Computer Skills for Aspiring Professionals

Many have asked why a Women's Studies program should include a course teaching computer skills and Web tools.  Aren't today's students already familiar with Microsoft Office and masters of the Web?  While students are definitely adept users of Facebook, most seem to lack experience with web tools more relevant to their future employment.  Few of my students have heard of, let alone know how to use, web tools such as:

• Blogs - used by many nonprofits, advocacy groups, and businesses
• Social bookmarking sites like Delicious - a handy research and networking tool
• RSS Readers or Start Pages -  to aggregate recent articles and blog entries in specified topics, very useful for keeping up-to-date with latest developments in your field
• Social media like Facebook and Twitter -  for professional networking and the promotion of social causes

While all students regularly use Word to compose essay assignments, few know how to use Heading Styles to provide a handy navigation aid for a long report (think of preparing quarterly sales reports or annual summaries of activities at a nonprofit agency).  All have prepared PowerPoints for class, but few have a clue about avoiding "death by PowerPoint" (avoid the same boring Microsoft templates, more single images & less bulleted text).

With so few job openings and so many candidates, students who can demonstrate some of the above skills provide added value to employers and are more likely to be successful in their job search. 

The skills described above are also useful for active citizenship, whether students only desire to be well-informed voters or intend to be participants in advocacy groups, political parties or trade unions.

It is not only WS majors who would profit from acquiring these computer and web skills; they are equally relevant for gerontology students, aspiring social workers, sociology and other liberal arts majors.  Perhaps social service programs and liberal arts departments should consider combining to offer a "Computer Skills for Aspiring Professionals" course to their students.

Resources and Examples:

• Delicious and Social Bookmarking - a Common Craft video
• About RSS Readers - a Common Craft video 
• Start Pages - Go to www.protopage.com/wscomputers to see  how one can access headlines from favorite blogs, bookmark useful web sites, display latest video on subject of interest, etc. Click on double down-arrow extreme right near top to view more pages – some directed to educators, some to non-profit organizations, some to Women’s Studies. 
• Using Heading Styles to Organize Notes in Microsoft Word 
• PowerPoint:  "Draft Ada Lovelace Picture Book" - be sure to click to display Speaker Notes  
• PowerPoint:  Corvida Raven: Geek Girl Storybook - use of images, musical background, converted to video.

YouTube Video - Politics of Class Online

Just discovered the YouTube video "danah boyd - PdF 2009 - The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online" with an excellent discussion of how Facebook users differ from MySpace users. The main point of danah boyd’s speech is that we really need to think about how online networks are perpetuating class and race divisions. And that as activists, if we only appear on Facebook, we are really limiting our audience. A rough draft of the text of her talk can be found at http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/PDF2009.html.

Are NonProfits Perpetuating Class Divisions Online?

Interesting piece at a New Organizing Institute blog post of 9/30/09 which opens with quote from Sarah Perez blogging at ReadWriteWeb “about a new Nielsen Claritas study finding that Facebook users tend to be better off financially, while MySpace users’ income is generally lower. She opened saying:

Oh how the mighty have fallen. The one time king of social networks, MySpace, now has the honor of being the site where the less affluent members of the online population stake their claims by way of bedazzled profiles overrun with auto-playing videos and songs. Meanwhile, the upscale, financially solvent users have moved on – and by moved on, we mean to Facebook, of course.

After criticizing the condescending attitude of Sarah Perez, the New Organizing blogger goes on to say "As a movement, we need to ensure that we aren’t tricked into ignoring online tools that reach large and important segments of the population -- regardless of whether you like the design of one site over another. All too often, online organizing efforts have Facebook pages, but fail to reach out to MySpace users at all. According to a study released earlier this summer by Anderson Analytics , roughly 32 million MySpace users do not have a Facebook page. That is an awful lot of millions to ignore." (emphasis added)

Causes (fund raising app) Abandons MySpace

Beth Kanter, in her excellent blog devoted to How Nonprofits can Use Social Media, reports on 11/6/09 that

"Amy Sample Ward reported that Causes notified 184,725 users that its MySpace app will be removed from MySpace as of today. The email encouraged MySpace users of Causes to join the cause on Facebook.

"One wonders what the motivation was? Amy's post spoke about the implications for individuals and communities, raising the question - "In abandoning MySpace, is Causes abandoning nonprofit groups organizing online with poorer users and people of color?" Justin Mass went as far as to say that the move was "social network redlining."

In class we discussed research by danah boyd showing that the users of MySpace and of Facebook were quite different - with Facebook users being a more college oriented group (who looked down on MySpace users). MySpace users tended to be more low-income and liked MySpace because that's where there friends were and because MySpace enabled people to customize their templates more in terms of color and layout.

Hence if Causes abandons MySpace, it likely makes it more difficult for nonprofits to do fundraising among working class people. Beth Kantor goes on to note that the Causes application can be criticized for failing to really involve people and so its loss might not be so dreadful - perhaps nonprofits should develop their own ways of more effectively interacting with users of MySpace.