Mentorship 2

Here is the evidence I have completed 25 hours
Mentorship

Literal

• Amy Crow, San Dimas Library 

•  acrow@library.lacounty.gov

Interpretative

• I was able to see how essential social media networks are for a business by researching and writing a 8 page paper on how to integrate it to a library. This is the most important thing I gained in mentorship because it gave me a taste to learn how to write a business plan as well as observe and analyze a Facebook page without bias.  

Applied

• This helped me answer my EQ because I noticed how people interact with businesses, which is definitely a lot different in how they act on their actual page with their actual friends. 

Tab for a Cause

Social media networking has created innovative ways to help others through a relatively easy effort. Here's one of the most recent efforts I have made to be more charitable through social media, which is signing up and participating in Tap for a Cause.

 Tap for a Cause is basically a way to donate money by surfing the web. Under the Learn More tab on their page, it explains how they do it and what it means to others. I signed up for this and chose to donate to Room to Read, and at this moment I have 8 tabs opened. I plan to continue implementing this in my daily routine, and hope I can encourage others to do so as well!

Of course, I found this on tumblr.

2-Hour Presentation is finally done!

I honestly had no clue what it would feel like to have accomplished this. For the last four years, it really didn't interest me because I had the false misconception that this 2-hour thing was not a big deal. But. It is. And, it's definitely worth all the time and dedication to researching about something you find so intriguing and worthwild.

Here's the blogspot I created for my 2-hour presentation.
http://alonetogether2013.blogspot.com/

Arigato ~

Blog 26: Senior Project Reflection

(1) Positive Statement

What are you most proud of in your 2-Hour Presentation and/or your senior project? Why?

One of the things I am most proud of about my 2-Hour Presentation is being able to present a “non traditional” presentation by using my powerpoint effectively. During my 2-Hour, the most essential thing I wanted to achieve was to convey a message to all the students that my project isn’t really about social media networks, but about ourselves (how we live our life, and why things are the way they are). I am so very proud of myself of being able to accomplish this by taking accountability for my studies and dedicating myself to research based learning while applying ESA that Mrs. Pittman taught us. I’m very proud of accomplishing all of these things because it really gave me flesh to my topic and allowed me to communicate to other students my genuine passion for the online world. In addition to this, what all these things have allowed me to do is to take a step back from my project and see what I have done and say, “wow, it all makes sense.”

(2) Questions to Consider

a. What assessment would you give yourself on your 2-Hour Presentation (self-assessment)?

AE       P          AP       CR       NC

b. What assessment would you give yourself on your overall senior project (self-assessment)?

AE       P      /    AP       CR       NC

(3) What worked for you in your senior project?

What worked for my senior project was my ability to: have a conversation with teachers about the progress of my topic, being able to effectively apply my research to my project, interviewing people who use online media, taking a sociology class at calpoly that allowed me to find the foundation of the human aspect of my project, the Technology Entertainment and Design network, utilizing expert source analysis on research, all three presentations, research checks, applying mathematical language to my project, having a 65 slide powerpoint (lol), my room environment/sponge activity, utilizing online media to enhance my project (my blogspot, my blogspot for my 2-Hour).

More importantly, the thing that worked most for my senior project was my growing interest in my topic and passion for it by the end of the senior year experience.  

(4) (What didn't work) If you had a time machine, what would have you done differently to improve your senior project if you could go back in time?

What didn’t work was seriously my mentorship. Lacking a mentor really weakened my findings due to the lack of experience in the field I had with an expert. I wish I would had tried more face-to-face efforts versus via email or telephone, because if I were to had networked myself out like this, I would had most likely found a nice PR firm or even social media networker and had been able to improve my senior project.

(5) Finding Value

How has the senior project been helpful to you in your future endeavors?   Be specific and use examples.

I am an aspiring journalist, in fact I am actually going to CalState Fullerton aiming to major in communications with a concentration of journalism. With this in mind, my senior project has prepared me to conduct investigative projects and heavily research. In addition to these aspects, my senior project taught me the importance of networking yourself out there as well as dedicating yourself to a goal.

For example, research based learning was essential to my project. By understanding how to apply Expert Source Analysis on nearly every source I accumulated, I learned that to have valuable findings, you have to expand outside of Google. My senior project has given me the reality that talking to people, whether it be through formal or informal interviews or even mere conversations, is something that helps give a person validity. Validity is important for a journalist to establish. This is because, it shows a lot about someone's character if they are  not only willing to dedicate themselves to the books and online sphere, but to talk to people who have experience in the question you are investigating.

Although this was an area I failed in my project, I learned that networking yourself out there opens many doors that leads to endless possibilities of success. Thanks to the senior project, I now know that to establish relationships with people, especially experts, limiting yourself to email and phone does not get you anywhere. 

Despite not going anywhere as far as mentorship, I learned that if you have dedication for something, things sorta just fall into place. I don't really know how to describe it in any way besides this, because dedication is the drive of how far we push ourselves to achieve success. For example, my dedication and passion towards my topic enabled me to really establish valuable findings and understanding to social networks. This understanding and value helped other students grasp the material taught in my 2-hour, because of the fact that: because it mattered to me, it mattered to them.

In conclusion, the senior project ultimately really allowed me to experience what not to do when doing investigative research projects.

Mentorship 1

Literal

• Mentorship log
• Amanda Riddle @ LA Youth ariddle@layouth.com
• Amy Crow @ San Dimas library (909) 599-6738)

    
Interpretive

• The aspect of mentorship for my project failed. I failed to maintain a stable mentorship where I learned how to utilize social media networking to better the community. Although this is the reality of my mentorship component, I did gain a lot from the experience of finding a mentor. I think that the biggest lesson for me was that I had to learn how to network out to people outside of email, but way too late. I believe that emailing was the biggest mistake I made while looking for a mentor, because it did not allow people to take me seriously when I asked to job shadow due to the specialty of my topic. I feel that if I were to had networked and met people, I would had never gotten myself in this predicament and been somewhere great as far as mentorship goes. 
  
  I hope to take what I learned from the failure of my mentorship and apply it to my life after senior project, since it is so essential to stand out from emails nowadays. I am happy that I learned this before I entered the work force, however it is a bummer it costed me my senior project. But, I am staying positive and know that the research I did to compensate for my mentorship will be seamlessly applied to my 2 hour and I will do good :) 

  
Applied

• Surprisingly, my mentorship experience really reestablished the relevance and truth about my EQ. Because I relied on email, I failed to meet the expectations I set for myself in finding a mentor. Although I did not job shadow under a social networker, or can find any meaningful relevance of LA Youth to my EQ (not to say that there was not any), I realized that I myself have been affected my social media networking and fit my answers. I see an example in myself of how it has changed our lifestyles, based on the fact that I was too scared to network out from my comfort zone, as well as belonging to the group of people that see it normal to base communication off of email. 

*This is part 1 of my mentorship blog; I plan to update this when I complete all 50 hours like everyone else. 

Alone together

Four things that stood out to me during my most important piece of research. 

"Why does this matter? It matters to me because I think we're setting ourselves up for trouble -- trouble certainly in how we relate to each other, but also trouble in how we relate to ourselves and our capacity for self-reflection. We're getting used to a new way of being alone together. People want to be with each other, but also elsewhere -- connected to all the different places they want to be. People want to customize their lives. They want to go in and out of all the places they are because the thing that matters most to them is control over where they put their attention. So you want to go to that board meeting, but you only want to pay attention to the bits that interest you. And some people think that's a good thing. But you can end up hiding from each other, even as we're all constantly connected to each other."

"Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. And when we do, one of the things that can happen is that we sacrifice conversation for mere connection. We short-change ourselves. And over time, we seem to forget this, or we seem to stop caring."

"And I believe it's because technology appeals to us most where we are most vulnerable. And we are vulnerable. We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we're designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. We turn to technology to help us feel connected in ways we can comfortably control. But we're not so comfortable. We are not so much in control.

These days, those phones in our pockets are changing our minds and hearts because they offer us three gratifying fantasies. One, that we can put our attention wherever we want it to be; two, that we will always be heard; and three, that we will never have to be alone. And that third idea, that we will never have to be alone, is central to changing our psyches. Because the moment that people are alone, even for a few seconds, they become anxious, they panic, they fidget, they reach for a device. Just think of people at a checkout line or at a red light. Being alone feels like a problem that needs to be solved. And so people try to solve it by connecting. But here, connection is more like a symptom than a cure. It expresses, but it doesn't solve, an underlying problem. But more than a symptom, constant connection is changing the way people think of themselves. It's shaping a new way of being."

"Technology is making a bid to redefine human connection -- how we care for each other,how we care for ourselves -- but it's also giving us the opportunity to affirm our values and our direction. I'm optimistic. We have everything we need to start. We have each other. And we have the greatest chance of success if we recognize our vulnerability. That we listen when technology says it will take something complicated and promises something simpler."

Exit interview questions

(1) What is your essential question?  What is the best answer to your question and why?

The question, how has social media most affected the ways Americans interact?, has been the drive of my entire senior year and focus for my senior project regarding social media networking. After finding three answers regarding how Americans see the world, themselves, and others, my best answer to my project is that American culture norms and values have changed. Throughout my senior project, whether I would be reading articles talking about how people are becoming more rude or interviewing sociologist professors on their opinion on the identity crisis we are facing today, all my research had an underlying foundation of a change in American culture norms and value. And, to attempt to define culture, that is a beast in itself. So, instead, I coined the term culture norms and values to be vague, but specific in my wording of my answer. Because, essentially the way we interact with one another, whether it is face-to-face or online, are mostly things that we once found disturbing or unacceptable within the last 20 years. With this understanding, my best answer had to be the culture and value shift, because the way we communicate has changed society, and society has changed our culture, vice versa.

(2) What process did you take to arrive at this answer?

Foundation 
First and foremost, arriving to the best answer was always there, but it took a "duh!" moment to actually see it. From the beginning of the year when I did a sudden change of senior topics, I have developed a genuine passion for my topic. Sure I could consider myself an expert of the use of social media networking, but researching about it and its future in our society was always mindblowing to me. Initially I was intrigued with the social impact of social media, since the advent of the Arab Springs and the current events going on in the Middle East really made a mark on me. However, I struggled to shift my focus onto one area of the globe since everything interested me, anything regarding political activism was something I could do a 2 hour on!

And luckily, Mrs. Ortega was by my side throughout the senior project. She was there when we changed it together, and there when she gave me a direction as to where to take it now after exposing myself to different aspects of social media networking. After sitting down and formulating my essential question with her and Mrs. Pittman (whom, without her, I would never had the idea to focus it onto one specific demographic!), I had a complete idea on the foundation of my essential question: to teach a revealing, and profound lesson to the students during my 2 hour about themselves.  

Potential answers & best answer
Social media networking has equipped Americans to perfect their identities, and be a part of filter bubbles online. In Ethan Zuckerman's Listening to Global Voices, it was brought to my attention that, as Americans, we believe we have a wide sense of the world, but we don't. The world is getting wider, problems are becoming global, but we still limit ourselves to people that are both close in proximity and very similar to us in the first place. After completing my independent component two, I realized that being who you want to be online, having control of it, and not being afraid gave flesh to my second answer regarding identity.

With the accumulated research and experience with my project, Sherry Turkle's Connected, but alone?, formulated my best answer that whether we perfect our identities or close ourselves off from the world, what is accepted in society has shifted to accustom the social media networking agenda.  

(3) What problems did you face?  How did you resolve them?

The biggest problem that I encountered during my senior project was finding mentorship. Because I changed my project at the end of September, I had to turn down CalPoly's spot for me to help out with their rose parade float. With the help of Mrs. Ortega, I got in contact with LA Youth and became a staff writer. This experience was helping me gain an understanding of the journalistic aspect of my project, until it closed down in February and left me with no mentorship again. To resolve this, I focused heavily on research to gain a deeper understanding of my topic so I could apply it to my presentations while talking to other teachers for a possible break through. At the moment, I am facing this problem of mentorship again, however this time, I am going to follow up with a few missed opportunities and hope for the best.

A few other problems I faced during my senior project was my independent component two and designing engaging activities for my two hour. I am a type of worker to set high expectations for myself, however for my IC 2, I feel that I did not meet the goal I set for myself and dropped the ball. I wanted to help others with social media, and in the end I only managed to meet my hours, and that was all. To resolve this, I am teaming up with Angel to create a facebook page for her blanket drive to practice my skills as a social marketeer. To resolve my activities dilemma since I had no idea how to incorporate my findings with students, I spoke with Mrs. Pittman who suggested specific social experiments as an activity to serve as a revealing experience for students.

(4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?

The two most significant sources I used to answer my essential question was my interview with Dr. Dennis Loo and Sherry Turkle's Connected, but alone? 

My interview with my sociologist professor at CalPoly Pomona, Dr. Loo, provided me with insight on the human aspect of my project rather than the technological side of it. I gained an understanding on social groups, American norms, newsmedia, and the essence of sociology.

Sherry Turkle's Connected, but alone? video featured on TED was the piece of research that led me to my best answer. I gained a huge understanding of how social media has affected our culture norms and american value system, while pointing out the bad side of social media and coining the term for me "alone together." 

(5) What is your product and why?

-The product I gained from my senior project is knowing how to utilize research-based learning to enhance investigative projects. As mentioned, I had a terrible time getting the necessary mentorship needed in a typical senior project. And, to resolve this problem, I turned to research to gain a deeper understanding for social media myself. 

While completing the Expert Source Analysis component for Mrs. Pittman was very helpful to me for my project, taking college courses tied it all together. I was further exposed to research tools with the CalPoly Database, and was expected to use it as I took college courses there. With the combination of the component and research paper I wrote for one of my classes, I realized how essential it was to apply this knowledge to my topic, since mine is especially one of those topics that can get funky Google results on the first page.  And, not only that, learning how to apply my research to my project is a practice I am very glad I learned this year, since I wish to continue investigative projects in my future career as a journalist.