My Campaign

I don't think my campaign failed, but it wasn't wildly successful either. Coming up with original content proved a lot more difficult than I thought it would be, so many of my posts were sharing links and sharing other Facebook posts. I did begin my page with a personal post about why I was beginning the page and that did receive a lot of positive feedback. I shared it on my personal page as well and encouraged my friends to go like the page. Some more friends shared that or commented with names of friends they thought would be interested. I hit the thirty likes I needed very quickly, but getting likes over the course of the next few months was difficult.

One way I saw success was through receiving contact from the other side of the country. A woman back east sent me her story about signing and I was able to share that along with a video on my page. That was when I felt like my page might actually be making a difference.

I had some goals set at the beginning of the semester including posting tutorials once a week. I ended up not posting that many tutorials and I definitely think my page suffered from that. I became worried about balancing original content with the many links I wanted to share and never quite reached that balance I had wanted.

I did learn that posts involving personal stories or something about me, myself, were a lot more successful. The last post I did was a video taken of me and my mom. I was signing a little bit and we were showing how my mom had learned a few signs herself. That post received a lot of positive feedback and was viewed way more than the posts prior to it. 

In discussing my goals, I did talk to some of the students in the ASL classes here at Dixie, but I did not get any follow through from them in regards to sending content to the page. I thought that would be a big source for my posts, but it turned out to be extremely disappointing. My last goal was to have a contest involving likes in order to win some ASL gear. I planted the seeds by sharing some of this gear and the Etsy pages I planned to order it from on the page. When it received disappointing feedback I decided it would be illogical to continue with the contest idea.

Overall, I'm happy I created this page because I know it broke up the negative news feeds that many of us encounter every day. My page would have been more successful had I stopped second guessing myself and posted more often. 

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Attitudinal Responses

The idea of automatic attitudinal responses is an intriguing concept to me, particularly because I’ve felt that I have had very different responses than people in my normal social group. This has been a significant source of frustration for me in every day conversation and other heated discussions. As I ponder on what has caused me to have the responses that I do, the thing that comes to mind is first my family, but then more particularly my dad when it comes to disagreement. My dad consistently pushed me to question all sides and challenged me when I couldn’t back up my own position. I think all of the discussion with my dad has caused me to side with him without question at this point. I’d like to think that I still have a brain of my own though, very much thanks to my mom. My mother, very opposite of my dad, doesn’t have those big discussions with me, but she has taught to keep an open mind and be very sympathetic towards others. This means after immediately picking my side, which usually lines up with something I’ve learned from my dad, I step back and question things like my dad taught me and then try to understand like my mama taught me.

So my parents are definitely very influential in shaping my initial reactions, but I know I have had my own experiences that speak to my responses. Some of my interactions and situations I’ve dealt with in college definitely shaped my reaction to the use of trigger warnings, which I discussed at the beginning of the semester. I don’t know that trigger warnings are things that my dad would support, but some traumatic experiences I’ve had definitely made me quick to snap at those in the class who thought they were stupid and unnecessary.

Being biased isn’t a bad thing. We all have biases and I think discussion, or more likely argumentation, is far more productive if we let those biases influence our words. In addition, being objective isn’t any fun. These biases become a problem though when we let them blind us completely from another’s point of view. I have been unfriended on Facebook for being controversial and offering an alternative perspective. I think that’s a problem. If a person’s automatic attitudinal response is to get pissy and unfriend someone who has a different opinion, that person won’t be able to gain anything from the situation. If all you’re doing is looking for someone to agree with you, it’s probably best not to say anything. To be able to grow and to view things from different perspectives, we need to let our biases play a part, but not so big of one that we are no longer able to consider an alternate view.

On The Media: The Polling Conspiracy

This week I listened to The Polling Conspiracy from Poor Judgment. The first thing I realized when listening to this was how much more complicated polls are than I thought they were. Apparently I am not alone in that either because Donald Trump seems to not know exactly what some of the terms mean or how they are conducted. He does not understand what oversampling or voter suppression are. He believes the polls are being manipulated to give the impression that Hillary is doing better than she is.
Gingrich talked about two alternative universes that we've created and I guess I agree. I don't think there is enough poll participation or correct use of poll information for us to all be on the same page. They used the example of one 19 year old black male being counted for like 30 times, giving the impression that Trump was doing better with black voters than he actually was. When this particular voter stopped participating in the polls, the numbers were thrown off greatly again. People change party affiliation, without necessarily changing their registration, people don't respond to requests to participate in the polls and take surveys, and use of the internet in gathering data is still a bit unclear.
Pollsters can travel the country, make a million phone calls, and study the demographics all day and night, but I really think all we know for sure is that we don't know what's going to happen because polls have been very wrong before and the way they are conducted is changing. I think that's the general theme of this election as well. We don't know what's going to happen.

On The Media: The ISIS Propaganda Slowdown

This week I listened to The ISIS Propaganda Slowdown. Donald Trump chose to divert attention from his obvious perpetuation of rape culture, which he claimed was just locker room talk, and then center the attention on ISIS. I'm not saying that one is necessarily more important than the other, but I do find it interesting that Trump tries to connect these two totally unrelated topics. For the sake of homeland security, tackling ISIS is obviously more important. However, I personally do not want a president that makes comments and has acted in a way that has spent his lifetime degrading women because I think having him in office sets the clock back on rape culture and equality, which is a big social concern for this country. This was only a small part of the podcast though, so I'll end my tangent there.

What this podcast really focuses on are the changes we've seen with ISIS recently. The propaganda for ISIS has died a lot within the last year though. Not only has the physical spread of ISIS slowed because of loss of territory, but the media servers are doing a lot better at halting the efforts of ISIS online. There have also been some very big names in ISIS that have been taken off the map recently. This combination has slowed ISIS down a lot, but the educated guess in this story is that it is just a game of time now. ISIS might be waiting for a Trump presidency to enact their next major terrorist acts. Hillary Clinton even asserts that Trump's words have been used as pro-ISIS propaganda. While this is not part of any official ISIS propaganda, we still have instances that support this to some extent.

I would agree that ISIS would benefit from a Trump ruled America, but only time will tell. No matter which way the election goes, ISIS isn't going away. I hope whoever our next president is will be able to actively and effectively defend against and take down ISIS. This lack of propaganda, particularly online, is just the calm before the storm.

Well Informed 2.0 Tribalism

This week I chose an article from July of this year entitled "America, we must not give in to tribalism." This article, written by Samuel Rodriguez, talks about race baiting and the racial divides that are currently damaging the United States. It's a fairly short article, but it sums up his thoughts in his last paragraph when he says, "You might have a different skin color, political party, religion, sexual orientation and bank balance than me, but you are not my enemy. You are my brother. You are my sister." I would love for everyone of different backgrounds to get along. Simple. However, I think he oversimplifies what is going on. Rather than addressing specific issues and offering solutions, he gives a bit of a Rodney King attitude - can't we all just get along?
Rodriguez is a reverend, so I'm sure he promotes peace and national unity to his congregation and those he interacts with every day, but I don't think he can reasonably talk about getting along in his news articles without expressing what steps we need to take. I find talking about problems without expressing possible future action to be a pointless endeavor. I'm not saying Rodriguez is wrong, but if a person has the ability to share their voice, I think they should be sharing solutions. The only thing that sounds like a solution to me is when he says, "You see, we must be able to differentiate race baiting and political opportunism from since cries of injustice." I guess that would be the first step - learning to see clearly. But then what?
I'm not saying I have the solutions, but I am saying that with racial tensions very high and divides based on them (tribalism - Black Lives Matter, etc.) we need more steps to take because wishful thinking doesn't equal progress.

Well Informed 2.0 Politics and Campaigning

For my post this week, I decided to look at how the presidential debates are set up and why we only have the two frontrunners participating in tonight's debate. The Commission on Presidential Debates was cofounded by the two primary parties, Republican and Democrat, to manage the terms of televised discourse. According to debates.org "Under the CPD's non-partisan criteria, no candidate or nominee of a party receives an automatic invitation. The CPD's objective criteria are applied on the same basis to all declared candidates, regardless of party affiliation or lack thereof." The article I will mainly focus on from reason.com addresses how while this sounds good in theory, it ultimately doesn't benefit those candidates who aren't Republican or Democrat. Last October, they decided to "maintain as a participation threshold the unreasonably high average of 15 percent in national polls - a level no third-party candidate has attained in September of an election year since 1968."

It is designed in such a way that it's almost guaranteed to exclude any third party candidate. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party nominee, is currently polling around 9% and will be on the ballot in all 50 states, but he has to resort to social media to be have a part in the debate that will take place tonight. He will be live-tweeting during the debate, which brings up another interesting point. Johnson is the highest-polling presidential outside since Ross Perot in 1992 and I think we can attribute much of that to his use of media. Johnson was able to receive a lot of attention for his "Dead Abe Lincoln" video last month. It still seems a bit twisted that he's excluded from the debate in person, but at the very least, now we have so much social media that's able to give him a voice when a commission won't.

The author, Matt Welch, believes that the following issues won't be taken seriously without Johnson's participation: the country's grim long-term fiscal outlook, federalism, trade, military interventionism, domestic surveillance, free speech, and prohibition. Welch says, "Remove the Libertarian and there goes fiscal sanity, federalism and free speech." I agree that we could benefit a lot from the alternative perspective that Gary Johnson would be able to offer in the debates, but I don't think it's fair to say that the issues won't be treated seriously due to his absence. We've all witnessed how much character bashing the two frontrunners use against their opponent while maintaining a very broad stance on issues that coincide with their political party, but I believe with how close we are to the election that Trump and Clinton will be a little smarter with their words. Welch also says, "In many important ways, there will be no adult on stage." Trump is known for his unpredictability and Clinton has made quite a few childish references and jokes in an attempt to win over a younger demographic. We can guess what will take place tonight, but we'll ultimately just have to wait to see.

I definitely think change needs to happen so that we include more candidates in the presidential debates. As someone who does not identify with any political party, I feel that I could benefit greatly from a more inclusive debate. Most of my social group says they will vote for one candidate because they do not want the other to win, but maybe if there were more candidates in the debate, people would actually find someone they would like to represent them. The CPD has a goal of voter education, but I agree with Welch that this goal will not be met without including Johnson, and possibly other third party candidates.

Well Informed: Learning and Thinking

I began preparing for this post by watching the video "The Future of Learning" but didn't get very far in because one of the first things I heard took me elsewhere. They start discussing how students learn differently. So while this focused on how, I started thinking about the what people know. What they want to learn and what they like to have knowledge about. I thought of the quote "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." I wanted to be able to reference the quote correctly, but my google search took me to an article called "Why we should forget Einstein's tree-climbing fish" by Professor Todd Pettigrew from 2013. I was able to take a new perspective because of this article.
He makes some excellent points. He says, "But worse, lines like the supposed Einstein quote above reinforce an idea that is actually quite dangerous to education generally: the idea that some people are just good at some things and some are not. This notion is anathema to education because the whole notion of learning is that you can, well, learn things." He goes on to analyze why he believes this is never something Einstein would have said anyway and he has a point. In an address, Einstein said, "The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost." I believe he's saying that at least in the mandatory education and core classes (K-12) that we should not be focusing so specifically on peoples' innate abilities. That time is later, but general learning that will help a person overall needs to be the focus before that time comes.
Where I think Pettigrew gets some of his argument wrong is when he says, "For while I would concede that various people have various relative strengths and weaknesses, it's quite clear to anyone who really looks, that there are a great many people who are not geniuses in anything." I think this is slightly ridiculous to say because no one is going to observe every aspect of a person and reasonably reach that conclusion unless it is about a person who they interact with almost daily. People have hidden abilities. Some people are math geniuses, but they don't have regular opportunities to share that ability, which means that the notion suggesting simple observation of a person to determine whether they are geniuses in anything is often inaccurate. Maybe if he could elaborate on what he means by "really look" his argument here would have more support.
"We all like to imagine that we are all, somewhere deep down, geniuses, and that the only reason we fail in school, or indeed, in life, is that our teachers and bosses can't see our natural brilliance. We're fish and those ignorant bastards are making us climb trees!" This quote from Pettigrew's article is what resonates most with me. I agree with this because my personal experiences as a student have given me evidence to support the truth of this attitude in people and the problems it causes. There have been many instances in school where I have heard people say they're not going to try in a certain subject because it's not their thing. Why go to school then? We go to school to learn. If something is not your thing, you can try to make it something you at least understand instead of whining about a teacher or subject. I mean, how dare the schools try to make you more intelligent overall and give you a good base for a variety of subjects.
Other evidence that backs up this attitude is the fact that I am part of a generation that receives participation trophies for everything. We're awarded for not being good at something. This notion reinforces the idea that if something doesn't come naturally to someone that they don't need to try because the world will say that showing up is enough. This attitude does not promote learning. It does not promote growth. Feelings of incompetency are not enjoyable, so learning can be hard. Education is not meant to be easy though. You are not in school to get a participation trophy. You're there to learn.

On The Media #1

This week, I listened to the podcast called Kids These Days, and decided to focus on the story called “In Defense of Trigger Warnings.” Trigger warnings have been a very hot topic as of late, particularly as this new fall semester began and there were universities who issued letters to their students stating that there would be no trigger warnings on their campuses. This professor in the podcast, who teaches philosophy at Cornell, defends the use of trigger warnings. She believes that by issuing them, she can help prepare students for controversial or sensitive subjects that her students will learn about and discuss in her classroom, which is an environment that frequently discusses touchy subjects. She believes it is in the best interest of the students’ mental health to use trigger warnings. Everyone deserves a chance to have their voice heard, but to be able to interact and discuss with a class, some people might need a little extra warning so their thoughts can be properly presented and can be valued as well. She acknowledges that her role as a philosophy teacher is different than a lot of other professors because they don't really have a need for trigger warnings. An algebra class, while very hated by many, is not an environment that would benefit or even have a place for these warnings. However her class delves into issues like rape and combat training, so those who have experienced such have a different psychological approach to dealing with the topic. The professor hits on the idea of culture playing a role when she talks about those who have a more privileged background feel that their free speech is being curtailed. It seems more acceptable for those people who are marginalized to speak about these topics. Trigger warnings may reinforce this idea that those in the center shouldn't contribute in some cases, but that's why the professor believes they shouldn't be mandatory and they should be carefully constructed.

I believe trigger warnings can be a good thing because of how they can help those who have struggled with the topics to be discussed. If someone suffers with an addiction or panic attacks, having the knowledge ahead of time that sensitive issues will be part of the class can prevent these negative occurrences. It gives them a chance to reflect on how their personal experiences will play a role in the discussion. I can only emphasize that the professor noted that these warnings are not to discourage participation or attendance, but to mentally prepare the student. I think that is what we need to focus on with them. They are not here to coddle students or baby them. They are here to help protect the mental health, and often physical health as well, of the participants. Controversial and sensitive issues need to be discussed, but it’s courteous and reasonable to let the students be made aware in advance. I don't see how issuing these trigger warnings disadvantage those students who may not have the sensitivities to the topics, so it can only benefit. It's not coddling. It's a responsible and rational decision that's made to help the students.

My Facebook Page

My Page: "Why I Sign: Inspire Others"

My Mission: Why I Sign is a page to encourage people to learn sign language by seeing the impact learning has made for others. We hope to see an increase in people who sign and increase understanding of deaf culture and the life of those who communicate using sign language.

Personas:

Nathan, 36, is the manager at a bank and recently had deaf customers come in. They were able to communicate through writing and the customers reading his lips, but he realizes that he can have greater customer service and make a big impact for some of his customers if he learns to sign.

Joy, 71, is slowly losing her ability to speak after suffering a stroke. She is getting increasingly frustrated with trying to speak, so she wants to learn other ways to communicate. Her arms and hands are a little bit shaky, but she can use them so she decides she would benefit from learning sign language.

Ashley, 25 and married, just gave birth to her first baby. After her baby fails the hearing test multiple times, she must come to terms with raising a deaf child. They don't know anyone deaf and aren't sure where to begin. The page connects her with people who can help her learn to sign so she can teach her child to sign.

Plan:
Share stories that are sent to the page
Post short video tutorials on signing once a week
Visit the ASL classes at Dixie to reach those who can help promote
Run a contest involving likes for swag such as ASL jewelry and t-shirts