Final Reflection Willa

Final Reflection
Willa

I have greatly enjoyed the last quarter working with this project not just because it is my area of academic interest, but also because of the experiences I have had working with the women and the children. Originally, I expected to work with the adults more than the children, but this quarter I only helped out with the adult digital literacy once or twice. Understanding the needs of children is much more complex than I thought I would be assisting with. I know what it is to be influenced by the adults in one's life when young. When I am working with the kids, I want to purposeful in what language I use and how I express myself especially because the children are mostly female and of an ethnic minority. In being careful with what I say, I also wanted to make sure that the applications that we downloaded for the iPads would reflect the same type of conscientiousness. Empowering female leaders and the use of technology in child development are my two themes that I will address here. 

Teaching women from childhood that they are valuable on their own without the right things, clothing, appearance, etc is an important part of the feminist construct that we have been employing in our project. I realized the first time that I work with the girls that I would need to be careful. I was using a brown marker on the whiteboard and one of the girls told me that she didn't want me using that color because it was the color of poop, which of course is also the color of her skin. I spent some time to explain that brown is not a bad color and there are plenty of things that are brown that are good (chocolate being the main one) and explaining that other colors also can be gross too (like red is the color of blood or that zits are white, etc). I have previously done a lot of thinking about how my words can influence others, but working the children has reminded me to think of it more and be even more aware of my words. Furthermore, I need to be conscious of how I speak  to myself. When things are rough at school I have a tendency to call myself stupid and attribute any academic success to luck or privilege rather than granting myself and owning my intelligence. 

I was in part in charge of deciding what applications to download on the iPads, which was mostly simple in choosing the educational applications for math and science because these are usually divorced from any social context. However, I have been increasingly cautious with what applications I would like to download in the realm of history and literature. I am aware that history is written by the dominant culture, which are more often than not, the oppressors and the victors. History can vilify and misconstrue events of the past. The only application that we have downloaded that has a history component was recommend by the children because they used it in class. After watching them use it and seeing the content, I thought it was fairly inclusive in alternative narratives. We also put other restrictions on the iPads. Only we can download applications and there are maturity rating restrictions (as determined by Apple). We do not believe that any of the children would purposefully seek out inappropriate materials, but we did not want them to stumbled upon it on accident. In one manner, we are acting as protective censors, which is something that I think a lot of adults do for their children. However, as I recently discovered I am an adult. I no longer have an adult censor and I have been reminded this quarter that it is okay and necessary to censor certain information for your own protection. I use the social media site Tumblr, which has an extension that allows me to censor certain tags. I have started to use these tags to censor disturbing information. I have come to believe that there is line between being informed and being overwhelmed. 

There is a multitude of themes that I got to explore this quarter that I do not have time to address in this format. However, I am looking forward to continue to work with the women and the children next quarter. I want to continue to be a positive influence and working, step by step, to affecting change. Good things can come from women who believe in themselves and have access to a positive narrative about themselves and their cultures. 

3/18/2015 Casa Latina Workshop Willa

Casa Latina
March 18th, 2015
4:30 - 7:30

Klarissa and I worked with the kids. The planned activity was something to do with magazines, but we did not have the proper materials so it turned into an activity on movement. One of the girls knew of an "educational" app from school, which teaches you dance moves to popular videos. It did fall apart towards the end because not everyone was interested and the kids rather liked listening to the songs over actually dancing. There were also two babies, which occupied most of my time. One of the babies likes to dance to music, which was fun to see. Also, when Klarissa asked one of the girls about how listening to All About that Base was educational, one of the girls responded that the song has a positive body message that was teaching her to love the body she's in, which was good, but also kind of snarky. :)

3/25/2015 Workshop Casa Latina Klarissa

Reflections from Class

Looking back on this quarter and my experiences working with Casa Latina, the two themes that stuck out to me is digital divide and women leadership. Digital divide is something I have always had an interest in. I even thought of incorporating it into my CHI Competition submission, for the theme this year was "Appropriating Technologies for New Cultures". The project asked us to “showcase your best abilities of "maker cultures" to build new connections and to make less-voiced cultures be better heard.” Although it isn’t entirely related to the Casa Latina work we were doing, a reading that I did for this class highlighted some aspects of the competition.

Author Alysa Hullett of “Why more women in leadership will mean few women in poverty” emphasizes how the spreading of resources among underrepresented communities is important for giving a voice to communities and organizations such as Casa Latina. She states how people have “failed to speak up about wage theft in the past due to fear and a ‘lack of power’.” Some things can be improved though by informing workers of their labor rights in the United States, and letting them know that claims can be filed. This is just one example how resources can be a game player in giving the voice necessary for change.

From here you think about the “digital divide” notion in America, and wonder how this plays a role in being a barrier to that voice that is needed. How prominent is this digital divide within various communities in America, not just Casa Latina? This class has left me wondering about other identities that face a digital divide. What about people with disabilities, or those within the LGBTQ community? What about someone who is a minority and a citizen versus someone who is a minority and a non-resident, or undocumented?

There is also the questions I have about women leadership in America. The same author, Alysa Hullett, brought up some interesting statistics about women leadership and women poverty in America. She also popped some questions in my head, such as who is responsible for this poverty? Who can change this? Are they groups, or are they individuals? Surely there are some solutions (which would take time to implement), but what solutions or action steps would be right ones?

It was great to looking around and seeing the women leadership happening in Casa Latina. It was also great seeing the true meaning of “community” and “family” take place right in front of you. I remember at one workshop, one of the women’s husband ended up joining us and that was awesome! I didn’t expect a husband to want to be a part of the workshop, and for him to be interested and a part of the conversation was great. It reminded me of a conversation I had with a couple of the women on a different day. We were talking about how it would be great if some of the men joined us. It is much more about the women at the workshop, it is also about their allies, their supporters, their family, and their friends. Together, change can happen. Together we can holistically look at what is going on around us and understand what can be done to change current situations. I would be interested to see how support networks vary from community to community, and what happens if there is no personal support network available.

Walking away from this I am left with so many questions. It was a great experience overall, and the stories that were shared allowed me to understand the articles we were reading even more, and see the power that exists in available resources and support networks.

3/11/2015 Casa Latina Workshop Willa

Casa Latina
March 11th, 2015
4:30 PM - 7:30 PM


Brad and I worked with the children literacy child care this Wednesday. Because Ivette had to run the adult digital literacy, she could not be there to do her planned activity, which was taking a photo of a body part that you like, writing what you like about that body part and why, and printing that photo in black and white. We had two babies and two older children to do this activity with. It was a lot of fun. Many of us took photos of our faces because we like certain aspects of our face - our hair, our eyes, or our mouth. We also took photos of the babies and wrote things about how cute they are. Unfortunately, the photos could not be printed in black and white because of the nature of the printer. The digital cameras also were not charged and we didn't have the right cords to charge them. We ended up using the iPad and printing the photos wirelessly. In the end, some of the children gave their photos and writings to their moms.

Casa Latina 3/11/15 Sarah White

Casa Latina
3/4/15
Adult Digital literacy workshop

Since this was the first day back at Casa Latina (and the weather was good!) we only had a couple of attendees. We had a good discussion about the upcoming month at Douglass Truth. One of the attendees was interested in Skype, and was able to download it her her phone.

I began to wonder about students in the service learning class who assist. I seems as though there isn't a good role for them to fill that brings them into classroom interactions. I am wondering if -- for the Spring semester -- they wouldn't like to participate in a more formal way (as their language abilities allow). Perhaps they could research the class topic ahead of time and make a brief handout for the presenters and other assistants (i.e. a bulleted list-type overview of different tech related to the topic). Or perhaps they could design some slides with screenshots. There are a lot of possibilities, really just any way to participate in the planning/teaching in some way so they feel more engaged with the topic. Since we'll have a topic list ahead of time, they could sign up for the topics they want to research/present/help with at the beginning of class time.

3/4/2015 Workshop Casa Latina Klarissa

Location: Casa Latina

Time: 5-630

Date: 3/4/2015

Casa Latina was very quiet today.  Two older girls and two infants. Stephanie helped me with the kids. Since we had to leave early we didn’t bring any crafts, only the ipads which were almost dead. I have been a little hectic this quarter, and did not plan very well ahead. Again, planning. How many times do I need to learn this?  Since I have very little experience with children, it’s important, because I don’t have a “bag of tricks” to fall back on yet. Still, kids are very good at entertaining themselves and they found amusement in the bag of jelly beans that Ivette brought- doing blind tastings, trying to trick each other into not being able to guess the flavors in various combinations.

Ivette, Stephanie and I left early to be able to attend a lecture by Anne Balsamo on campus, one of the founders of FemTechNet. FemTechNet’s manifesto is at the core of our mission as Ivette laid it out(rewrite this sentence). The lecture was quite interesting, but not what I had thought it would be. The title of her newest book, “Designing Culture” to me, as an anthropology student seemed as if this would be theoretical and broader- a discussion on social construction through the ways we design informational technology perhaps. And I haven’t read the book, so maybe it is about that. But the lecture was about a project to digitally archive the AIDS memorial quilt- which is interesting in itself.

There is the idea of resisting the silencing of historical narratives, queer history and the still active creation of the quilt.

She talked about technological obsolence and the quickly shifting paradigms- how long will our informational technologies be useful as holders of history, artifacts, words, ideas and knowledge?