutgers received over 100 applications, to be one of the 25 students invited to discuss their current research and proposed dissertation topic with Rutgers faculty, existing doctoral candidates, and other invitees is a privelege and real highlight of my academic career.

In my application I had to submit an existing paper to demonstrate my research. The paper I chose to submit was on identity work performed on twitter through the use of language and sentence structure. This paper looked at how people create and present an identity of themselves on Twitter, primarily through the use of @ replies, hashtags and retweets. While it’s a decent paper, for Rutgers I’d like to extend it to look at this identity work, and how the Twitter community sees its need to create an identity of concern in crisis and tragedy. This is where I’m headed.

Online communities and crisis

We’ve all seen media stories of tragic events, and how people are affected by them – and how they’ve gathered together online as a result. While sites exist to create online memorials, sometimes it crosses over and a personal fun page is morphed into a place for others to gather when they’ve passed on. On Twitter, I have personally witnessed multiple occasions where someone has ended up tweeting their own tragic events. The death of a wife. The death of a child. I wonder what would have happened if Twitter had been so commonplace during larger tragedies such as the Virginia Tech shootings.

I have watched the online community gather to provide concern and support to individuals directly affected by tragedy. It is this kind of resonance that led me to undertake a small content analysis on the tweets associated with the Australian bushfires last year. I wanted to find out who was tweeting about it? How were they involved? What were they saying and why?

The paper was a very small, very specific analysis in which I was surprised to discover that two thirds of people who twittered during the high point of the bushfire-related tweets were located nowhere near the tragedy. In fact, they were overseas. None of them knew people directly affected. And what were they saying?

Apart from retweeting basic information, the majority of people wanted to know how could they help?

Seeking triangulation? I’m not quite there yet…

Last week I attended the presentation of Leysia Palen’s to-date work in crisis informatics at CU. And the data appears to be reflected in her unit’s research (in particular, on the American-located Red River floods) as well. Exactly the same percentage – two thirds of people tweeting during a disaster are not directly involved.

So, is this real?

I hear a lot of people who doubt the friendships experienced in online communities. They say “how do you know they’re real?”

Now, of course they’re not doubting that the person tweeting is human (sometimes now, however, that presents an entirely different issue), but they are definitely doubting their authenticity. How do you know someone is really concerned about you if you’ve never met them face to face before? And it’s a really good question.

The Karen Walker factor

Karen Walker was a special character who found life, and resonance with many in the hit sitcom, Will and Grace.  While the show has had its day, there are many Walker moments that still hit the nail on the head.It is what is swimming in my head as I plan my paper for the Rutgers Invitational.

One of these is in an episode when Will and Grace are not talking (after a massive argument in which Will tells Grace to move out, which I swear was one of the strongest bits of acting on television I’ve seen). In chatting with Jack about how to get Will and Grace to talk again, she firstly says, “pretend to think, pretend to think.” She then follows it with “Pretend to care, pretend to care.” Of course Karen does care. She’s just conscious of the need to appear to care as well. Plus it’s funny.

So here I am:

* Are people who offer support in online communities ‘pretending to care’?

* Is the expressed concern a demonstration of identity work that gains them favour and positions them as caring individuals you’d want to have as a friend?

* How does the caring from the community affect the person experiencing tragedy?

Do you have any experience of this? Would you be willing to undergo an interview for my research? What do you believe is true?

My sincere thanks goes to the SJMC at CU, without the support of which I wouldn’t be able to conduct any of my research and also in particular to Dean Paul Voakes who saw fit to support my application with a letter of recommendation that I never saw, but am convinced was highly influential in my acceptance.

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1. Disrupting the barriers of media in the 21st Century
2. The IKEA effect and online community
3. Mummy’s back in graduate school

Spending the last two days at the Colorado Learning and Teaching with Technology Conference was a wonderful, enriching experience. As you’d expect from a conference that has a wealth of great sessions, I’ve come away invigorated and inspired to analyse, assess and further integrate additional teaching and assessment strategies – even though I was a co-presenter at the conference too!

I believe these conferences are vital. To get educators, particularly at tertiary level, to consider the way they deliver both content and assessment, really look at whether it’s working well or not and how they can improve, is a real focus of what I want to achieve both personally and professionally.

It was such a great experience to be able to focus in a workshop on how to use Twitter, in particular, in a tertiary education environment.

Step One

Before considering the technology, step back and think about your desired learning outcomes and competencies you need to deliver in your course.

Step Two

Consider how you deliver those things now. What works, what doesn’t? What learning styles are being addressed? I really think in a classroom environment we’re so used to seeing all the students enter and sit at the back of the room, and the same 5 people participate in discussions, that we’ve stopped realising that it’s problematic. Stopped looking at ways to improve it. Disconnect and think of what your ideal is.

Step Three

Think of things you can change to meet those different inadequacies. To improve your practice. Some of these may well include using social media to foster inclusive and participatory discussions, the elimination of people thinking they’re asking ‘dumb questions’ and resonance between students and educators.

Step Four

Gently lead your students into associating social media with an education environment. You’re going to be nervous in trying something new. They are going to be nervous that you’ll encroach their ‘personal’ domain. (Damn it, what’s next, friending them on Facebook?) While for many students, you accept there’s a number of people who will just not get involved, for the students, there are a number of them who are just expecting to fail. Simple. Think back to the most effective educators in your lives. These are the people who made a real impact. And typically, they’re the ones who tried something a little different. Who cared just that bit more. Why not be that educator to these students?

Step Five

When you’ve identified the areas of practice and efficiencies you’d like to change, focus on the tools that will help that happen. And then test it out. Invite students to take a journey with you. I bet that if you’re honest and let them know you’re testing something out for the first time, to try and get the content more engaging and interactive and anything else you’ve identified as problematic, most of them will willingly take the journey with you from the very start.

Remember:

A. Every semester is a new beginning. You don’t have to let the legacy of the previous one linger. But you should celebrate the improvements you made.

B. Every semester allows you to learn as an educator, and be even better.

C. Every student wants to learn. They’re in your class for a reason. Some don’t know what they’re going to learn. Maybe it’s just that they can. And that’s okay.

D. Get honest: Believe you can be better. Believe alternative strategies can actually work. Recognise your teaching practice wasn’t perfect to begin with.

E. Get ready to be important to your students. An educator that they remember for the rest of their lives.

Good luck this semester!

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So now the can of worms is opened. As expected, newspapers are closing. Many print journalists are inexplicably in shock. Their next paid employment may well include the words, “do you want fries with that?”

And that, truly, is devastating.

But we still have new people entering schools, wanting to be journalists. Play with me here:

Let’s say we have a new intake this year. They’ll be trusting us for the next four years to prepare them for employment. Beyond fast food. And so the question for educators is specific. What are the best journalism schools teaching now? What should they be teaching?

Be specific! I’m not interested in opinions that simply state “they need to be prepared for the web.”

Here’s a few of my views. We need to:

a. Teach the very real and vital aspects of the role of journalism, its values and role.

b. Equip students with these values as paramount, above and beyond the role of the media they work in. We need them to see the media they work within never compromises or changes their values as journalists.

c. Move away from teaching print media with a concentration on newspapers as the standard, and instead move towards the web as the standard media format.

d. Continue to teach content creation for broadcast and radio, and print magazines. And equip every student for a start in any of those formats.

e. In their first semester, teach students about the real possibilities of independent blogging, microblogging, podcasting and vlogging and insist they do all of them.

f. Instill in them all an awareness and practice of newsgathering and research in a new media environment.

What do you disagree with? What is missing?

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I am swimming in the B pool and I’m not happy. (Don’t try telling me getting a B is okay. It’s not.)

I have some kick-ass papers to write. I have a great brain and a wealth of experience. But I’m not getting the grades I want.

Graduate school is difficult. This week I had what I’d describe as a ‘crash and burn 24 hours’. There were lots of reasons to just go back to work. Lots. But in talking with my husband and friends I realised these ‘reasons’ were things that could be changed if I wanted to find a way to make that happen.

So I’ve made a plan to fix things. A better approach. I will be far more efficient at note-taking, writing (so that includes drafting, revising and final drafts… not just one draft), and research. I will talk to people I respect, and tie myself to my professors. I am not going to study myself to death. I am not going to be so fearful of writing the wrong thing that I leave it and end up writing it without checking. I’m going to write it anyway, and then check it up and rewrite it instead. 

All this seems obvious. And it is. Unless you’re living it.

So that’s basically it. Oh, and the capstone is the kids and I have a deal. When I do pull myself out of the B pool, we are having a family party – complete with glow sticks from Dollar Tree, disco music and junk food.

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