Use Slide Shows for Resumes?

One of the purposes of the Women and Computers course is to prepare students for the job market, so I was intrigued by this posting by Amit of Digital Inspiration. The post has 4 or 5 examples of people who used the medium of a PowerPoint slide show to present their resume. I thought one of the examples near the end from a teacher was particularly interesting.

I didn't find any examples from women, only men. Women less willing to take risks with non-traditional approaches? Blog author preferred the men's examples?

Women Who Blog

Since my last post about the need to use exact phrase with quotes "why women blog" to find any useful information, another student in the class located a reference to the "2009 Social Media Study" by Blogher, iVillage and Compass Partners which looks at women's use of social media based on surveys of two different population groups - a general population survey of 2,821 online women (53% of whom participate in social media at least once a week) and a survey of 1008 women from the Blogher network.

Most interesting to me was a chart on page p. 12 which compares the demographic characteristics of women who write blogs or post comments to other people's blogs from the two survey groups.

If look at just the general online population survey, 69% of those who participate in blogging do not have a college degree - which contradicts the stereotype many have of the blogosphere as inhabited by only the highly educated. In contrast, if limit oneself to the BlogHer network, only 30% have not graduated from college - so women who participate in BlogHer are not exactly representative of the female online blogging community.

When asked why they blog, little difference found between the general population group and the BlogHer community. The most frequent reasons given were:

• 76% for fun
• 73% to express myself
• 59% to connect with others like me

In contrast only 22% said they blog in order to "to persuade others/advocate" and 17% "to earn money"

Why Women Blog – Need Exact Search in Google

Students and I were trying, somehow, to find articles on why women blog. I know I had read some in the past, so why can't we find them in the search engines? I went to Google and tried a whole bunch of different terms - women blogging benefits - women blogging problems - women bloggers problems. And I had very little success.

Finally the light bulb went off and I remembered you could do a search at Google putting an exact phrase in quotes. When I entered "why women blog" (including quotation marks) in the Google search box, I got lots of hits right on target (7 on first page of hits plus a good video on second page). I'm listing them below for anyone who wants to follow up on this topic.

• Video: “Why Women Blog” uploaded by author to MomTV.com on Feb. 10, 2010. Based on a one year study where she asked women all over the country “Why do you blog? The main message I got from the video is the community building around bloggers & their readers. Also this video seemed like a lot better way to present one’s report than the traditional all text methods. Video also available at author’s own blog site Marketing to Women Online where more comments are posted.
• “Blissdom '10 - What I Learned About Women” what blogger Holly Buchanon learned about women bloggers at the Blissdom ’10 conference. Entry dated 2/7/10 on Holly’s Marketing to Women Online blog.
• “Why Women Blog” from the Crossroads Dispatches blog, dated 5/20/05
• “Why Women Blog Less than Men” from Newser.com, dated 10/27/09 – very short, not sure I agree.
• “Why Women Blog More than Men” from Jerminix” blog, dated 8/30/08
• “Why Women Blog” from the Feminist Majority’s Choices Campus Blog. Dated 6/19/09
• Wonderful link provided by commenter in above blog post to Bella DePaulo’s “For the Love of Blogging” at Huffington Post. Dated 6/19/09
• Great list of relevant articles at Highbeam.com where they want you to pay to read, but they give the source of each of the articles – many of which are also available on the free web; others available to SCSU people for free via EBSCO host at Miller Library web pages.

The Web as a Community of Scholars

The "Connected Student" video presents an overview of the web tools a student might use in a school setting where students are encouraged to find things out for themselves, to be creative and self-starters. Students can not only use the Web to read the most information on their topic, but can personally connect with others, including experts in the field, who might easily be persuaded to talk to the student’s class via video conference. Finally, students can contribute to building knowledge by social bookmarking, writing blogs, or creating wikis or videos.

But it is not only students who need to learn information management skills and how to develop networks. The web tools and approaches presented in this video are equally useful for professors trying to keep up with developments in their field or for any learner/scholar.

I am considering assigning this video to students and asking them to write comments and discussion questions. I am particularly interested to hear their reaction to this self-organized mode of learning (as contrasted with the traditional teacher structured mode).

Thanks to the Clio and Me blogger for calling this video to my attention and for providing an excellent example of blogging as a tool for sharing knowledge about what works & what doesn’t, about useful tools & techniques for college teachers of history.

About WS445 Women and Computers Class

I just completed a short slideshow designed to recruit students to the Women and Computers class I teach for Women's Studies. Only 20 slides long, it presents a few snippets of the issues we explore in 3 major aspects of the course:

Gender, Race, and Class Perspectives on the Web and computers
How Feminists and Social Justice Activists use the Web
Hands-on Training with free software and online Web tools

I am using the slideshow to give short speeches in several classes to inspire (I hope) students to enroll. If interested, you can view the show at Slideshare.net

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)