Digital Natives as Self-Actualizing Citizens

"Young people are... less interested in joining formal groups or political parties, less inclined to seek information via conventional news outlets, and more likely to avoid...voting." 

The main points that caught my attention were that

-these circumstances could be just changing patterns of engagement and are "opportunities that will reshape the notion of citizenship in this century"

-young citizens are naturally focused on connecting with peers through the internet and are focusing on lifestyle issues, yet at the same time there is an ecology of young citizens who actively participate through the internet by going on public issue and global campaign sites

-there is a huge shift in citizenship styles, making a contrast between Dutiful Citizens (DC) and new century self-Actualizing Citizens (AC) 

Dutiful Citizens

• have an obligation to participate in government-centered activities
• believe voting is the most important democratic act, supported by growing knowledge and contact with government
• join civil society organizations or express interest through political parties that typically use conventional communication to maintain and keep supporters

Self-Actualizing Citizens

• have a higher sense of individual purpose and don't see the government as the total ruling force
• believe voting is not more meaningful than more personally-defined acts, like consumerism, activism, and volunteering
• their mistrust of the media and politicians is reinforced by the negative mass media environment
• favors a more community-like type of interaction (loose networks)

This article made me think about the fact that it's not that teenagers don't care about politics or current issues both nationwide and worldwide, because there are a huge amount of teens who have their own opinions about certain large issues, such as marriage rights and abortion laws. I just think that many people aren't fully informed of political figures and their beliefs, including those running for government, and it isn't until that information is spread to popular sources of information, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr that the user is made aware of current issues.

I also think that in some cases, there are people who possess traits of both dutiful and self-actualizing citizens. But I agree when Bennett mentioned that schools should help students develop their own public voices by using multiple digital media that allows students to find their own means of leaning about political issues and also develop peer-learning communities. He says that the ideal learning environment would be one that includes "identifying individual preferences for personal expression and peer-to-peer discovery of issues" and offers learning paths for "issue resolution". 

Basically, we need to create a learning environment for young people in which they can practice being a citizen, for lack of a better phrasing. If teens are aware of their rights and how their voice can affect the government, it's more likely that they will want to participate. After all, they...we... are the future.

Social Networking Sites

It's impossible to deny the fact that society uses the internet as an important source of communication. Because I've had both a Facebook and Twitter for a few years now and have always looked at it as sort of   its "own world" for just students, it's pretty weird to see it so quickly turn from a place to keep in touch with friends into an outlet for businesses, organizations, and people of all ages to communicate.
Although Twitter is more of a fast-update site (and seems like a perfect tool for those with a quick wit and short attention span) and is quite different from Facebook, Facebook has definitely become the most popular social networking website.

Both sites have a live feed of the people you are either friends with or following, yet all Twitter updates are the same- just people tweeting; whereas with Facebook, the feed could be any updates of different forms of activity. Facebook overall is a lot more interactive because of the ability to access people's photos, videos, and posts on their wall. Twitter is much more organized and simple- your profile is just the things you post (like a blog), instead of people posting on your profile, like Facebook.

Although I used to be an avid Facebook user, but lately I've been a bit turned off from it. I do really love the networking aspect of it, though. I think it's a smart tool for businesses, local artists, bands, etc. to use to get their name out there and heard, but for me it's starting to seem like a contest. And ignore me if I come off a little cynical or naive, but I see as a place for teenagers to post about their lives simply because they want everyone's feedback and gratitude. When I'm on my Facebook newsfeed I get too caught up in other people's lives, especially ones that I don't even need to be (for instance, a random acquaintance that I had French class with my freshman year of high school). I see that in a lot of my friends, as well, who admit that they barely even know a large chunk of the people they're friends with on Facebook. I think that sometimes it's easy to get yourself caught up in those lives that are around you, rather than focusing on those you love and especially yourself and your own happiness rather than happiness of your ex-roommate's friend's girlfriend during her trip to Cabo.

Yes, Facebook is a great tool for networking just about the entire world to, well, the rest of the fast-paced world, and being a Communications major I 100% see the many positives it comes with. But me? I feel less stressed without Facebook, which is why I deactivated it. It started to turn into an impulse to check every single time I connected to the internet, and since I have such an addictive personality, it became a negative thing. I like staying in touch with my family and friends through other means of communication.

...I still love Twitter though. Hehe.

Final Project

Project 3 turned out to be a success!
It wasn't until the peer review day that I realized our project is actually quite long and filled with a ton of information. Other groups had more simple sites that only had 4 or 5 extra pages, but since Mama's Cheesies has a lot of subgroups, being a clothing site, it was pretty lengthy. It made for a lot of work on our part, but didn't seem like too much the work was spread over the period of a few weeks.

I am very impressed with the final turnout. The website redesign is neat, organized, and pleasing to the eye because of color repetition, font repetition, and alignment of texts. The peer review was extremely helpful because of the advice we got regarding the titles- placing a green bar behind the title at the top of each page separates the title from the information on the page. Looking at it now looks so much neater. Before it was there, it felt like there was something missing from the page that I couldn't quite place my finger on... that's something I love about design work. The reader him/herself could not know exactly what it is that's wrong about a page, it just looks "weird", but once that aspect is there everything falls into place (especially with word alignment). When things are jumbled around, it's hard to tell exactly what the "job" of some text or a picture is.

Another important change we made after the peer review was taking out a separate contact page and just adding those few bits of information to the homepage, near the bottom. This is a lot more convenient to the shopper, who would want to have the contact information easy and accessible, because if you think about it, a telephone number and an email address are not things that you should need to look for.

I think it's safe to say that all this hard work really paid off.

Project 3: Google Docs

I couldn't imagine doing this project without Google Docs. It's such a helpful tool- for as many different people to work on one presentation at the same time using different computers in different time zones... it amazes me. I love that the changes you see being made by your partner are happening at that very moment, and the chat room makes for quick and easy communication between all group members. It makes me wonder why every group didn't use Google Docs for this specific project, especially since it's so hard for a group of 4 or 5 to meet in person, when each member has such a busy schedule, and because Spring Break was placed smack dab in the middle of the project.

Project 3: Group Work

Working and interacting with people is one of my favorite things. It's something that I thrive on... if I don't at least see people everyday, let alone converse with them, I feel lost. Don't get me wrong, I love my alone time, but I just love being around people and studying firsthand how people's strengths and weaknesses balance out with, and bounce off of, others'. Working with my group on redesigning Mama Cheesy's crappy site was such a good way to see the way my peers express themselves both creatively and in writing, since this project was pretty creative. The week before the extended due date, on that beautiful 75-degree Wednesday afternoon, we met on the quad to divvy out jobs. It's funny, because since we are all friends, we do tend to wander off in conversation and start socializing, but I've noticed that no matter what, we always get back on task. In 10 minutes we managed to assign everybody at least 3 different jobs, discuss the layout of the final slides, color schemes, descriptions, etc.

Overall, I'm very impressed with how everything is going! 

I wish I posted in this blog during the actual project to get more accurate commentary, but looking back, I felt that this project was a very successful one.

Website Re-Design Work

Working on the website re-design for the very interesting (...pretty strange) "Mama's Cheesies" clothing site has actually been pretty fun. I'm glad my group and I have worked together so well, it really gives me faith in group projects. I'm usually quite concerned when informed that there's going to be a group project in any class, but this time I was proven wrong. Everyone contributed their fair share, and we all worked together to figure out times to meet up on Google Docs, online, and in person to share our thoughts, ideas, and incorporate elements into the slideshow.

I was very impressed with how our website turned out. The website layouts I've seen in the past have been really professional (my sister majored in graphic design and I would always look over her shoulder when she'd work on such projects), so a slideshow on Google Docs wasn't exactly how I pictured the actual website would look like, but it's pretty damn close. The project itself made me love web design, especially after learning about the four key website design aspects: alignment, proximity, repetition, and contrast. I've always loved design, and I think this project made me love it even more.

Overall, our group works very well together. Since my roommate Rachel was pretty close with Hannah and Kayla first semester, it was easy for all four of us to become very good friends. We listen to each other's ideas and, in my opinion, blend together quite nicely. If one person is struggling with what to fix or do to one thing, another will help out; or if one person doesn't want to do one task, another would love to do it. This trust and balance are two important things that make group work so much easier.

Project 3: Website Re-Design

Me and my group's website re-design for mamascheesies.com was due today, and I think our project came out really really well. We worked well as a group, dividing up the work and assigning jobs for each person. Because the original site itself had a lot of content on it, the slideshow did take quite a bit of work, but once we got the hang of it, everything came together.

At the start, our initial decision was to divide the clothes into categories that were easy to find- tops, bottoms, dresses, accessories, etc. We thought that when the shopper clicks on a picture, a pop-up window should appear, revealing a larger picture of the item, its cost, description, and sizes (also, options to add to wishlist or your shopping cart). This is a feature that is on many clothing and shopping sites, and we thought that it would be an easy way to modernize the site.

We also made the site a lot more aesthetically pleasing overall, by having one color scheme instead of a ton of crazy backgrounds and colors everywhere like the original site had.