Abstract: Distance Education Technologies and Women

Full text at: Global Impact of New Communication Technologies on Expanding Educational Opportunities for Women

Women have fought for years to gain equal access to education. In today’s technology-based education environment, educational opportunities for underserved women in rural areas and developing countries have become more readily available. The introduction of these new technologies has also introduced new barriers to gaining access to distance learning. By looking at research in the fields of distance education and women’s studies, and presenting case studies to demonstrate the opportunities associated with various education technologies, this paper looks at how well information and communication technologies used in education are serving women living in poverty, rural areas, and developing countries. By assessing the current state of these technologies, the paper concludes with a call to continue developing needs-based distance education delivery formats to serve the unique needs of underserved populations.

Shock Waves

Welcome to the crisis culture—nonstop drama pumping through the airwaves at lightning speed. TV networks and Internet news sites spike new ratings highs with every passing hurricane, drug-addicted starlet, abducted child, failed financial institution, and adulterous politician. The news media profit from sensational journalism, but at what cost to us?

Researchers have studied the psychological consequences of sensational journalism for years [1], but the Internet is a relative newcomer to this research and we are only just beginning to see the fall-out from a culture feeding on a virtual all-you-can-consume buffet of tragedy and drama. While we may not know yet the long-term impact of such behavior, it has become obvious that people are consuming sensational material on the Internet at alarming rates.

Domain names linked to tragic events are being snapped up and then auctioned on eBay by opportunists feeding on our obsession with tragic news stories. Immediately following the Virginia Tech shooting, people rushed to register domain names like “vtechkilling.com.” [2] When it was revealed that Australian Joseph Fritzel had raped and imprisoned his daughter and mother, a rush of dedicated Web sites went up with regular updates as the story unfolded; one man purchased three domain names using the incest victim’s name. [3]

While despicable, this practice has proven to be lucrative. We just can’t get enough shocking news. MSNBC.com reported an all-time traffic high after the Virginia Tech incident, beating their previous record from Hurricane Katrina coverage. Coverage of these tragic events also gained ABCNews.com a record for most unique visitors in a single day (2.3 million), with September 11, 2001 holding the earlier record. [4]

What is driving this increasing obsession with bad news? One theory says that citizens of developed nations have more leisure time than ever and we are simply bored, finding ourselves on an ever-escalating novelty-seeking thrill ride. Author and seminary professor Dr. Richard Winter observes, “When stimulation comes from every side, we reach a point of being unable to react with much depth to anything anymore. The boredom we feel today is probably as likely, perhaps more likely, to come from overload than underload… The Media create expectations for us so that ordinary life becomes increasingly boring and we grow more dissatisfied. Like drug addicts, we want a bigger fix next time.” [5]

Has tragedy become our drug of choice? Is the adrenaline rush we get from an unedited film clip on the Internet actually addictive? Maybe the term “news junkie” isn’t so facetious after all.

Causes for concern:

1. Compulsion: While you may not have to check into rehab for your Internet addiction, you could be withdrawing from life. Any type of compulsive behavior is unhealthy. Technology-related information overload has been proven to create stress, social isolation, depression, and even lower IQ’s. Internet addiction is now classified as an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and treatment clinics are popping up around the world. [6]
2. Passivity: As voyeurs rather than active participants in the world, we are learning to view tragic events as entertainment. The news is only valuable to us personally if it leads us to take action to correct a problem or live our lives differently.
3. Our Children: “According to parental reports of 179 children one month after the September 11 attacks, children who viewed images of the attacks on the internet had more symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder than those who saw images of the events on television or in print.” (Saylor et al., 2003). [7]
4. Long-term Psychological Effects: In a recent study, researchers identified patterns of brain activity in nonaggressive children who had been exposed to high levels of media violence that mimicked those of aggressive children diagnosed with disruptive behavior disorder. [8] While we need to protect our children, we also need to be concerned about the long-term impact of an entire generation exposed to a constant stream of crises.
5. Truth and Lies: Gross, indiscriminate consumption of “junk food” media does not replace careful reading of credible journalism. As news consumers, we need accurate information presented in a thoughtful manner. Carl Bernstein writes, “…speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context. The pressure to compete, the fear that somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised.” [9]
6. Manipulation: Marketers take a lot of liberties with good taste, but a recent television ad for Chevrolet’s Silverado truck reaches a new low. A stirring montage including images from Vietnam, fires, floods, September 11, and Hurricane Katrina—set to patriotic music—concludes with an image of shiny new truck and a final musical phrase, “This is our country.” [10]

What we can do:

1. Manage Information Overload. Psychiatrist John M. Grohol offers the following five tips for minimizing the impact of Internet overload: reduce your information intake; consume information systematically instead of randomly; divide entertainment time online from work time; set time limits; and “chunk” your information. Source: “Grappling with Information Overload” View this in contrast to Mike Elgan’s “Twelve Step Program for News Addicts.”
2. Sensor Yourself. Identify quality news sites with content created by reputable journalists and resist the urge to view sensational YouTube videos or compulsively Google a developing tragic news story.
3. Get a Life. Substitute virtual world activities for real-world adventures. There will (hopefully) be a lot less blood and gore, and a lot more fresh air and peace-of-mind.

Learn more about this issue:

Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma: A resource and network for journalists and journalism educators dedicated to improving media coverage of conflict, trauma, and tragedy.

Overfeeding on Information: An October, 2008 New York Times article that provides insight into and examples of compulsive news viewing.

YouTube Users Watching and Sharing the News: A Uses and Gratifications Approach: A paper from the Journal of Electronic Publishing examining the motivations and habits of YouTube contributors and viewers.

Coping with Psychological Effects of Terror: FoxNews.com looks at terrorism, how it affects us, and ways to cope.

Children “Freaked Out” by Internet Images: A brief article in The Independent that gets to the heart of children and the uncensored Internet. Comments from parents provide further real-life accounts.

Should Tragedy be Used as Entertainment?: A blog commentary on another interesting blog article: “When Kids Get Hurt, Who’s to Blame?“ Disturbing accounts of teens setting themselves on fire, and otherwise maiming themselves to achieve fame on the Internet.

Why We Showed Gunman: BBC News editor discussing the decision to air the video Cho Seung-hui created before he went on his shooting spree.

Footnotes/More Information:

1. Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma
2. Some Profit Off Va. Tech Domain Names
3. Opportunists Profit From Domain Names and Tragedy in Austria
4. The Impact of Virginia Tech on the News
5. Still Bored in a Culture of Entertainment
6. Internet Obsession or Addiction
7. Children and Media Coverage of Tragedy
8. Media Violence May Affect Children’s Brains
9. The Idiot Culture
10. American Tragedies to Sell Trucks

Celebrating Creative Process

“…what separates so many of us from art is a lack of understanding between art and its impulse, as well as our refusal to acknowledge the art of our everyday life.”

This from Kirk Hathaway, creator of Descriptive Eye. Descriptive Eye is a blog about the creative process. Like “Lost and Found,” Descriptive Eye celebrates the creative potential we all have as individuals and encourages the development of that potential.

Descriptive Eye takes this thought a step further, though, by providing a forum for submission and discussion of creative works of all types. In this model, a writer or artist can submit a completed work or work-in-progress and explain the process and thinking behind it. Objective observers can then reinforce or redirect the artist’s path by offering other perspectives on the work. By sharing in this way, artists and commentators are exercising their creative muscles in new ways and improving their creative approach.

Artful lives are not played out in isolation. By forming communities on blogs like Descriptive Eye, we have the potential to tap into a vast ocean of creative resources and inspiration.

Fresh Rolls

Our class assignment last week was to create a blogroll. Not too complicated–just find a few of the best and worst links out there about our chosen topics, write a brief description of each, and add to our blogrolls. Hours, days, going on weeks later I have gathered a small handful of barely relevant links. Our class discussion forum has a thread now about how insanely time-consuming this seemingly innocent little assignment was. What has this experience taught me?

Blogrolling takes talent and hard work, and a really excellent blogroll is a true piece of art. It’s hard to imagine how many hours have gone into creating some of the blogrolls I have encountered. The worst examples were alphabetical lists of sites with no description and no apparent relation to one another–mostly friends’ sites or random senseless links. The best were neatly categorized compilations of top-rate sites, all relevant to the category or in some way related to the blog’s main topics or expressive of the blogger’s personality.

There is great value to readers in the well-formed blogroll. Kudos to those of you out there who have done all the hard work so the rest of us can sit back and enjoy the fine link collections you have assembled. And my personal favorite to date is the inspiring and creative collection offered on the 52 Projects blog. Something to aspire to!

A First-Rate Soup

My classmate Bobby Ramsey has created a very interesting blog, Socratic Questions, about “learner-centered” education. Bobby’s work as a tutor and educator has inspired him to explore this topic in greater detail. In his blog preamble, Bobby discusses the educational philosophy of Constructivism where ”…much of the curriculum should involve hands-on learning experiences.” Bobby makes an excellent case for approaches to education that allow children to learn by discovering new things for themselves.

Bobby’s work in this area led me to look further into the philosophy of Constructivism, through which I learned about an outgrowth of the philosophy called Constructionism. The concept here is that people learn when they are actively constructing something outside of themselves, an external product. Call me crazy, but this brings to mind images of biscuit dough and crudely crafted teddy bears. Of course, much of the theory of Constructionism, developed by scientists at MIT, relates to the use of computers in schools. But I wonder if the same theories apply on a more simplistic level, coming into play earlier in development when creative pathways are still forming.

Imagine a young mind puzzling through the complexities of cutting two pieces of fabric into a shape resembling the outline of a bear and then joining those two pieces of fabric together with stitches, right-sides-facing, turning the result inside-out through a small hole left in the stitching, then evenly filling the inverted item until it emerges as a teddy bear. While the act of creating a little stuffed bear may seem insignificant, how might it enhance a young person’s ability to think in abstractions or develop the capacity for creative problem-solving?

In her paper about women’s creative development, posted on the Creativity Centre’s Web site, Dr. Kathy Goff observes, “Creative thinking and learning involve such abilities as evaluation, redefinition, analysis, divergent production and problem solving abilities.”

Summarizing from Maslow’s Motivation and Personality (1987, 3rd. ed, p. 159), she describes a time when Maslow changed his idea about creativity after observing one woman whom he described as ”uneducated, poor, a full-time housewife and mother who was not creative by traditional standards, yet was a marvelous cook, mother, wife and homemaker. With little money, her home was somehow always beautiful. She was a perfect hostess and her meals were banquets. Her taste in linen, silver, glass and furniture was impeccable. She was original, novel, ingenious, unexpected and inventive in all of these areas.”

“He learned from her and others like her to think that a first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting, and that generally cooking, parenthood and/or making a home can be creative while poetry can be uncreative.” summarized Goff.

She goes on to conclude, “Educational emphasis must be placed on nurturing the creativity of girls and women. According to Sadker and Sadker (1994, p. 14), ‘if the cure for cancer is forming in the mind of one of our daughters, it is less likely to become a reality than if it is forming in the mind of one of our sons. Until this changes, everyone loses.’”

Food for thought.

It’s Always More Fun…

…to share with everyone! This week in class, we’re learning about filtering the web and gatekeepers. I asked the folks at Dove, who were very kind and responded right away, if it was wrong of me to have posted pirated YouTube versions of their amazing films here on my blog. No surprise, they said they weren’t in a position to authorize such sharing and suggested I simply link to the films (which I did). This way, all the layers of interests associated with the films would have their rights protected.

In contrast, I found a lovely if somewhat less highly produced film that speaks to my topic in a different way on Current TV. This clip is from their Weekly InfoMania show with Sarah Haskins, who is really funny! Current TV provides the code for embedding the video right into your blog post so all can enjoy with no distracting link-clicking. However, WordPress (appropriately cautious) only allows video to be embedded from a very few select sources…so back to YouTube. I figure I’m safe since Current TV offered the code, even though WordPress didn’t accept it. At any rate, here’s a fun perspective on the domestic arts, courtesy of Current TV’s open gate policy.

When I talk about an artful approach to the domestic arts, I’m not advocating a sexy moment with the dish rag (although I’m not against that, either) or pumps and pearls for the morning mopping. Rather, I would hold this short film up as yet another example of what is wrong with the way we view the role of women and the domestic arts.

And back to the topic of filtering the Web and gatekeepers, it is interesting to see new media venues like Current TV taking a different approach to information rights and making their material available for sharing. In the digital world, this may ultimately prove to be the smarter business model. I can promise you that I’m hooked on Target Women films now and will be an InfoMania regular!

Lose 20 Pounds, Get a Man

But your man still has the right to cheat, especially if you get fat again or do other unattractive things like make demands on him or wear sweatpants. This from Dante Moore, who offers women his male viewpoint on a number of issues, including how a woman should react when a man honks at her. “Don’t dismiss the fact that somebody has beeped the horn at your stinking ass. Take it as a compliment because there’s going to come a time in your life when nobody will ever beep at you again except to tell you to get the f**k out the way.” This is so ridiculous that I wouldn’t even include it here except that someone actually published this book and people are actually buying it! He has gotten a lot of publicity, including an article in the Washington Post and an interview with Ryan Seacrest (the segment is about 15 minutes long but you’ll get the general idea in the first couple of minutes).

I really didn’t intend for this blog to become a feminist rant, but as we are learning this week about filtering the Web and creating blogrolls, I am looking at my research proposal from a variety of new perspectives and discovering all sorts of shocking stuff. Thanks to technology, I have been staring at a stream of trash (and some pretty terrific material, too) for hours. As the information bytes that I have found particularly compelling, good and bad, come together here in my blogroll, I feel almost as if my blog has taken on its own life. I would not have predicted that it would unfold this way, and I don’t expect that it will be just like this tomorrow. New links will be discovered, adding to the overall tone of this endeavor. The trick, I believe, will be not to lose focus and stray too far from my topic–the lost arts of women. 

Maybe my reference here to Dante Moore’s book is off topic, but I do think that it speaks to where I never, ever want to take my discussion of women and the domestic arts. Dante Moore represents what is still wrong with our thinking about gender roles. I want to encourage women to live artful lives and find joy in life through creativity, not be slaves to controlling macho bullies (uh oh, I think I’m becoming a feminist after all).

Distortions

Not to get too stuck on the Dove campaign, but one of my classmate’s blogs got me thinking further about this issue of women and beauty ideals. Alex Molaire’s blog, Digital Imaging and Photo Ethics, touches on a troubling issue that is also highlighted in the following Dove Campaign for Real Beauty film called “Evolution”:

Click here to link to film.

Our culture no longer values the every day creative accomplishments of women. Instead, a woman’s value is measured against impossible physical standards–fictitious renderings, distorted concoctions of iconic beauty. I have been wondering if the “new domesticity” trend is a way for women to fight back. As women incorporate artful living into their daily routines, they are rejecting the culture of artificial beauty and, instead, seeking to create outward expressions of their inner beauty. Mothers, in particular, seem to be drawn to this trend as they look for ways to protect their daughters from the “onslaught” (see previous post).

Author Woody Winfree said in a recent interview, “Beauty is not the size of our waists, or the cascade of our hair. Rather, beauty is the sum of our talents, accomplishments, intellect, contribution to our families and communities, and every other measure of living a life that deeply matters.” Her book, We Are More than Beautiful, is a collection of stories and images of teen girls who are challenging the ideals of beauty.

We all deserve an opportunity to experience our own beauty. Creative self-expression gives all of us–women, men, and children–a way to discover our inner beauty and share it with others.

Self-Esteem

Why is artful living important for women? In my view, it is because we have lost sight of what womanly beauty really is. We are dealing in objectified ideals, not true femininity. How did we get here? The women’s liberation movement got us out of the kitchen and into the boardroom. But now we have the “Lolita Effect” where push-up bras are being marketed to preteens and pole-dancing kits are sold in toy stores.

Gigi Durham, author of The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It, said the following in a recent interview with Salon.com:

“…as women have made tremendous gains politically and in the workforce, grown women are moving away from this traditional model of femininity where women are supposed to be docile and passive. And little girls still conform to that very traditional ideal of femininity. So I think that increasing attention is being focused on little girls as embodying ideal femininity.”

We had better get a grip on what “ideal femininity” is, and soon. The Dove film series (created by Ogilvy) does a beautiful job of illustrating the problem, but this is ultimately a campaign designed to sell beauty products.

Click here to link to film.

Perhaps we can find the answers through rediscovering the art of womanhood.

I Am Woman, Watch Me Stitch

My grandmother taught me to love doing needlework. My mother taught me that women have the freedom to pursue anything they want in life. My liberated generation taught me that needlework was stupid. Was my mother wrong—where’s the freedom? I have been a closet needleworker for years. So, I have observed with keen interest the emerging trend of new domesticity. These young women are blazing a trail right back through history to revive the lost arts of our grandmothers and their mothers before them. This is a trend worth watching.

In my former role as a specialist in marketing to women consumers, I spent a lot of time studying what motivates women’s behavior and what informs their decision-making. These concepts do not just apply to purchasing patterns; they can also explain social trends. But to fully understand the implications of the “new domesticity” movement, we need to examine it from a historical perspective. Why did the women’s liberation movement so deeply reject the traditions of the domestic arts? Perhaps it was necessary, but maybe we have come full circle now with Gen Y and their stitch-n-bitch brand of domesticity. 

The phenomenon called craftivism is also emerging from this generation’s return to the domestic arts, but this trend has a conscience. Young women calling themselves craftivists use their art to make political and social statements. What does this mean for the feminist movement? Is it a step backward, or a step forward? This ebb and flow of tradition and innovation is not unique to our time or to the American culture. What lost arts might be rediscovered as empowered women across the globe return to the gentle arts?

Research keywords and phrases: “new domesticity,” “fabriculture,” “craftivism,” “Gen Y,” “cyberfeminism,” “domestic arts,” “lost arts,” “feminist ideals,” or “crafts.”

Web resources:

Craftivity Narratives: Fabriculture, Affective Labor, and the New Domesticity
A link to a scholarly paper that examines the new DIY “fabriculture” in terms of gender, technology, and feminism.

“Do I Look Like a Girl Who Makes Jam?”
An interesting first-person account from the Manchester Guardian (UK) by a young woman who is “waiting out the fad”

Get Crafty
Blogs, pictures, forums, wikis, and more “for the craftistas”

Jane Brocket
The official site of the author of The Gentle Art of Domesticity and the cult favorite “Yarnstorm” blog

microRevolt
A craftivist collective, founded by artist and activist Cat Mazza, which develops projects that examine the historical and current problems with sweatshop labor