Bridging the Gap

Weekly Progress Report: By Mike Martin

Week 1-  Project brainstormed, four ideas created, three selected for greater exploration.

Week 2- Project idea selected, call to form project groups.  Brainstormed themes, style, and timeline.  No group was found.

Week 3- A single person hops on board the group project, though is tied to another group and has a busy schedule. A meeting is setup, and exact topics are selected and schedules formalized.  I come up with Global Warming, Security vs. Privacy, and Free Speech rights focusing on the banning of an NFL player over a gay slur. Mahria adds UN Political Hypocrisy to complete a list of 4 topics for pursuit.  The final style of the project is decided to be akin to Penn & Teller’s Bullshittelevision series.

Week 4- Little progress is made by either member, meetings are rescheduled on account of additional work encountered by Mahria.  Target interviewees are discussed in general with the goal of researching individuals by the next weekend.

Week 5- Mahria informs me that scheduling has become impossible, and devotes full attention to original group.  No progress is made on the project, and the project is shelved.  Inquiries are made about joining Mahria’s group.

Week 6-  Mahria’s group is joined.  No tentative schedule is formed, I offer to do anything and whatever they need me to do, though no specific task is assigned.  I begin exploring email providers to form a recommended list for senior citizen’s ease of learning.

Week 7- Several group meetings, though the group is still dealing in generalities.  I contemplate withdrawing from the course, but remain after requesting that the group assign tasks and deadlines so that the project can actually start.  I am tasked with designing a logo, assisting with interviews, and helping to draft interview questions.

Week 8-  Logo completed, though the group leader wishes to have a realistic version.  I fall sick causing two interviews to be rescheduled to the following week.

Week 9- I help film the interviews with Professor Loges and Dorbolo, and finish the variant logo using realistic elements.  Group leader states that it is unnecessary to interview him about the projects overarching goals and purpose, eliminating one of the few concrete tasks I had planned to do in this project.  I am of course, somewhat apprehensive, and continue offering help with whatever is needed.

Week 10- I await the call to assist in video editing, though expect it to be unnecessary.  All I can do is cross my fingers at this point.  Alas, the call has come in, one hour before a meeting the day before it is due, only to find that we are without a clear story line/board to place the footage in.  Players in panic mode, and myself wondering “why wasn’t I called on to help?”.  Can’t help with editing as it’s all being done on John’s laptop, can’t help with the webpage, as McKenzie has that under control, and the graphic I had created is no longer likely to be used.  Just another day in a crummy week.

By Marhia Zook

Earlier in the term I made a post about how I would be doing two final projects…  Completely thought that I would be able to have that locked down—I was completely wrong.  That young idea was squashed before it even started.  There was no way it was going to happen.  I’m not so sure anyone could pull off working on two of these projects.  The initial state of the term and our glorious delusions about how the current term will somehow be different from others—where you’re dragging yourself, legs exhausted and limp behind you across the finish line, praying that you will just pass—proved futile as always. 

I am certainly content with this, however, because of the quality experience I have gotten out of our “Bridging the Gap” project.  Let me just start by saying that none of this has been easy—nothing about a group project has ever been.  You bring together individuals who are going fifty different directions, and probably have other group projects with individuals who are all going fifty different directions, mix that with food deprivation and personal attachment and you damn near have the emotional equivalent of an A-bomb. 

Fortunately, for how limited our time was together as a group, we have pulled through well.  Everyone took the initiative and got assignments done on their own, which is huge!  It hasn’t been a situation where one person is left having everything dropped on them at the last minute because nobody else ever checked in and completed their assignments.  Having this was key because we were so limited on time that we could actually come together and collaborate as a unit, that the need for people to go out and interview and gather information on their own or just as a pair at the last minute was crucial. 

What we have learned about the topic we have ventured into was as well surprising.  We came into the project with the same—call it stereotypical, perhaps—idea that senior citizens had no clue of how to navigate themselves through new media and the internet.  They are so scared of it and need to be shown why it is so valuable and why they “MUST” use it…  Well, we had two professors who told us that this just really isn’t so—at least not holistically.  We learned that senior citizens as well just don’t feel a large need for some new media, or they just use it for different reasons other than social networking ( e.g., searching health-related topics).  Through my interviews with Bill Loges, Professor in New Media Communications and Sociology, and Jon Dorbolo, Professor in Philosophy and Associate Director of TAC (Technology Across the Curriculum), I learned that the problem—assuming we should even be calling it a problem—isn’t so simple as senior citizens are terrified of new media and technology.  I learned that the use and purpose of use across the generations is where the difference lies.  Certainly there are things right now that kids ten years behind me are growing up with that I would look at and consider completely unnecessary and useless.  These two professors really helped me put this into perspective, as to not write a certain group off as illiterate to a technology and its potential uses simply because their uses and outlook on whether or not it is or isn’t useful to them simply because it is different than mine. 

So where I came into this project with a complete outlook that our theory was completely accurate and the project would end up being of benefit to seniors really turned around and has become more of a benefit to those of us who are misinterpreting this assumed digital divide, or at least can now see it in a different light.  This has been the most exciting part about this project to me.  I started off thinking that I knew, but I didn’t, and instead I learned.  That is really priceless and I hope that all of my future work in this field provides such a fruitful experience.  And it has changed how I look at how to conduct an interview and how to report and tell a story in general.  You have to be unbiased.  It’s all about the information.  You can have your opinion and assumptions but you have to be willing to accept what transpires through the unfolding of the story as the facts are revealed.