Digital Story : Proposal

For my digital story i will be taking on the idea of my missionary project in Pennsylvania that i encountered while in my sophomore year of high school. This memory is very fond to me because not only did i help change a families relationship, but i changed the opportunities and lives of their kids and themselves. Based on the lectures through First Year Seminar as well as the multiple hours of classwork put in to learn and use a Blog, not only do i understand the knowledge of this social network but i have a Facebook and a twitter to help communicate and learn about new activities and world events. The storyline for my digital story will consist of the people that i went with from my church group, starting from who they are, where they are from, the place we resided in doing our trip, and the gathering of Presbyterian people to help support one another for a good cause. From then i will move into the family, who they are, what they do, how they got to where they are now, and how we as a community can help them. For the third part in the story i plan to tell of the things we did to help this family out, how we changed their lives as well as the steps we made to better ourselves as well as this family in dire need. I intend to use the digital story to support my views of how social justice will tie into the culture of this family as compared to my life and how i live on a daily basis in Buffalo, NY. I intend to use still photos mainly, and make my digital story come to life with detail and emotion as best as i can. with the use of the resources given of the webpage of Dr. Shutkin i have many options to choose from in regards to how i can show the audience my experience and how it changed me as a person.
Annotated Sources: http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/starttofinish/storyboarding/
(this super site will be efficient in helping to tell me how to properly plan and organize my ideas)
http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/50+Ways
http://www.ourstory.com/ (for the actual digital story telling)
If there are any questions or concerns, feel free to ask.

web blog 666666

My personal twitter literacy level is very slim. i just recently made a twitter because i think its awesome that you can follow celebrities and athletes. i am really excited to start getting into it. i understand some of the lingoes but others i have no idea what people are saying. From my understanding you can tweet anything you want and it doesn't have to mean anything or have to do with anyone. ESPN uses twitter to keep up to date on famous athletes and what they do in their daily lives. 21st Century literary skills are very short and abrupt. people get down to the point a lot quicker than they used to. if you've ever heard the saying "practice makes perfect" that most definitely applies here. The only way to pick up what people are saying and the words they are using is getting involved and being active in the ways of Facebook, twitter, and other social networking sites. the more your on it, the more you learn and the more you find out. Schools cannot teach kids how to act freely outside of the classroom. these different social networking sites have brought new opportunities, good and bad, to the people that want to find information in the blink of an eye. word spreads fast when things are posted in Facebook and twitter. what people learn outside of the classroom is then brought inside the classroom and this is where the problems arise. Kids these days are doing everything a lot faster than previous years. for example, i didn't get a cell phone until i was in about 8th grade. now my neighbor who is in 5th grade, is on her cell phone everyday. what has this world come to?? The relationship between technology, 21st century literacy and participatory culture is that in the world today they are all intertwined. Being that our generation is a participatory culture and we were born into being consumers but producers as well, we find it easier to speak our mind and do what we have to do in order to succeed. We grew up in the time period where only the public can change the overall whole of the decisions and have an influence on the economic market and sometimes, what happens in the world.Technology plays a huge advancing role in the way we live, without technology life would not be this easy. technology has given us the power and influence that no other generation had. it has changed the way we live and from these new creations we can only move forward. Personally i can't imagine the world without the drama of social networking sites or even meeting a person over the age of 15 that doesn't own a cell phone or at least know how to use one. Nowadays kids are learning to rely on the internet and other databases and moving more away from the actual books. the literacy levels of the younger generations will be significantly worse than the previous ones because they are living and learning from texting and a world full of incomplete sentences and random statements. the public in turn, provides the literacy level, but also uses it bringing us to the new 21st century literacy level, thus it is the year of the twitter.

Web Blog numero 5: Internet and Digital Divide

My personal experiences with computers are not much. From the time i was little i have always had a brief knowledge of computers and how to use them, then again, i tend to learn something new everyday. Since i was in Second Grade at Lindbergh Elementary School, i have been using Dell computers and always got the newest Dell. My father loved the Dell systems and thought they were very easy to use and maintain. In middle school and high school more and more assignments needed to be typed. and now that i am in college everything is typed. I haven't created much in terms of the internet so i would say i love being a consumer and seeing what other people like to throw out on the table. I have made a few websites and messed around with different Windows products and Operating Systems. Over time i feel like all skills will get better if you practice or if you are constantly perfuming such acts. Typing and writing are two different skills and someone can be a really good writer but not a very good typist. Learning about a computer is like learning a new language, where you know nothing about this computer and nothing about the language. Based on my knowledge and usage of the internet i have experienced so much more in the world that i would never ever experience in my life. i haves laughed too hard, i have felt sympathy, i have learned and obtained the most possible information with the click of a button, literally.

WebBlog 4: Where Race Lives

In the "A Tale of Two Families" story it spoke of a family with a kid named Byron. Byron was a black man that found it hard to get a job due to the fact that he was black and during the years of segregation, not many people would hire blacks and if they did they would be the first to get fired. When manufacturing crashed in Chester, PA where Byron Green lived, many people left and the ones who stayed were heavily taxed. Luckily for Byron he received a scholarship to an Ivy League University and due to his parents unstable financial situation, he used his personal money to get to college. Byron's parents sold their home in Chester and moved elsewhere leaving byron in charge of their finances. Racial segregation played a huge role in this mans life and because he was not white and couldn't do what the whites had the opportunities to do. The opposite story of Byron Green, was Max Holland, whose family was very wealthy and thus made him into a successful man. Through the struggles that Byron had to deal with as a child to the everyday struggles he has with his parents finances, Byron has worked hard all of his life and doesn't receive much credit for it. One thing that helps save people like byron is the government's aid. Due to the Social Security Act of 1935, Byron's parents, when they reach a certain age, are able to obtain money now that they are older. Most people today are living off what the government gives them and these same people, are uneducated, have no jobs, and contributing nothing to the American society, but still the United States sends them a big check every month to help pay for their food and water. When the Fair Housing Laws were passed in the 1960's this helped get people who deserve to have homes, have homes. No one could be left out on the street and everyone was able to have an opportunity to live where they pleased. Segregation was now not an issue in terms of housing.

WebBlog 3 = David Miller's Scope of Social justice

Through the writings of David Miller and his essay on The Scope of Social Justice, he first introduced the theory of social justice by the late nineteenth century early twentieth century to the liberal societies in America. In the previous Omela story the first theory was based on the fact that life was almost perfect and in a way they could do as they please without having to worry about everyone else. Everyone was equal but everyone lived a life of solidarity through the many different ways of the Omela people during the festival.

As Miller's ideas and writing progressed he first spoke of his concept that philosophers describe social justice as an aspect of distributive justice and how these divisions of justice were found in many different associations, fairly. As said in Blog 1, the theory of freeing inhibitions and living equally but individually is the same idea as the distributive justice that Miller writes in his essay.

Miller talks about social justice being obtained as a way of welfare or aid. He tells us that he feels in order for social justice to be a way of guiding peoples behavior that it needs to assure the thoughts shown restraining the guidelines have to have fair principles and procedures so people actually follow them. In the Omela story many there weren't any specific guidelines introduced to us as a reader except the procedures and guidelines that were implied. The questions that Miller seems to be asking us are questions of how can these people have this culture if we can assume they get tired of it towards the end of their life.

This leads me to my second theory in the Omela story, about how as people get older they tend lose sight of those good habits and get caught up in the slow moving, days passing by, mentality. The Omela people are just ordinary people living equal lives in their community. Every area in which people live in is different and no matter where you live you have to make the most of your scenarios. Why sit through life and waste time when you can be out there in life, enjoying every minute of it doing what you love to do, working hard to achieve those goals?