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 * Ingredients to my reflection for Mark:**
 * **THEATRES*2450**
 * **Class W/10**
 * **Students of influence=40**
 * **Professor Mark Lipton**
 * **important, not-to-be-missed reference: http://approaches2mediastudies-m-lipton-w2010.wikispaces.com/**
 * <3** Dear Mark Lipton + my theatres classmates: **<3**

Social media is a revolutionary technology that promotes, free open dialogues with everyone across the globe. In our unforgettable class of constant share, input and participation with each other, I have learned to value the creative ideas from everyone as ideas of friction which can be constant and being open to the possibility of constant improvisation.

Social media is a community access to free education. Contrary to the capitalism ideology of most Western society, it improves and brings an evolutionary generation of bricolage and remix in encouraging original share of ideas. This system of bricolage and improvisation works best when everyone receives respect or treats their counterpart strangers, their online community of participants with respect, despite the lack of transparency that our computer screen provides – the lack of face-to-face interaction. This was best understood with the video that Andrei shared about Chatroulette (explained): []

In the conclusion of the video, the author poses a great question of one of the problems that the online social webcam utility/site has – he brings up the issue of apathy in the ability to “click” away your counterpart stranger on the Chatroulette social site. It is a problem that may increase online apathy in respecting our counterpart social conversers when we’re online. Although maybe Darwin would argue that this lies within our evolutionary characteristic of shallowness in judging our fellow community members by their immediate outlook.

According to Mr. Darwin, the symmetry in a person’s face would most likely represent a good health and not to mention good turnout of genes should one decide to give off to babies. That point of evolutionary benefits is almost flawless to me, but if we are to create a cohesive, evolutionary working online community, I think we need to really respect our computer-screen away //others// who are interacting with us. Even, if it’s just a computer/virtual projection of other people’s self, and a real self at that! Even, if we have that power of clicking away social awkwardness away with a button at a second’s speed. I think, to perpetuate and improve a community of online interaction, we have to come to face with all the awkwardness just as in-face-to-face. Even, if it’s just online interaction with a 2-D screen...well, I'm hoping that there isn't already a 3-D interaction with a computer screen. As social networks spread and become popularized, it is important that this problem is addressed to prevent apathy online. It is in this way that an online community of respect and humanity can be achieved.

With the popularity of online social media share and utility tools or websites, I think there is a clear, solid emergence of market for online security to assist in solving the problematic of the online world’s lack of transparency. The success of a website lies within a safe community and thus a safe, secured transaction in sharing of ideas. As I have learned from you, there is no absolute guarantee in “safe spaces”. It is only how you learn to cope with the situation, how to best adapt to that situation which we are always forced to come to face with – that one may in order, come out with a successful coping strategy to revolutionize the further problematic situation we may all have to struggle with later on without warning – as that’s how life usually tends to go.

There is something else I have learned from an author in another course that have been intimately related to your class - it is my English class called “Literature and Social Change”. The reading //Pedagogy of Hope// by Paulo Freire suggests an improvisatory argument to the dilemma of “safe spaces” both in the community and can also be applied to the possibility of fostering the safest online social media community of sharing creative ideas. With the open invitation of free edit and participation, we should foster respect for each other’s ideas yet at the same time providing critical feedback to improve and to adapt to each other’s ideas.

Freire, in his conversational dialogue with his readers, proposes a solution that successful education should be interactive, and one of the ingredients in achieving this successful, constant, interactive sharing (similar to the online concept of bricolage) should be in a common ability to empathize with our other person’s diverse situations in order that we successfully create a state of critical //conscientização////. It hit me when I heard you say: “I have made myself vulnerable at the end of this course, and this is what I have intended.” (Not those exact words but I hope I've gotten the core idea down.) It was then that I understood, or maybe just partly came to partial understanding (since all things should be progressive) of your pedagogy. It is also what Freire attempted to define in his proposed idea of a working pedagogy in real// // education (rather than professed or, one-way education). Freire says education has to be dialogical, and this means in constant interaction with all of us. And to be able to successfully dialogue in education, the basis of dialogue lies within confidence in the other party – being able to trust the other person who you are conversing and interacting with in sharing of ideas. //

// The way you have encouraged us to participate in your experimental class is a great example (I'm SO proud that I made such a wise choice..hahahahaha). The class has been a good process of experiencing and understanding the underlying core concepts of successful social media participation as well as effective, revolutionary pedagogy, contrary to the systematized benchmarks a university institution submerges academia members in. //

// There is also something else of value I’ve learned that I’d like to re-emphasize and echo. I think it is very important in a partial solution of attitude to marginalization or oppression. You always emphasize to us that there is only a limit by imagination. This is an uplifting realization for everyone who thinks//// they are voiceless. It is just as Richard Rodriguez says in his personal essay of Complexion//// : “What made me different from them was an attitude of mind,// // my imagination of myself.” - this is his realization, yet a realization important to waking up the oppressed condition of the working-class, no-status workers called // //los pobores// he had been differentiating himself with. // To conclude, our being and existence has only one limit, and it is a limit in perception. With this kind of realization, we can prevent decay in minds and release the fetters of the marginalized. //