EME 6414 - bdevies

Inspired by Dr. Dennen's VoiceThread for class this week, the photo above is from 2010 of my brother and I. It is one of my mother's very first Facebook profile pictures and has been semi-easily accessible to anyone who can see my tagged photos for the last decade. As one of the last rounds of Millennials, most of my middle school and high school photos found their way onto my Myspace, Instagram, and Facebook as well as my mother's and friends' pages. A few years ago, I had this realization and did a deep clean through my personal pages, often making these albums of memory under the privacy setting "Only Me." I did not want future employers to see my awkward middle school years! This concept of context collapse has me reflecting on digital natives (and particularly Gen Z). Context collapse is the idea that we can control how transparent we are with our lives in certain spaces. So many of these digital natives have been "online" since they were born. ...

This week has been immensely heavy, with the murder of George Floyd (and Breonna Taylor and Ahmud Aubrey in prior weeks) and the riots across the country. Across all my timelines, I see folks asking for resources for learning more about racial injustice and equity online so I am using some of our platforms this week to compile a list of resources that are accessible for those wanting to explore more on this topic. This list is just a beginning point for folks and is not exhaustive by any means. Feel free to share others accounts, channels, and resources in the comments! Instragram: @ibramxk @antiracismctr @kimberlecrenshaw @rachel.cargle @theccnyc Twitter: @THECC_NYC @DrIbram @wkamaubell @sandylocks @ProfCAnderson YouTube:  Let's get to the root of racial injustice | Megan Ming Francis | TEDxRainier Jason Reynolds & Ibram X. Kendi - “Stamped” and the Story of Racism in the U.S. | The Daily Show How to understand power - Eric Liu The urgency of intersectionality | Kimberlé Crens...

This week in another one of my doctoral classes, we got into a conversation on "cancel culture." To avoid giving too much context on "cancel culture" and some of its roots and events, check out this article from the New York Times on "cancel culture" . While becoming very common language on social media platforms, "cancelling"someone or something often occurs after something problematic or troubling takes place.  "In a subscription-heavy era where everything is on-demand, and celebrities are packaged and sold as commodities, the language of cancellation is close at hand" (Bromwich, 2018 [author of linked NYTimes article]). In reflecting on this new cancel culture, I reflected on the added complexity of digital natives taking this phenomenon over and repurposing it to fit their digital needs. "Cancelling someone" often comes after they do something problematic. While it can see seen as a good ethical compass to notice these ins...

Dr. Josie Ahlquist is an adjunct faculty at Florida State and bimonthly, she sends out a bimonthly "Your Digital Leadership Download." I have subscribed for about a year. These are jam packed with information, resources, podcasts, and her own blog posts on digital leadership (often focusing on campus-based practices and college students). She recently shared one of her blog posts that I found very impactful and resourceful and I wanted to share a synopsis here as well as some of my own reflections. First, let me share the link to the blog post here . Enjoy some of my big takeaways and reflections below: "Help students build capacity, community, and belonging using the features of digital spaces." Dr. Ahlquist mentions this early on and while it may seems straight forward, this is the continued challenging work of my colleagues in both academic and student affairs at the moment. How do we replicate the collegiate experience online at the drop of a hat? I remember ta...

Dr. Dennen's recent blog post on her site prompted me to do some deeper reflection on a book I finished this week that deals with a dark side we see with social media and some digital natives. The book is "All We Ever Wanted" by Emily Giffin. This book follows the complex lives of two families who are brought together when a high school aged boy sends an inappropriate picture via Snapchat of a teenage girl (both are digital natives). The photo is then screenshotted and distributed widely via text message and smartphones to many other digital natives. This book caused me to think more deeply about digital natives relationship to social media in particular and how we consider ethics within Web 2.0. Prensky (2001) refers to digital natives as the generation who are "native speakers" to the Internet and have spent their "entire lives surrounded by and using computers, video games, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools ...

Welcome to my blogging space for EME 6414 (Web 2.0)! I did a blog when I was an undergraduate through WordPress when I studied abroad as my reflective space on the trip for a class, but that was many years ago so I may be a little rusty when it comes to blog writing and logistics! I am not only excited for this space as a place of reflection and collaboration, but also a place to work on my writing and understanding of a new tech resource. I am eager to learn alongside our classroom community this summer! Let summer begin!