Well Informed #3

Racism 2.0

Mathew Cook did an amazing job of presenting the history of racism. Starting with how racism was more of a class thing which evolved into color. For centuries we have fought for the equal rights for all mankind and yet we still decide to divide ourselves into a categories to show we have more power than another category. 

Jane Elliot is a teacher who I have seen become a huge advocate for colored peoples rights. She created an exercise called the "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes exercise". In the video linked (which I highly recommend watching) Elliot gathers college students together and separates them from brown eyes and blue eyes. All throughout giving instructions, she is stern and slightly uncivil causing many of the students to feel intimidated. She has the blue eye'd people go into a room with only three chairs while those with brown eyes go into another room. She instructs the brown eye'd people to sit on either side of the room looking directly at chairs that are facing forward in the middle. She instructs those with brown eyes to mistreat those with blue. To call them names, to make them feel lesser as she teaches a lesson about listening. 

Once the blue eye'd students are put into the room they are treated with disrespect and humiliated for thoughtless things they may say. She does all this to show what those who have colored skin go through everyday. And when one blue eye'd girl couldn't take it anymore she stepped out. Once re-entering Elliot insisted she apologize for taking a liberty that those of color do not have and only then does the message of racism begins to settle in. 

Elliot not only pushes her students to tears, she makes them realize the horrible fact that is racism in our present day. We may have equal rights in a technical sense, but we still do not have equal treatment. 

I am a white female and I KNOW I have had greater opportunities because of it. I know I have had better experiences with law enforcement, I know I have had better options given to me because of the color of my skin and I am grateful for that. And because of that gratefulness I will continue to voice my concerns about the increasing issues surrounding race and show my support to those who don't have my opportunities. I think its important to judge a person based off their character, rather than their skin color. 

Well Informed #2

Privacy 2.0

When you google "Privacy Online", the first couple of posts are things like, "the top ten best ways to improve online privacy" or "Using the internet safely" when in reality, there is no privacy online. This has been drilled into my head by parents, friends, and professors. Growing up, my family always told me to be careful of what I put on the internet because it can never be taken down, even if you delete the original post. And I believe that is becoming clearer and clearer as time goes on. 

A title caught my attention in my search for what 'online privacy' really meant when I found The Illusion of Online Privacy  from USNews. They brought up a somewhat recent hack from AshleyMadison.com. For those that didn't hear about this, AshleyMadison.com is a website that allows married or committed people to meet and hook up with other committed people. In this case, a hacker was able to leek users names, addresses and card payments. 

In fact, in 2016 the number of U.S. data breaches hit a record high of 1,093. A 40% increase since 2015 with only 780 data breaches. This raises the question of how truly private our information is online. If 1,093 data breaches were actually detected, how many do you think happened undetected? 

However, data breaches from online hackers are not the only sort of monitoring the internet does either. Have you ever been looking on Amazon for a specific item and a few hours later be scrolling through facebook and see an ad of the items you'd been looking at? Or an ad from a separate website of similar items? According to Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Arvind Narayanan, "What this technology is really good at doing is following you from site to site, tracking your actions and compiling them into a database, usually not by real name, but by a pseudonymous numerical identifier. Nevertheless, it knows when you come back, and it knows to look you up, and based on what it has profiled about you in the past, it will treat you accordingly and decide which advertisements to give you, sometimes how to personalize content to you, and so on." 

I found this information extremely interesting as I've always wondered how what I had been searching for shows up in my daily feed. Its insane to think that our technology is so far developed that based on the websites I visit and the posts I make, the internet, or rather the cookies on the internet, can trace and create my profile that matches fairly close to who I actually am and what I actually like. 

In all honesty, I'm not as surprised by the amount of data breaches I found or the fact that advertisers are able to track what I like. I think its become an assumed risk we all take when we go online. It does slightly worry me with the amount of breaches we've had and the steady incline that will probably take place , however I know there's not really much we can do about it. The government is spying on us, advertisers are spying on us, even our facebook friends do a little stalking from time to time. In all honesty, who isn't spying on us? I think that the facade of having online privacy is a sham and we should all adjust the way we think of it. A facebook post announcing you don't authorize the use of your information is not going to stop someone or something from using it. Instead, being more cautious of the information we put online will give us a small ounce more of privacy. It may not be much, but it is something. 

OTM #2

The Ties that Bind

Bob Garfield started off this podcast with a large attention getter, and news I hadn't even heard about. That we the United States were not at war with Australia. . . yet. Immediately I was alarmed, what did Garfield mean war? What did our half-a-brain president do now? And why wasn't this circulating the mainstream media as much as the Celebrity Apprentice ratings were. 

So I looked it up.

According to Vox news and The Washington Post , Trump had called the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull on January 28th, 2017 and wanted to discuss the pre-existing agreement made with former President Barack Obama. In this former agreement, Obama had agreed to take in 1,250 refugee's that were in detention centers just outside Australia. As we all know how much our current President Trump hates taking in refugees (*cough Muslim ban cough*) its obvious what Trump wanted to discuss.  He didn't want to take in the refugee's. When Prime Minister Turnbull wouldn't change the agreement, Trump abruptly ended the call (after insulting Turnbull and boasting himself) at 25 minutes, which was suppose to be an hour long phone call. 

The aftermath was what we can expect from Trump, a mean tweet on twitter saying, "Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!" as well as accused Australia of exporting the "next Boston bombers".

However that is not the only topic that grabbed at my attention. Garfield also brought up the fact that Trump did threaten to invade Mexico "if they don't take care of 'bad hombres'". I delved deeper into this topic and found he was referencing the drug crimes in Mexico. According to the Washington Post , a spokesperson from Mexico said, "It's absolutely false that the United States President threatened to send troops to Mexico". Later clarifying that Trump was speaking in jest and that the Mexican President knew it (thank god!). 

These are both stories that I hadn't even heard about in the news circles I follow. Perhaps I just hadn't been paying attention when those headlines were being talked about, or perhaps they were buried under the unimportant new. This is something I had been thinking of when Garfield was reporting on those stories, which eventually became a concern of Garfield's too.  

With all this leaked news from insiders of the White House, I'm excited to know we are seeing what our President is truly up to. However, I feel that the reporters are focusing too much on the dumb things our President is known to say and they aren't paying enough attention to the dumb things our President is actually doing. And its not just the reporters doing this. I see people on Facebook re-posting dumb things our President has said recently or in the past and though I do find it entertaining, its not what we should be focusing on as a society. We need to stay up to date on what is happening in that White House so that we the people can have a say in what happens and be prepared for the inevitable. 

WI #1

My first experience of learning in a group is a fond one. I had gone through elementary school, Jr. High, and even high school before experiences it, and honestly, it changed my life. I have never been a fan of school. Learning, reading, writing all bored me. I had gone through a year and a half of college still hating education to the point that I was ready to quit. Go to a trade school and start working. 

That is until my second semester of my sophomore year. I was taking classes to fill my credit amount and decided Communications would be an easy one to use. I went into the class expecting to get an easy A and finish getting my associates degree.  Only I found it changed my life completely.

 My teacher believed in learning as a group instead of as an individual. Because of that he forced us into groups and told us that would be who we could take all of our quizzes with, all of our tests, everything. At the time I was thinking this would be the easiest class I had ever taken, that I'd hardly even have to try to pass. And in a way I was correct, but for a different reason than what  I was thinking. 

As the semester went on, I found that I actually enjoyed going to class, something I hadn't experienced before. I loved what I was learning about and because of that put more effort in to learn more. I would go home from class and do my own personal research to understand things being taught and because of that, I passed with flying colors. Because of this teacher and the way he taught and the relationships I built while learning, I decided to further my education, and even change my major to communications. 

This story came to mind while I was watching the TED talk from Sugata Mitra. I found the quote, "If children have interest, then education happens" to truly resonate with me and I'm sure with many others. 

According to getcollegecredit, there are three benefits (I'm sure among many, but these three are all they listed) from learning in a group which are: Increases retention, boosts motivation, and expands access to information. I believe we as a human race usually seek some sort of friendship or relationships and we can always remember things when they have a discussion tied to it. So I think by learning in groups, we are better able to retain  information when we discuss it in a group, whether as a classroom, or in small study groups. Those that promote socialization, tend to make it last longer in their brain. 

Memorizing does nothing for most students. From personal experience I can vouch that when I'm forced to memorize things, it goes in one ear, keep it there until the test, then goes out the other. Just as the comic portrayed above. I think that to improve our learning here in the states, we should assess the issues of how lessons were taught back then, and change them to a more advanced and effective way for the future.