Communication Lecturer Florangela Davila visited Wenatchee High School to gain insight into the GEAR UP project, a partnership of the Higher Education Coordinating Board, Office of the Governor, the University of Washington, College Success Foundation, and a number of national, state and local organizations.
GEAR UP, or Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, provides middle and high school students from low-income households resources to apply and be accepted into college.
While talking with students and teachers, Davila compiled video footage that shows how the project is shaping a positive future for students. “Some of us are lucky in that going to college is a given. What I learned is how GEAR UP helps fill a gap for these students,” said Davila. “They have parents who may have never gone to college; parents who may be unfamiliar with the U.S. system; or maybe they’re entirely on their own. GEAR UP shows them what their future could look like. And it makes college a realistic attainable goal.”
Davila’s COM495 class also put together a slide show during summer quarter 2010, featuring GEAR UP students, which is featured on the UW Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity website.
GEAR UP participants receive after-school tutoring to increase academic performance, and mentoring from dedicated teachers and UW students (eMentors). Students and their parents also take advantage of workshops to help them navigate the pathways to college scholarships, financial aid, and filling out applications. During the summer, GEAR UP students participate in weeklong college immersion experiences at UW, where they learn what college life is really like.
Marsha Fall, the GEAR UP scholars coordinator at WHS has been mentoring and tutoring her group of seniors since they were in middle school. In Davila’s video she says, “GEAR UP has done so much. It’s a reason to come to school; it’s someone to check in to.”
Jessinia Sequentes, a senior at WHS, says, “College has always been a dream of mine. For them to just keep pushing you toward that goal is what really helps us a lot.”
Comments OffPrinceton’s Center for Information Technology Policy has awarded Philip Howard a fellowship year, beginning March 2012. The Center is a nexus of expertise in technology and engineering, public policy, and the social sciences and the Center’s research, teaching, and public programs address digital technologies as they interact with policy, markets and society. Howard will be continuing his research on digital media and the prospects for democratization in the developing world.
Comments OffThis week was a first for President Obama, who took questions for a White House Town Hall from Twitter users. The White House asked people to participate by sending their questions using the hashtag #askobama.
Social media have introduced two-way direct communication and Obama used the town hall as a way to harness this real-time communication. The town hall was broken into three sections: questions that had “risen to the top” by being retweeted, follow-up questions to Obama’s responses, and opinions that were voiced during the town hall that Obama had the chance to respond to.
The event felt more like a real-time conversation than a town hall hosted by Facebook and moderated by CEO Marc Zuckerburg in April, which included questions submitted in advance.
Tweets leading up to the event were flooding in so fast that the feed on http://askobama.twitter.com/ was impossible to follow. In addition to a Twitter algorithm that looked for a high number of retweets, Twitter recruited a list of journalists to curate questions and responses in real time. According to the New York Times blog Media Decoder, Twitter officials said they looked to journalists as curators to help make sure questions reflected geographic diversity.
In advance of the town hall, Republicans used the hashtag as a way to voice their opposition to Obama’s policies. For example, Nikki Haley, governor of South Carolina, tweeted: “Why is your administration supporting the NLRB’s job killing policies in South Carolina?”
Jack Dorsey, Twitter founder, introduced the session with a reference to the use of Twitter around the world to engage people in conversation and action. Twitter and other social media have been credited with helping to facilitate the so-called Arab Spring.
Dorsey said that 27 percent of the tweets were about jobs, 10 percent were about education and 6 percent were about housing.
Presidents have historically looked for ways to incorporate modern communication channels. For example, President Franklin D. Roosevelt used his “fireside chats” as a means of addressing the American people directly via radio transmissions during the Great Depression.
Obama said he was going to make history by live tweeting at the beginning of the town hall. “It’s only 140 characters,” Dorsey joked as the president appeared to be deep in thought. The town hall audience was also composed of 140 people — followers of the White House Twitter feed who signed up for a chance to attend.
Dorsey referred to a screen behind the president that displayed a map of the U.S. showing where tweets come from and the concentration of topics.
One of the most interesting parts of the town hall, was the inclusion of follow-up questions. For example, after Obama talked about underwater mortgages, a follow-up question was posed by “Shnaps”: “Is free-market an option? RT @whitehouse: Obama on homeowners underwater: Have made some progress, but+ needed, looking at options.” Twitter seemed to rely heavily on its curators for these follow-up questions and the responses that followed.
The last 20 minutes included response Tweets with a chance for Obama to respond. For whatever reason, the Official Q&A did not include these responses in its stream. I don’t think they were quite sure how to handle posting of these responses on Twitter.
On CNN’s live blog, it was observed by Shawna Shepherd that “Obama answers at least twice as many questions at twitter @townhall than he usually answers at news conferences in same time frame.”
The amount of advance preparation and coordination that Twitter put into the event made a huge difference in the quality of the town hall. Whether they were truly representative of all #askobama questions will be a question I anticipate analysts will continue to look at closely.
Originally posted on Geekwire. Kristina Bowman helps faculty and students in the Department of Communication to use new media.
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I love that turn of phrase from Clay Shirky’s still influential 2008 book, Here Comes Everybody. Publish, then filter. In the digital age, it means barriers to entry, costs, and content distribution platforms are all so accessible that the traditional mass media model of “filter, then publish” is no longer the norm.
Net economics have changed substantially over the last few years. Today, publishing is no longer the exclusive preserve of an established publisher that curates and vets content over months or years until it deems it sufficiently polished and attractive to distribute it to a large enough market — thereby justifying its costs of production.
Authors like me (who aren’t tied to scholarly publication requirements) can now get it out quickly, even if imperfectly, and then continue to revise, refine, often in concert with the very same people you’re looking to reach.
It’s how I manage my blog posts, and it’s now what I’ve done with Storyteller Uprising: Trust and Persuasion in the Digital Age (it’s also how I produced my first feature documentary a few years ago).
I published the first section (around 35 pages) to Amazon Kindle and Scribd in February, directing my students and those who heard me talk on the subject to those resources if they wanted a more tangible take-away of my ideas. Thanks to the innovative Espresso Book Machine at the University Book Store, I’m already on my second printed edition. And I’ve just published to the e-book platform aggregator Smashwords, which has forced me to finally learn Word in order to create a universally acceptable file for Apple, Sony, and Barnes and Noble. (I discovered that I have better mastery of the Final Cut Pro editing suite than convoluted word processing software that I’ve taken for granted for years).
Will I make money? The simple answer is: it doesn’t matter, and I already have. Read more
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Looking back on her undergraduate years, Kristin Gustafson (PhD, 2010), lecturer at the University of Washington, Bothell, says she never planned to pursue a career in academia. It wasn’t until after she spent more than a decade in the journalism field, including work at the Minnesota Women’s Press and the St. Cloud Times, that she realized she had more questions she would like to be answered and returned to school to pursue her graduate degrees.
Today, Gustafson is an award-winning academic: the recipient of the 2011 Gene Burd Urban Journalism Research Prize along with an Honorable Mention Award from the American Journalism Historians Association for the AJHA Margaret A. Blanchard Doctoral Dissertation Prize competition. Read more
Comments OffAssunta Ng has been selected as the recipient of the 2011 University of Washington Charles E. Odegaard Award, regarded as the highest achievement at the University of Washington relating to the promotion of educational opportunity and diversity.
Founder and publisher of the Seattle Chinese Post and Northwest Asian Weekly, Assunta Ng has devoted her life to promoting and mentoring young women and youth. Her tireless volunteerism and leadership in Seattle’s Asian American Community empower the goals of both OMA&D and EOP.
The Charles E. Odegaard award was established in 1973 to honor individuals whose leadership in the community and dedication exemplifies Dr. Charles Odegaard’s work on behalf of diversity. Charles E. Odegaard was the 19th President of the University of Washington and is generally credited with being the person responsible for taking the University of Washington from a regional public school to one of the leading educational institutions in the United States. He was most noted for his leadership in the community and dedication to educational opportunity at the University of Washington.
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Well, maybe not “invade” per se, but they are definitely represented in the form of a silent auction item.
Come to the Communication Spring Auction tonight, and bid on the ultimate futbol package which includes special pregame sideline access and great seats for the “Full 90.” On Saturday, September 10th, watch as the Sounders face off against Real Salt Lake. As sideline guests, you will enjoy up-close views of the players preparing for action. After the thunder of player introductions, you’ll move up to your seats to watch the match in North America’s best soccer environment!
This auction item also includes a $25 gift certificate to Ray’s Boathouse Cafe & Catering, along with an official Ray’s cookbook. Whether you’re looking for a sophisticated seafood dinner after the game, a casual brunch with friends the next day, or if you have an event coming up, Ray’s has the key to an excellent dining experience. Ray’s offers the finest seafood of the Northwest, a Wine Spectator award-winning wine list of over 500 selections, a choice of microbrews to satisfy any beer connoisseur, and the atmosphere to tie it all together.
So come on down to the Communication Spring Auction to bid on this item and support our students. You can register online, or buy your tickets at the door.
We hope to see you there!
Comments OffThen you need to register for the Communication Spring Auction so you can bid on a package of a lifetime. It includes four lower box seats to the Mariner’s game of your choice. Take in the smell of the ballpark – the peanuts, beer, hotdogs; there’s nothing else like it – and watch as the M’s swing away at the game of your choice.
This package doesn’t end with ticket to see the M’s game. You will also receive two $100 gift certificates to the Metropolitan Grill, Seattle’s premiere steakhouse.The Met has built its reputation on the classics – filet mignon, New York peppercorn steak, delmonico, porterhouse and chateaubriand, carved tableside. Steaks are seared over the high heat of the “Iron Wood of the World,” imported mesquite charcoal, ensuring the most tender, juicy steaks available.
Then for a cozy night in, enjoy your mixed case of Lazy River Wine and Brittan Vineyards. Everyone who drinks a glass of Lazy River Vineyard wine shares the product of a well-farmed vineyard and an expert winemaker. As a special treat, take a fine October afternoon to enjoy lunch with the harvest crew at The Carlton Winemakers Studio. Depending on the day’s schedule, you may be able to watch crews as they pick the clusters at Lazy River Vineyard, or join the sorting line.
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Connect your body, mind and self with a three month unlimited yoga package at Urban Yoga Spa. The Urban Yoga Spa is the ultimate urban destination for ongoing maintenance and improvement through the practice of Hot Yoga and Spa Services, in the convenience of one location. The Urban Yoga Spa provides accommodations which include: restrooms, showers, lockers, as well as storage cubbies for Yogi’s who practice “on-the-run”.
Come to the Communication Spring Auction to bid on this item, because there’s sure to be competition – especially from me!
Comments OffBut only if you come to the Spring Auction this Thursday! Bid on a two-night stay at Hotel Deca in a junior suite with complimentary parking. With its panoramic Seattle and mountain views and comfortable, well-appointed rooms and suites, Hotel Deca offers contemporary accommodations featuring art-deco motifs. Hotel Deca is 100 percent non-smoking and also features wireless internet access.
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