Digital Divides: Race, Class, and Gender in the Age of the Internet
ENG429 | SUNY Cortland | Fall 2019
Hi everyone!
Please read through these four articles, they’re not too long! After that please make a comment on here saying two things that you found interesting, questions, or comments! Please have your posts done by Sunday at 6 PM or no later than class on Monday! We will be discussing your comments and a short video clip in class! Have a great weekend!
-Tiff, Claudia, and Molly
This project has been put together and maintained by Avery Dame-Griff. He is a Lecturer of Communication studies at Gonzaga University. A cool thing is that he says to contact him with any new information, or to just let him know why we’re using the website. On this website are projects that include early LGBTQ online communities, an archive of transgender-related net groups, Interactive maps, and one of the first international transgender-specific BBS networks.
The main point of QDHP is an effort to document pre-2010 LGBTQ digital spaces. They are constantly updating and adding to their sources. This website is clearly made for LGBTQ+ Fanatics and scholars. A lot of the information is dense and heavy to understand if you aren’t well-versed in technology and the acronyms entailed, you have to keep going back to previous pages to remember what they meant as I did. The good news is that almost all information is accessible to everyone to use. The website itself is very bland, but it’s doing a lot of important work. I downloaded one of the “AIDS Information BBS” it took five minutes to download as well as putting 6,366 files on my laptop. This website is clearly doing important work, there was also an attachment that got sent to me so that I could subscribe to any further information about AIDS BBS.
The organization of the site is based on “Digital Transgender Archive”, they know it may not be the most organized, but it avoids adding labels to people who might not identify with them. I’m not sure how successful this is in terms of reaching other people, but in terms of the Activism it’s doing a lot of amazing work
Teaching needs to adapt to the newest addition in society, that being the Internet. It is no secret that we are all constantly on our phones, or laptops and any other form of an Apple product. The key is reinforcing these new ways of living in the classroom. Society revolves around the teaching styles of “factory and the assembly line” (7). This is not the world we live in now. Teaching styles should reflect what students need for their future. Change the assembly concept to an interactive internet. By just merely putting a lecture-based class online does not do the work it needs to succeed. Put the class online, but also adapt it so that people can actually learn rather than just remember. When thinking of the Hierarchy of Higher Education it all gets passed down to the teacher, what they can and cannot do. What if this was the other way around? We let teachers pick a curriculum they love and thrive to teach, not just teaching it to click another box on “degree works”. Let’s go even further, what if we don’t make people use websites through the school like Blackboard, but let teachers pick what would work best. This creates a space where teachers are more excited and more willing to also learn and adapt to the current world by using new technology.
Right now many students are getting pushed into the STEM fields because that’s where we need people. And classes in the humanities are seen as obsolete and a waste of time. The real question is how do we prepare people for after college? “They want to do a better job addressing major world problems than their elders” (13). I don’t believe students earn to learn maths equations, but that they want to know how those equations fit into society. Instead of teaching to the test, we should offer challenges that are real-life ones to students. Being successful after college is also learning how to function as a human being after it. That is where humanities classes come in. For example, this English class is doing a lot of work to progress in society. Using the knowledge in this class (ENG 429) teaches us how to be better humans outside of the classroom; just like Gender Studies, history, Economic classes, etc…
This generation is the first generation to be brought up with the internet, some may say it puts us back in time because we have lost so many social skills. I don’t believe that is the case. We have become more passionate and curious, the world at our fingertips… How could you not be? A random question comes up in a conversation with you and your friend, take 10 seconds to find the answer on google. What a concept! This should be pushed into the classroom rather than shunned. We want change, we starving for it. These 19th-century lecture-style classes aren’t doing the same work they used to be. Since technology is so accessible so is knowledge. Why can’t we infiltrate that into the classroom? With the world changing every day more and more, I think that teachers should be changing their lesson plans and syllabi yearly to keep up with the times. Students adapt to all of the different teaching styles our Professors have semesterly, why don’t teachers adapt to the students as well? In a world where we need to be digitally literate, why are some still struggling (including me)? Using collaboration I think that we fight back against technophobia and find a middle ground where the technology of modern-day and classrooms can interact seamlessly. I will leave you with this, What are some ways that your professors have integrated technology into the classroom, how did it change your experience? Do you have any other ideas for teaching students how to be digitally literate and ready for the world after college?
Davidson, Cathy N. The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World in Flux. Basic Books, 2017.
Hello everyone, my name is Tiffany Stoddard. I’m an English major with a minor in Women, Gender, and Sexuality. I’m from a small town upstate called Fort Ann, there are more cows than people there. Looking forward to the semester and this class!