Please answer ONE of the following questions:

In what way did using I.M.O.W.’s Community Forum Threads enhance your educational experience?

Explain how one particular exhibit/story was useful for illustrating, deepening, or illuminating an issue covered in class.

The posts that the class made on blackboard were more informative than responding to a question on an individual basis because they offered the ability to see what each other student posted. On that same note, the I.M.O.W. posts were even more rewarding because they were not limited to the individuals enrolled in our class. It was interesting to see the responses from others in the I.M.O.W. community because they respond to the question without the influence of class discussion and, in so doing, offer a different perspective on each issue. It’s easy to fall into the habit of regurgitating class discussion without noticing, rather than responding to a question directly. It’s helpful to see fresh responses to questions based only on the exhibits themselves, without the influence of what we have all gone over in class. This environment allowed me to better understand the questions themselves as well. It’s easy to misinterpret the meaning of a given discussion question and having a broader community of individuals responding worked as a catching system to help avoid tangents as well as repetition in answers.
There were also, of course, benefits to the I.M.O.W. experience, independent from how it affected the class. The exhibits were all interesting and there was a variety of different information to browse through. Being able to read posts made by others who have a better command of the subject helped to enrich the information I read about in each exhibit. Politics, recent history, and current events viewed through the lens of the women’s experience is a new academic environment for me and it really helped to hear what more experienced individuals drew from each article.

This semester-long assignment was the first time I ever "blogged" on a website. I found it exciting and more interesting than any other regular reading assignment or essay. Another important thing I learned was to read and take into account classmates' opinions before considering yours. I taught me to share perspective on issues and that it was ok to debate against. The interactive aspect of the forum was a brand new way for me to learn. Until this semester, I didn't bother asking myself what other people's take on issues assigned were. We would all individually turn in our essays and that would be the end of it. Now we get a chance to understand different opinions from different perspectives and backgrounds. Really cool!

For me getting to interact with the IMOW exhibitions and forums was an exciting way to connect the ideas and stories we were learning about in class to the real world. Of course the issues we learn about in class are reality, but reading the different IMOW stories and responding in the present made it all seem much more accessible and relate able. Another exciting thing about being able to use IMOW was the way in which it was constantly overlapping with not only our in class material, but my service learning as well. This helped build up my understanding and knowledge in a wider and more global scope. As a guinea pig experiment I think the whole thing went really well and not only contributed to expanding my education, it was extremely inspiring. It made it easier to learn about all the struggles and problems of gender and politics then be able to turn around ans read about what is happening and being done to help!

When posting on the I.M.O.W’s Community Forum Threads I always felt as though I was taking the concepts I learned in the classroom, and applied them when reading the current articles of the exhibit. I enjoyed the experience of having outside perspectives interact with our Gender Politics’ usual bloggers. I am convinced that the I.M.O.W’s Community Forum Threads truly did enhance my educational experience because the exhibition correlated so perfectly to the material of our class. It was a pleasure reading the various articles of each month’s exhibition and keeping myself updated. The I.M.O.W provided an alternative mode of engaging with the subject of gender issues that was easier to connect with and understand (especially because of the photos and video clips). Building on this, I felt that we were contributing to the idea of voicing the issues of those women who cannot and this was a fulfilling sensation. In actuality, having the well-organized exhibitions each month made all the themes we discussed in class come together more clearly. Hopefully the students who choose to take this course in the future have the same opportunity to become apart of the I.M.O.W’s community and have the same enjoyable educational experience as I did.

The story “Kidnapping a Candidate,” illuminated the issues that a lot of Latin American countries are currently dealing with or have dealt with in the past. I thought it was a very interesting exhibition because prior to reading it, I knew very little about Ingrid Betancourt. Learning about her struggle, and persistent fighting against the rebels definitely interested me, and later, helped me gain a better understanding of all of Latin America. When we discussed women’s movements throughout other countries in Latin America, I saw a lot of similarities to Betancourt’s struggles. Many of the groups grew from similar issues as Betancourt’s, like corruption of government, dangerous rebel groups, and the kidnapping and killing of innocent people. The idea of “militant motherhood” reminded me a lot of Ingrid Betancourt because of the powerful advocacy and the fearless pursuit of justice when going up against dangerous, powerful men. Ingrid Betancourt used very risky tactics, like handing out condoms and Viagra, to get her message across. Women’s movements in other countries also took risks, like Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, coming together to speak out against the kidnappings in Argentina. I loved that both Betancourt and Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, were not solely promoting advances for women, but working towards justice for all of their country’s people.
I also felt that the exhibit gave me more appreciation for El Grupo Cultural Yuyachkni’s performance of Antigona, because having a better understanding helped me make connections between the main character, Antigone and the past struggles of Latin American women. The “Kidnapping a Candidate,” story gave me a much deeper understanding of the Latin American Women’s movements and I am glad I had the opportunity to read about such a phenomenal women, setting the tone for the rest of my discoveries about Latin America.

I agree with Chenoa, that interacting with others on the community discussion board was exciting in itself. I liked how the forum threads challenged my own views and pushed me to think critically about the various articles throughout the semester. I enjoyed reading the numerous posts about the exhibits, posted by the community. The community posts also helped me understand and become interested in their personal views. I think that it is important to know both sides of the story in order to make, my personal arugment, stronger. I also enjoyed reading the differnt posts on topics relating to women in politics and what those women are actively doing to improve the situation in their community; I found these articles most empowering. IMOW showed me that women can make a difference and that alone is inspirational. What would we do without strong women in the world?

The idea of an online museum is a very useful instrument for educational purposes. The facts that this museum is open for any comments and shared knowledge, and that it is able to gather people around a highly discussed topic with different backgrounds and ideas I think are extremely effective regards to enhance one’s educational experience. The problems, issues raised in the museum are discussed upon a nice amount of information provided by the staff with almost a never-ending chain of information packages. This helps a lot having the platform for start conversation and raise awareness. Given that the forums are active and international the topics are becoming alive and bring us closer to practical understanding as well apart from the knowledge and information provided by the exhibitions. I have never experienced this kind of device so closely. It seems to me that it is very efficient and inspirational. All the heavy issues raised in the museum are becoming lose through the opportunity that the museum provides online, that experts and students, women in power and women without power are forming common understanding.

The I.M.O.W's community forum goes hand in hand with our class work and further enhances the understanding of global persepctives. Just like the belief of Girls Helping Girls organization, the internet and this forum has opened more windows for me to understand not just a particular group of women but more importantly, the barriers and challenges that global women face as a whole. Thanks to the convenieces of our modern technology, I was able to read and watch many of the activists interviews through the forum without actually being present there. If I was unclear about any blogs or interviews, this forum allows me to read and analyze over and over again which is a great help for my reflections. Personally, I feel as if I am participating in a classroom with an extensive amount of international students contributing to different ideas and providing solutions for a way forward. As many people bring many different perspectives to the table, I am being assured that I would not be blindsighted in my reflections.

I found posting on I.M.O.W’s website to be much more interesting than posting on the regular blackboard site. IMOW gave me an opportunity to respond and give my opinion on current day issues regarding women’s rights. I enjoyed how current most of the issues we discussed were; it was much easier to understand the concepts we were learning in class as most of them could be applied to the present day issues we were discussing in the IMOW forums. I also liked how our homework was to talk about and respond to questions and issues that were already being discussed by members of IMOW. This allowed for numerous positions to be presented on certain topics and gave me a better understanding of what people outside of our class think. Most importantly, I felt that all of the threads we were required to respond to were intriguing and almost always debatable. The questions posed by IMOW were often times open ended and left up to us to decide which position to take. The foundation didn’t take a particular side regarding most of the issues which made my learning experience much better, as I was allowed to develop my own opinions about the topics.

I really liked how closely the forum topics reflected what we were discussing in class and also incorporated our reading material. Reading stories about the ways women organize really helped provide me more examples for what we were reading and discussing in class. Being part of an online community also helped contribute to broadening discussions, we had time to discuss and then post or post and then discuss. Threads also gave us the opportunity to really think about what we wanted to say and constructively engage with each other on sensitive information that we are all forming different opinions on. These arguments are also sometimes harder to make in person on-the-spot in class. Interacting with other community members’ ideas also helped broaden the voices I heard and went beyond the already varied perspectives students hold on the exhibited issues. I feel very lucky to have had Professor Friedman and Constanza work so closely to make our course material seamlessly blend into a larger spectrum of women’s voices from the site. I also just like reading from the computer, that might just be a generational thing, but it’s so easy just to click links on the site that connect us to other exhibits with similar topics. Like Seb this was my first blogging experience, I read many, but I have never been part of an online community. I am excited to remain a member of this community and continue posting on exhibits! I am a very visual person, visual learning accompanied with the educational information on the IMOW site was very helpful in my retention of the material.

Having access to I.M.O.W's exhibits and forum threads was extremely beneficial in my own educational growth and personal grasp of material discussed in class. The fresh perspectives of outside participants in the community forum were welcome and helpful in presenting a broad range of ideas and contexts (and they helped to eliminate the "regurgitation" of material that Chenoa mentioned). I also experienced the same overlap that Gretchen talked about: the I.M.O.W. exhibits/class discussions conveniently coordinated with some of my service learning projects, which was extremely useful in developing my own comprehension of the content, particularly with regional issues and contexts. The exhibits chosen for our class were perfectly complimentary to the course material, and covered a diverse mix of topics, which I appreciated. Then again, because of my personal interest in gender and sexuality studies, I found myself reading I.M.O.W. exhibits for fun, and not necessarily because they were assigned or attached to any class activities.

Using an international forum to exchange ideas and information is a perfect example of the type of communication and organization we discussed in class. Because of this fact, I wish that we'd utilized I.M.O.W. more frequently throughout the semester, or perhaps just spent more class time discussing our different exhibit readings. It feels a little to me like we didn't take full advantage of the site as a tool or examine the various possibilities in using this technology (both in the classroom and in the "real world"). Perhaps I just felt somewhat disconnected from I.M.O.W. because we've had to divide our time and attention among so many different resources (lectures, textbook readings, Blackboard postings, I.M.O.W. postings, service learning), and though we engaged with an online community in our posts, it felt more like an individual process than than true exchange or collaborative effort that I know it can be. It seems that many of the students preferred I.M.O.W. postings to Blackboard, either due to reading content or the forum structure; but in translating that to the classroom, I really didn't feel much of a difference in the responses or subsequent discussions. I think that the utilization of I.M.O.W. as a resource in connection to the USF course definitely succeeds as a way to introce and explore alternate ways of sharing information, but on a personal level, at least, I feel that I.M.O.W. enhanced my individual learning experience more than it benefitted my experience in the classroom as part of a collective unit.

I don't think there's much else I have to add, I agree with everyone's points about how valuable the museum exhibits have been. I like that most of them were small snippets, more like reading a newspaper article than an essay, that allowed us to get several perspectives on an issue covered. The one thing I think would have made the forum postings better is more interaction with the IMOW community. Of course what our classmates say is valuable, but that option is already available to us on blackboard or in class, and I think getting different perspectives from people who are looking at these issues for their own education, rather than in an academic context, would have helped develop the discussion.

This semester in Professor Friedman's service learning course, in addition to our posts on I.M.O.W.’s Community Forum Threads, we were required to do weekly posts on BlackBoard (USF's online educational site). With BlackBoard we were reflecting and posting on topics discussed in class but only interacted with our classmates. I found the interaction a larger communities, through I.M.O.W.'s forums, really enhanced my educational experience, exposing me to ideas, concepts and experiences that I might otherwise not have considered. I liked engaging in the hot topic discussions such as the Sarah Palin forum because there were so many opinions and arguments put forth to digest. Participating in I.M.O.W.’s Community Forums has allowed me to 'talk' to an expansive community of people who are similarly interested in the topic of women's roles in society and history.

Without sounding like too much of a brown-noser, i think the IMOW posts and exhibitions perfectly supplemented what was being discussed in class. The exhibitions gave me a clear visual to relate to the scholarly readings we discussed in class. I think the best example of this would be the Sarah Palin blog and posting. I enjoyed reading all of the women’s posts (...maybe there was one man) that discussed what they wanted in female government representative and what Sarah Palin's standings meant for American women. It was a great feeling to know that what most of the women, and myself, wanted was a substantive representative of their needs in office, not just a female. Most of the women reiterated that Palin maybe a women and a mother, but she did not value much of the women's agenda. A common misconception is that all women are fighting for the same things and this came up many times in class, for instance, there is separation in the women from different regions, parties, or religions. luckily for me, I was able to see this issue play out in the blog debates and later when the election results were released.

It was very usefull interm of being introduced to different topics and issues not only that but it makes you as well think about many issues and question it. Not to mention that you are always thinking and try to come up with ideas that people on the page could agree or disagree with you in.