Final Project Brain Dump

 Thinking ahead about the final project, I have a general idea that I am excited about as to where I would like to go with it. As one of the few people in our class that does not work with a group of students in a classroom setting traditionally, I wanted to use this opportunity to further plan for a future goal that I am working towards. My final project parallels Katies' final project from 2020 from the slide deck; so seeing their project and hearing their process gives me confidence in going this route. Similar to Katie, I too was a Communications major for my undergrad here at RIC, with a passion for journalism, sports entertainment and all forms of media creation. While pivoting to a career in youth work and now in higher education, I believe that students of all ages learn better through hands on participation. Today, students are actively participating and developing real tangible skills without understanding the depth of what they are doing without being "taught" or "guided". TikTok dances, thats basic and in some cases more advanced choreography. Games like Roblox and Minecraft with servers where youth can create are variations of coding, while also holding platform for social communities. From my experiences working at Shea High School and Blackstone Academy Charter for 6 years, I encountered more students with interests and passions for content creation, students with $600 mirrorless DSLR cameras, students making decent money taking photos and making mixtapes for athletes across the state than I could have imagined. This was surely more than were around when I graduated from high school in 2012. Through my roles coaching basketball at Shea and Tolman High School, I connected with the Tolman Media Club, where I met students like Justin DeCosta (current PA Announcer for RIFC Soccer and In-Arena Host for PC Mens Hockey and Women's Basketball) who were developing these talents on their own and showcasing them through the then @TTN.Sports instagram page (which later has evolved to @onepawtucket). Meeting students with not only these interests, but the natural talent and creative mind to excel in careers in communications and digital media has inspired me to foster that creation. 

I envision as I approach the end of my Masters in the upcoming Spring, I plan to begin to develop my own out of school program / non-profit for high school students in Rhode Island with interests in digital media, content creation, journalism, and careers in the field. An inspiration behind this is me being a coach in Rhode Island and my interactions with media in the state. (specifically ProJo, me and their sports department have a love/hate relationship. It's a long story lol.) Nonetheless, ProJo Sports department is understaffed and under-resourced, a far cry from the days I grew up in where you could get the in print box scores for every high school game in the state the next morning. Now with Projo write-ups behind a paywall, I have always advocated for somewhere information and stats, boxscores, interviews to live. I would like to fill that void and develop students in their respective high schools to become young journalists in training developing "The Network" of young journalists across Rhode Island covering the RIIL. 

 Students will be able to develop writing samples, learn and develop their media voice, as well as getting on camera and behind the camera experience.  In a perfect world, down the line possibly this program can grow into a program similar to Upward Bound here at Rhode Island College; allowing students the opportunity to take Early Enrollment Courses in Communications or related courses at RIC that align with the program, while allowing them to stay on campus and utilize high level facilities like RIC's Television Studio. Building a community of youth across the state of like minded creatives can also assist in the social development of youth ages 14-18 and exposing them to individuals from other communities and interests. I hope I can use this course and final project as an opportunity to develop and flush out this idea further. 

Also, if you happen to read this blog post please let me know your thoughts on the idea. Good, bad or indifferent. I value all feedback and am open to any and all ideas. "The Network" is a workshop name right now, open to any ideas there too! 

My Personal Relationship to AI

 What is your personal relationship to AI? How do the arguments of Ferlazzo or Galland & Rettinger feel to you?  Do they resonate with you? Alienate you? Scare you? Excite you?

I cant lie, my relationship with AI is unique to say the least. On one hand, I understand the accessibility and ease that it is able to provide at our fingertips for tasks that feel minor. In my personal life, I use AI primarily for flushing out ideas and unclear thoughts in hopes of connecting resources externally. For example, I have began to think about potential ideas for my capstone for my Masters, building a profile through ChatGPT engagement and using references to career interests and academic background to generate depth into potential outcomes for my capstone project. To my surprise, the initial idea that I had came up with on my own, was not an idea that ChatGPT was able to generate. This correlates with Ferlazzo in AI Can Save Teachers Time and Stress, when they mentioned using AI to create several lesson plans for their classroom and them all following a similar template. Ferlazzo concluded that AI did not have the ability to be creative. Ironically enough, today in class when working in our groups on the poem assignment as we working to generate an AI image for our graphic we discussed amongst ourselves the lack of originality in the AI generated images that are all over social media. Whether it be a sports related graphic, an advertisement for a local food entrepreneur, or even some images tied to large corporations all share similar fonts, formats and the same "Artificial Imagery" as I call it. Personally, I struggle with not only the lack of originality that AI provides, but also the moral and ethical impacts behind AI are also a challenge to deal with. Data Centers and AI moderators testing have been known to directly impact underresourced communities internationally and domestically and many of the AI moderators and testers are underpaid, minorities who are enduring some potentially harmful physical and emotional conditions in these positions I have learned in my prior YDEV course with Dr. Benson.

Overall, the arguments of Ferlazzo excite me as they do provide me strategy for how to utilize AI while being able to still have my own personal touch in my work. The idea of AI providing a rough draft, or using AI as a brainstorm for ideas and then taking that bare base and "MJ-fying" the finished product. In my work in Academic Advising, we are aware that AI is coming to campus in new innovative ways and we are working to incorporate AI hopefully for clerical and administrative tasks, which in theory should provide more opportunity for myself and our team of advisors to be more present in our work and interactions with students. I am excited, curious, and ambitious to see how AI and I can work in tandem going forward, as it is apparent that AI is not going anywhere.

Digital Native Response

After reading Spiegel's revisit to Presnky's "digital native" article, Spiegel provides some necessary pushback to the ideologies of Presnky. In my interpretation, a portion of this can be attributed to the timing of the initial article and the timing of the revisit. Spiegel mentions reading the article in 2002, a year after it was published in 2001; 20 years prior to the revisit that we are discussing today. With that change in time, language such as "native" and "immigrant" can become outdated and leave room for misinterpretation. These 2 terms also put a hyperfocus and false confidence in the "native" to be an expert and that there is not much to be learned from the "immigrant" but more to teach. 

I really was compelled by the mention of Danah Boyd's research that found that youth are not tied to their phones because they love gadgets, but more so the private community and safe space they are able to comfortably inhibit through their phones and digital spaces. This is especially eye-opening for me as someone who feels like I was able to navigate my childhood as both a "native" to it but also an "immigrant" by the given terms. I owned video games, and had a walkman as a childhood, but also had parents who made me look information up in the encyclopedia anthology we had in our basement growing up. I think I was too the native to these things, but as Spiegel mentioned, I do not see my relationship to media or technology remotely close to the youth that I work with. I find myself too saying things like "No, in the real world" as opposed to things that may be on social media like comments under an Instagram post. The assumptions Boyd mentions of youth being assumed to understand all technology based on their ability to navigate social media platforms that are native to them is something I experienced first hand with my mother as technology developed throughout my youth. I found that challenging in my youth without understanding until now the reasons as to why it was assumed I would be able to navigate these devices. I feel as though the term Spiegel brings forward "digital socialites" are becoming more and more common amongst the youth and it is becoming a social regression for humans today. I have a nephew who just competed his sophomore year of college, and he rarely has ever approached a person of interest in person. A majority of his interaction is based on reactions to social media posts, comments, liking pictures back and forth ; and there is an element of interaction or "game" that is lost there. 

I personally, mentioned this in class but I feel like the best way to summarize if we were looking for a term would be digital navigators. We are all navigating through this digital world in our own ways, some with more expertise than others, some starting fresh from scratch, some that know nothing other than a world where AI will be prevalent in their digital experience. I think of it as the scale of pain at the hospital. And there may be more than 1 scale. Just because I am proficient in posting and navigating my social media algorithms, doesn't ensure me to be able to upload your pictures from your camera to your laptop. I may be a 9 on the scale of navigating social media platforms, but a 2 on the scale of working with cameras and platforms for example. 

5 Pictures About Me