Robin Lindeen-Blakeley

I met Ari when she was in high school and I was a sponsor for a youth group through my church. At a regional event retreat she was assigned to my group of about 10 teenagers with another adult leader. From this introduction I remember her as a beautiful and caring kid. And yes, she still is as kind and grown as a talented adult about 15 years later.
Through the years our paths have crossed many times through her friendship between our families, but lately, I interviewed her and we caught up at lunch along with her lovely six-year old daughter after not seeing them for a couple of years.
Ari Harris has been involved with teaching for many years and is a singer-songwriter with a repertoire of folk and meditative music. Please give a listen to her on SoundCloud at https://on.soundcloud.com/3nLyg and also to her band at https://on.soundcloud.com/PzPvB
I am watching her confidence and talent grow through the years and am excited to see her living her dream in the Portland area with beautiful music. Looking forward to seeing her at a venue near me soon.

I am reviewing my blogging life.

I have started a new website for the first time ever to develop an online presence. My hope is to be able to transfer my old blog to this website and continue my work in progress. This most recent class I am taking for OSU is ART 451, and it has reminded me that I need goals! One goal I am seeking is a review of my blogging and incorporating it into this project by seeing if my farsighted dream of using my musical voice is even a possibility. Is it real or imagined?

I have been looking at S.M.A.R.T. goals and this is what I came up with as my initial goal:

• I would like to use my voice in song as a feminist advocate, as a singer in a choir, or as a substitute teacher in a K-12 classroom. Truth be told, I would go so far as to be a backup singer in a band.
• Here is the deal. I want to accomplish the joy of music as a way to give musical voice to peaceful protests, spiritual venues, or even entertainment venues, or as a classroom teacher learning with children. My voice is not so great singularly, but I love to sing, especially harmonies.
• Since I am presently working full-time in administrative support at a public K-12 school and I am 18 or so credits away from graduating with a BA in WGSS/ED, I may have to work seriously on this goal after I retire in 1.5-5 years, or after I graduate, whichever comes first!
• I will measure progress by being able to connect with an audience in a march, church, bar, concert/theatre or school setting.
• My skills need to be polished. I have not sung in a choir or taken voice lessons for many years. By connecting with musicians I can get the rust off. My motivation is the love I have of spreading a message through voice, either as a cheerleader/chanter, songstress/singer, or hummer/whistler.
• By setting this goal now, my seeking another career or life journey in this new medium is underway and relevant.

“I will use my voice in song as a feminist, and vocalist in a group to spread the joy of music in marches/protests, spiritual venues or classrooms for learning opportunities and connections by 2024-2027.”

Robin Lindeen-Blakeley, October 2022

So here I am blogging like a “pro” and three months ago all I had ever done was read other peoples blogs.  I am feeling rather accomplished at all the technical skills I have learned this quarter in Gender and Technology.

I find it exciting to know the difference between a post and a page.  Concepts like these were “Greek” to me in week one of spring quarter 2014.  I learned so much more technology than I have ever before and the fun part was combining it with gender studies.  This is a topic I am becoming more passionate about as the second OSU WGSS class I have taken, and the third class in my Ecampus career.

The knowledge I learned in this class will take me further in my job skills, and in my personal life.  It has given me the confidence to know that I can learn new things and that persistence pays off, even as an older student going back to school as a junior.  This course was challenging in all kinds of ways, especially when I wanted so badly to have someone show me physically how to do something.  But the written directions were valuable for me to hone my detail skills even further.

I will use screenshots and spreadsheets to communicate online in the future.  Embedded hyperlinks are like taking a “cake walk” now, and I struggled with it at first.  However, I’ve learned a lot about the nuances of different internet browsers and how to accomplish more success with Blackboard with the right system compatibility.

All in all my classmates were wonderful partners in learning and critiquing and the class was structured very well.  Thanks to Professor Van Londen for being a very honest and helpful teacher.  This is by far the most work I’ve put into a three credit class yet, but it was well worth the effort.

I know it might be a little late, but I like the motto ” better late than never.”  So I added an RSS feed to my blog today.  I can see current technology news and hopefully will receive some extra credit points.

It feels like I’ve accomplished something more in my WGSS 320 Gender and Technology class, yet again.  I used Google News and was able to follow instructions for adding my feed and saving it.  I did name it technology as opposed to “Technology and Gender News”.  I hope that still works.  I think I became a little too excited about my progress without being succinct with the directions.  So I also decided to try to update the name.

And I’m not done recapping the course yet M. VanLonden!  Presently enjoying my first day of vacation in beautiful Central Oregon.  Life is good, albeit busy.

A list of my greatest dreams:

Retire by age 67+

Travel the globe

Promote world peace, maybe with activism to help establish the U.S. Department of Peace or policy to ignite the United States Institute of Peace

Build my cottage at the coast – has to have a porch, big area for sewing projects, be made of environmentally friendly construction and utility operations

Advocate for family friendly social policies

This new post will address whether the subject of my Gender Lens Project warrants further activism.  I chose the urinalysis test strip for my subject.  My research has found that it is a gender neutral medical product, so I do not believe further activism on that front is necessary.

Marketing is not an issue with this product.  It is widely distributed and known about in the medical community.  The household consumer might be better educated about it and then over the counter retail marketing would be more widespread.

Better recycling options are one area that could warrant further activism.  If the test strips could be made of something other than plastic, like recyclable plastics and the human urine on them could be disposed of so as not to be hazardous, the product would be a candidate for recycling.

There are many manufacturers of this product as well as many levels of specification and design.  With the high amount of emphasis on reuse, reduce and recycle of products for our ecosystems, it will be a matter of time before someone invents or introduces a more ecology-friendly urinalysis test strip that doesn’t go to the landfill.

I’ve begun to research and analyze a piece of technology, the urinalysis strip test.  Now to blog about it as requested under 7.5 instructions from Week 7 of WGSS 320 Gender and Technology class.

• Research Success and Problems

Successes:

(a) I’ve found lots of research sites and materials, all through the OSU Library.  I am always amazed at the resources it has to offer.  It’s fun to investigate and find sources.

(b) made it this far….making the grades.

Problems:

(a) how to sort through the myriad of pages to find what it is I will write about,  specifically organizing a thoughtful paper in the way it can be done through the Gender Lens perspective.

(b) become technically savvy enough to do better on this project than the Cultural Research Project.  This is my challenge, as I seem to have difficulty at times on Blackboard Learn.  I’m not sure if it is me or the application.  I am having better success using Google Chrome as my browser, but wonder sometimes if Windows 8 or my internet provider/connection is not always optimal.

(c) I’m still feeling like I am getting up to speed on “how to do school again” with pursuing my degree, doing full-time work and this being my third class with Ecampus.

• Contact with the librarians

I went to the link that Professor Van Londen had included under 2. Ask Other subject librarians, and found more ways to research under the OSU Library.  There are Research Guides with Course/Subject lists.  I found a subject librarian under public health, and it took me to the website Oregon.gov, which I use at work as well.  I found a guideline form which is pertinent to my subject.

• Saving resources the bibliography tool of your choice

I’m using OneNote 2013.  I’m not sure it is the best tool, but it is part of my computer software package.

As I continue to research for my Cultural Research Project, I’ve found all kinds of sources for my project. I’ve even found how easy it is to find something once, and then not be able to find that same source again. But fortunately, librarians are there to help.

One source of information I found on my topic during continued resource hunting is on microfiche in the Valley Library. I thought I would have to make a special trip to Corvallis in order to take copies from the microfiche reader, at a price per copy, as it said it could not be checked out of the library. But then, I realized our professor asked us to contact a reference librarian to fill in any specific questions we had. So I thought, maybe I should ask if there was a way that someone could copy the information for me and send it out like the other books and materials that can be checked out of the library and shipped to me directly via FedEx or postal or other shipping service.

As luck would have it, I emailed the Ecampus librarian and hit the jackpot with her response. She said

“You can request them through Interlibrary Loan https://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/ill

If it’s some specific articles, we scan them and mail them to you. If it’s the whole fiche, then we will mail the fiche and you would need to mail it back. You will need a microfiche reader on your end. It sounds like it’s specific articles so we can scan those. You’ll get an email when they are ready. Just follow the link in the email.”

I really appreciate all the resources that are so easily available for Ecampus students through the OSU library. Now I know how the Interlibrary works too. It was an easy form to fill out from the link and I expect an email tomorrow or soon regarding when I should see them at my house or maybe just emailed to me. All of this research helps me understand technology and its uses even better.

From the continued research sources for finding the biographical, cultural, statistical and technological details I’ve used the OSU library databases the most, but have also used EBSCO Women Studies International, Google Scholar, and The Library of Congress Science Reference Services to find most of my materials online. I was also able to use Google Play Store, and Powells.com to order some fairly cheap source material as well.

My initial ideas about this topic for my blog and writing about it are:

1.  It took me a while to figure out how to even get to my blog spot and login, I am learning.

2.  I have now learned to add a new post.  I did also read about settings.  Now I need to create categories for future posts.

3.  This topic will hopefully make me more social and I’ll be able to blog about how I have constructed my blog site.

4.  Keep learning by repeating steps and following instructions.  I have an urge to dwell too much on it, but I think I have to learn more by doing than thinking about it, so that it becomes more familiar.  I think it is like taking baby steps where you just keep getting up after falling down.  The more you practice the more it makes sense and becomes second nature.

5.  On to my “assign it a category” learning, but first I think I need to publish so here goes, I’m hitting the publish button.

6.  Maybe a little soon on the publish button, but it’s nice to know I can update.  Have moved my categories up to under the “update” button, since I think it as close to the publish button as I can be now.  Have added the categories as assigned on the right side.  When I post weekly, the posts will go into one of these categories.  Right now I have only Uncategorized blog posts.  Sidebars categories will appear when I assign my posts a category.  Hitting update, as now I remember the tips say to save and save often.  Then I’m going to home page to see what it looks like.  No more room on this post?  Not exactly, it just keeps scrolling, but for visual, I think I want to keep my posts within about 300 words.

7.  I like that edit button on the view post page.

8.  I redefined the uncategorized post category to say Set Up.  My week 1 blog is now categorized there.  I have to figure out how to get this week’s post to show up there as well.  This is my next task.  Success.  I went to my categories page and found the post, hit edit, unchecked the boxes except for the Set Up box.  This was all done pretty intuitively.  I think I’m beginning to like this blogging technology!  On to adding pages for future projects.

9.  Pages set up.  Time for a break, i.e. fix some food for future brain power to continue these assignments.  Publish at a later blog time, logging out for now.

10.  I chose my theme, Sea Shores, as it suits my style.  But I don’t think it met requirement.  It has two sidebars.  I love the ocean, but I need to find something else.  I settled on a different theme that has only one sidebar.  It is not as pretty, but more basic and should work.  Double checking now.

11. Some things are so obvious, but if you think too literally about the widgets, you might not figure it out. For example, you won’t find a widget labeled links. Professor Van Londen made that clear in her announcement, but until I realized that, I had added two widgets I didn’t need. Also, I thought the meta tab would have a login option. But alas, I think logout, is part of the same widget for login? I hope I’m right on these.

12. I added descriptions to the post categories to define them there.

A recap of my writing a new post so far, at least I’m in the right spot.

The email signature was not too tough, but then I have already had experience with Google mail at work, so just another way to practice for the school email account.

I do like listening to web pages with my computer’s text-to-speech function, but I am more of a visual learner, so haven’t used it again since figuring it out as part of our assignment.

Time to publish this!