Ann P. Bishop's article, "Public Libraries and Networked Information Services in Low-Income Communities," focuses on low-income, African American mothers. Researchers asked the question "what do they want?" and came to find that they sought information about health, parenting, and education. It was found that these individuals don't really care how they get that information, they just want it in order to take care of the bigger priorities in life. The people trying to help the community overlooked this. They discovered that what should be done is to figure out what each communities specific situation is, and determine what specific help to give them.
This can be related to "Legacy" in that the family in the documentary happens to be mainly African American mothers, trying to raise their family the best they can. The main focus of the movie is not how they can be helped by being given public access to information, but rather how they struggle to find jobs and earn a living. Their main priority to them is the success of their family, and they do not often take advantage of computer access given to them, as they are preoccupied with taking care of their children. This is a perfect example of what could be done: help give them information that they need about health, parenting, and education.
Video Reflection
14 years ago
Ann Bishop's article discusses several things that appear in the movie "Legacy." Bishop's article was about a study done in 1999 of low income, single, African American moms struggling to provide for their families. This is also the setting in the movie as a single mother attempts to find a steady job and income in order to get off welfare. The Bishop article shows some of the problems of single parent life that make it extremely challenging to find the time to obtain a quality education and seek meaningful employment. Another similarity between the movie and the article is that Bishop's article mentions the value of networks. "Legacy" demonstrates this value as the grandma joins a support group to try and get over her drug addiction. Bishop's article and "Legacy" provide a unique perspective on the struggles of impoverished, single parent families and emphasize the importance of getting a good education.
ReplyDeleteIn Christian Sandvig's article, he discusses three major initiatives to enabling Internet access for children in inner cities. The first major initiative identified is just that "Ensuring Access for the Underprivileged". In this section, Sandvig discussed the concept of universal service, which encourages greater technological access for everyone. In the article, Christian explains that this is similar to the idea of universal education--signifying for both that universal service and education are no longer a goal but an expectation (pp. 172-173).
ReplyDeleteThese ideas of universal service, and especially universal education, are highly relevant to the video "Legacy", as Nicole realizes that she must get the education she needs to fight the hardships her mom faces due to a lack of education. In the video, Nicole's mom is proud to know (in a bittersweet way, I guess) that her bad habits have instilled self-motivating characteristics in Nicole to get out of the projects. It it with universal education that can help struggling inner city kids like Nicole move past the major obstacles they face and make success and education an expectation rather than a goal. It is with the help of her school that Nicole can get access to education to help her achieve bigger things that can be achieved in the projects. By implementing universal education, her siblings and cousins can make success more of an expectation than a goal as well.
the jaeger article carries a theme of looking underneath the surface to find a deeper, clearer more accurate picture. This mentality can be applied to the movie. initially it looks as if the mother is just another lazy person who has lots of kids, watches tv all day while relying on welfare for all income and support. Looking deeper she has much larger problems than that. she was born of a mother who struggled to make it as well so she doesn't have all of the socio-economic benefits that a large portion of americans have, she is stuck in the welfare cycle. she also had children when she was young and therefore did not get to finish high school or even think about college. she wants to have a job and a life but she does not have a courage or self-esteem to make it happen. it is not until she feels like she belongs in teaching that she really gets the enthusiasm and confidence needed to pursue a life off of welfare. so while on the surface she may seem lazy and unwilling but looking closer she was not and she need the proper tools as well as enabling situation to break out of the welfare cycle
ReplyDeleteAnn Bishop's article is about a study of low-income African American single mothers that are supporting their families. The movie "Legacy" is similar in that it, too, is about how a struggling single African American mother tries to support her family and give her kids a better life than what she had. The article talks about how the women lacked the education to use the internet and it showed what the single mothers need in order to find employment is child care services. This is the same for Nicole's mother in "Legacy" because her mother had opportunities to get a job but becaeuse she did not have anyone to look after her youngest children, she was unable to make the interview and didn't get the job.
ReplyDeleteChristian Sandvig's article describes how their are attempts to filter material in libraries to prevent children from watching pornography. He argues that pornography were not common sites for children. Most children used sites to play games or chat. Sites with pornography were rare. Sometimes when pornography did appear, the name of the site was a misspelling of another site. Children who visited a pornographic site did not enter past the first page. Sandvig argues that since pornography it is rare, it is not worth it to filter because the children could lose access to educational sites.
ReplyDeleteThis relates to the job fair in "Legacy". Nicole's mother needed to find a job. She need as much information as she could get. The job fair opened up some opportunities. If there was a real life filter like the one proposed to libraries and school, then Nicole's mother would have less opportunities to get a job.
There are many parallels between Bishop's article and the Legacy video, but the major theme that jumped out at me in both articles is the idea of priority and time management. Bishop believes that one of the driving forces behind the African American woman in her study being so far behind with information technology is that it is not very high on their priority list. There are so many more important things at the forefront of their minds like putting food on the table, childcare/school and simply making a steady income. All these things take precedent before over getting to an information technology center and learning how to use these resources. This was also evident in the Legacy video, when the mother misses her computer training course because she couldn't find someone to get the kids from school and was working so she was always too busy. The simple daily needs that the woman in both the Bishop article and the video are too overbearing to ever have the time to utilize information technology.
ReplyDeleteTo add to the previous comment, the Bishop article also compares ICT access in the home to public ICT access. Bishop explains that many African-American women cannot regularly use public ICT sources because of the inconvenience of location or time conflicts. As said in the previous comment, this is shown in Legacy when the mother has to drop out of her computer training course due to a conflict with her duties as a single mother. The article explains that when ICTs are available in the homes of people like the mother in Legacy, information is much more accessible and tasks become easier to accomplish. If the mother had a computer in her home she would be able to access information in many examples that she otherwise had great trouble finding. Online computer training would allow her to gain the computer skills she wanted whenever was most convenient for her. Also, job information would be much more available online and she would not have to travel to job fairs that may or may not have job information suitable for her.
ReplyDeleteOne of the Bishop article's main points was that single African American mothers would like to use the internet for very practical purposes -- healthcare, employment, education, information on places to go for the best deals, and the like. In Legacy, the women in the family (all single African American mothers) are attempting to overcome addiction, find jobs, ensure education for the children, and move out of the bad neighborhood they'd been living in. Had these women been educated in using the internet and been given computers with an internet connection, they would likely have had an easier time finding the information and resources that they needed.
ReplyDeleteA particularly important idea from Ann Bishop's article is that building community networks (outside of the library) can potentially have positive implications for underdeveloped neighborhoods.
ReplyDelete"Legacy," the film from class demonstrated the importance of this in two ways. The first demonstration is Nicole's relationship with older community members. Having a solid network with adults in the community provided her with additional opprotunities to learn about financial aid for college. Secondly, for Nicole's mother, having community services that were applicable to her situation allowed her to explore job opprotunities. This exposure eventually led her to the successful acquistion of her job as a kindegarten instructor.
In Bishop's article, she pointed out that many of these single African American mothers in her study wanted to use the internet for very simple needs. She also points out that many of these women don't use ICT's because they are inconvenient to use because of the location of them. In "Legacy", the mother of this family was struggling to find a job and also child care while she was away. Had she been able and educated on how to use the internet, she probably would have been able to find both of these much easier and quicker.
ReplyDeleteAnn Bishop's article focuses on single, African-American mothers and their use of information technology. Their use of the Internet and computers is much different than for someone like a well-established businessman -- they're using ICT for simpler needs like employment, health care, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe movie 'Legacy' is the story of three generations of African-American women in the same family, and the struggles they go through because of their lack of resources. The grandmother, Wanda, and Nickole's mother are all single mothers, and are at a disadvantage because they haven't grown up with or been exposed to technology. Nickole attends a private school and is able to learn how to use computers and the Internet there, and this is probably one of the reasons that she and her family are able to turn their lives around and make progress.
Anne Bishop's ideas are exemplified throughout the film legacy. The article largely focuses on the needs vs. the wants of communities in terms of seeking information. But how did the film legacy key into this? I thought what was most related, was the mother's search for a job. She saw the internet as a barrier to gettting a job. She didn't know how to work a computer, so she felt incompetent entering the highly technological work force. The internet wasn't thought of as in terms of leisure or fun, but rather as a way to achieve sucess in the market, in the professinal world. I feel if the internet is marketed as something that is fun, to communities that don't have it, it will become a priority in life, similar to that of teevision. It shouldn't be seen as a luxury item that can be cut from the long list of expenses, but rather as a necessity.
ReplyDeleteAnn Bishop's article "Public Libraries and Networked Information Services in Low-Income Communities" had a main focus on African American women in low income communities. These women needed to use technology for reasons that would better their lives and of others in their community. Their goals may have been simple, upgrades in healthcare, employment and education, but upgrades in technology would vastly improve their lives. It shows us exactly what is lacking in the lives of these women including the technological education needed to improve their lives. "Legacy" can be seen as very similar as it is about a single African American woman dealing with the struggles of motherhood and the goal of giving her children everything that would give them a better life then what she grew up with. In the movie, the mother had opportunities for jobs, yet because she was unable to get someone to watch her young children, she couldnt make it to the interview and as a result, couldnt get the job. The internet in the movie was seen as a hindrance in her advancement, an as we saw with the A.Bishop article, a little help and education for these women could go a long way.
ReplyDeleteLegacy was simliar to bishops article in that they both had to do with african american familes "trapped in urban poverty". I think Legacy made a visual for the issue of these families being trapped, with no way out of the cycle of poverty. You could really see how it was an endless cycle, however.....it seemed that her child got out of the cycle, by hard work and going to school. This was sort of inspirational and a sign of how education can help end poverty........i feel we just need the establishement, funding and teachers to do so.
ReplyDeleteP.T Jaeger’s article talks that how policy is reflected and utilized in Internet access of public libraries. In the article, writer introduces policies and supports in government scale, which affect Internet access.
ReplyDeleteOne particularly interesting point that I found from this article was how the government policy moved their focus from “digital divide” to “digital inclusion.” This means if the past policy was made to provide more people to actually have an access to Internet, now they focus on observing what level of access people use. This decision seems not realistic for me.
In the video “Legacy,” the family was struggling because they cannot afford basic needs; therefore, Internet access was not their priority. In addition, their mother could not even attend job training because she had to take care of family. Community seemed lack of connection among community members as well. That family needs solution for their lives, not the Internet access. On the other hand, this is an extreme example of digital divide, which the government is missing.