Fresh from the Chronicle of Higher Education's "Wired Campus" column comes the amazing discovery that college students DO NOT want to become friends with their professors on Facebook and they don't want to get "tweets" from their twittering profs.

When Professors Create Social Networks for Classes, Some Students See a 'Creepy Treehouse'

A growing number of professors are experimenting with Facebook, Twitter, and other social-networking tools for their courses, but some students greet an invitation to join professors’ personal networks with horror, seeing faculty members as intruders in their private online spaces. Recognizing that, some professors have coined the term “creepy treehouse” to describe technological innovations by faculty members that make students’ skin crawl.

Here's an (abridged) definition of "creepy treehouse" from Jared Stein, director of instructional-design services at Utah Valley University:

• n. A place, physical or virtual (e.g. online), built by adults with the intention of luring in kids. Example: “Kids … can see a [creepy treehouse] a mile away and generally do a good job in avoiding them.”
  
• n. Any system or environment that repulses a target user due to it’s closeness to or representation of an oppressive or overbearing institution.
  
• n. A situation in which an authority figure or an institutional power forces those below him/her into social or quasi-social situations.
  

Having been a college professor, I can testify that the only group more likely to deceive themselves about being young and hip are people who work in ad agencies.
Maybe profs are hip and young compared to their chronological peers. Or maybe having a captive audience of 18-21 year-olds tends to give you the false impression that you're fascinating.

I created private usenet groups to catch the spillover from class discussions, particularly my graduate seminars, at Case Western Reserve Univ in the early '90s. I asked each student to post once during the month for the experience, even if it was just with a question or a "hello world, I got online" message; after that participation was voluntary.

It appears that you can make your students join your Facebook network, but you can't make them like it. You can only make them dislike you. A story in the Guardian called Students Tell Universities: Get out of MySpace! explains that:

E-learning gurus want to exploit their students' passion for the new generation of interactive online communication tools - collectively known as web 2.0 - to deliver academic content. Not content with podcasting mini-lectures to students' mobile phones and i-Pods, they are hijacking the internet telephone system, Skype, and invading FaceBook.

But a research exercise ... has just revealed, amazingly, that students want to be left alone. Their message to the trendy academics is: "Get out of MySpace!"

Stein and his colleagues who study online learning suggest that college professors check out alternative social media systems designed specifically for educators. Those systems allow for the spontaneous and instantaneous communication Twitter etc. provides -- without bringing the stink of work into the playroom. Stein offers one solution proposed by Utah Valley Univ. student Tyrel Kelsey:

Students reject creepy treehouses for one reason: they are creepy. I think a better approach to education is the idea of a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) … which [students] can invite the professor into when they feel comfortable doing so.

Question: so what do you do with courses in which the media IS the message, as McLuhan so presciently said.

Increasingly the purpose of courses in journalism, media studies, and communications is to teach students the skills to use this technology, just at journalism students were once required to learn to read the shorthand of teletype or record and edit radio broadcasts on reel-to-reel tape.

Answer:?

Just like being a feminist isn’t just about saying, “Hey! That’s sexist!”

But what does it mean, what does it take, to be an ally to an oppressed population when you don’t belong to the oppressed group?

I don’t know, exactly, and several people who are POC will tell you just how clueless I still am, but they’re also the people I’m learning from and I’m grateful. You’ll find many of their blogs in my sidebar, as well as in my RSS reader which I read even before the Ohio blogs folder in my Bloglines account, everyday.

If you want to read about race and talk about race, then you need to learn about how it impacts people who’ve lived it their whole life and who can help you learn about allies and what allies can do. It goes way beyond, and for some people doesn’t even include, supporting Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

A description of just some of the excellent blogs by people of color or other marginalized groups, with information when I have a personal take:

A Book Without a Cover
My co-panelist and roomie at BlogHer, Adele Nieves, writes this blog and is almost singlehandedly responsible for my watershed moments related to awakening to the enormous POC blogosphere out there, among many other revelations she’s triggered for me.  I owe her a lot.

Angry Black Bitch

Aunt Jemima’s Revenge

The Bilerico Project
I first got to the Bilerico Project by way of a review of WAM!2008 by Jessica Hoffman.  She also wrote what some consider a seminal article about white feminists (a lot of the themes go way past my knowledge but I’m learning/I’ve learned that the content has a lot to do with something called intersectionality and I believe that that concept itself is somewhat controversial in terms of how it’s applied to feminism and racism, among other constructs).

Black Women Vote

Black Women, Blow the Trumpet
Professor Kim Pearson suggested this one on her own blog I believe.

Clueless White Woman
Written by a white woman who has sought to be an ally (and is I believe).

Culture Kitchen
Liza Sabater writes this blog and is one of the most prolific and sought-after WOC bloggers from what I gather. I’ve read about a number of important incidents and opinions on her blogs first and I really enjoy the strength with which she writes.

Cynematic/Pillowbook
One of my co-panelists on the BlogHer Race and Gender panel.

Diary of a Content Black Woman
I love this one.

Echidne of the Snakes
Echidne is one of the most established blogs by a WOC.

Jack and Jill Politics
JJP is a staple of many political bloggers across the spectrum and deservedly so.

La Chola
This blog is written by BrownFemiPower.  She is widely revered among people who blog and are active in the POC blogosphere as one of the best POC writers and bloggers.  Her blog is also another from which I’ve read about incidences you’d think we’d know about but don’t and should.

Mixed Race America
Another blog I learned about by asking people I trust re: which POC blogs should I be reading.

Pam’s House Blend
Another absolute must-read, like Jack and Jill Politics.  When something hits the fan - like the Michelle Obama Daily Kos lynching image, I specifically pray that one or more of these (Prof. Kim Pearson is another one, and What Tami Said or What About Our Daughters or Racialicious) have written about it.  To analogize, when something happens with Jews or Israel, I don’t like or need non-Jews who want to appear or sound all empathetic to be getting enraged if it’s not something that’s enraging me.  Sure - they’re entitle to their opinion, but I’m not going to be told that I should be outraged, thank you. I can figure that out on my own - and by doing some surveying of how others, far more directly affected than I am, are reacting.

Professor Kim’s News and Notes
Prof. Kim is great - is a contributing editor at BlogHer.

Racialicious
Another recommended to me blog that I find to be excellent.

What About Our Daughters
Gena McCauley I believe is her name - she organized or had a big hand in Blogging While Brown.  Great blog.

What Tami Said
I love Tami.  She’s another person to whom you’ll say, thank you for blogging.

WOC PhD
Excellent blog.

Women Wired In
The blog of Shireen Mitchell of Digital Sistas who has a connection with our Bill Callahan.

Worker Bees
This blog is written by one of the three co-founders of BlogHer, Elisa Camahort.

There are some excellent WOC bloggers on BlogHer who’ve been writing about race lately and the threads have some fantastic discusions.  Here’s a sample (and it really is just a sample):

Kelly Wickham of Mocha Momma and Rita Arens of Surrender, Dorothy get it in on big time here.

Laina D just got the party started on this thread.

And Nordette does so here.

Last but not least, Clueless White Woman - the sister I never had.

One of the things I love about BlogHer is that, because it’s such a large community and conversation is so highly valued, it is really easy to say stupid things, say that you know you might be saying something stupid and people will not come to your rescue but will say, well, yeah, - you’re right that is stupid - but here’s why and what’s going on and where to go with that.

Anyway - happy reading.  I couldn’t decide whether to have a sidebar header for Women of Color or People of Color but i just really want to point out these resources and writings - they make the blogosphere so rich and especially for Ohio political bloggers, who count no people of color that I know of as part of the sphere - and if there are some, please, let us know.

As I sat down to have lunch at home just a short while ago, I grabbed my alumni magazine, which arrived yesterday or the day before, to browse through the updates of classmates.  But on the cover, there were title teasers about the articles inside.  “Coming Out” was one of them.

Immediately I thought, noooo - that can’t be an article about sexual orientation, can it? Not from the school that fought hard during the 1980s, and especially during the years I was there, to exclude a student group comprised of gays and lesbians.

It must be referring to some other kind of coming out - some new building or new program.

Well, I was wrong and very, very happy as well as surprised to find this very lengthy article on the inside, “Out on the Hilltop: LGBTQ Experiences at Georgetown.”

Now, I’ve been through this before so I apologize for the readers that know it, but the current president of GU, Jack DeGoia, is a young guy who was my RD in my sophomore year and went to my high school in Connecticut - albeit a 3-4-5 years before me.  He is the first lay person they’ve ever had as president at GU and he’s married with at least one child (I don’t know if he’s had more).

And he’s been pretty aggressive about changing the outward presentation of the university and getting it in tune with the 21st Century. So in this regard, I’m not surprised.

But GU is one of the most populus if not the most populus Catholic (Jesuit) institution of higher education in the country.  And again, as the article notes, it fought tooth and nail in the 1980s against acknowledging the student LGBT group.

I haven’t had a chance to really read it with the time it deserves, but I would encourage other people interested in how one of the oldest Catholic institutions in the U.S. has chosen to come out about coming out.

As a side note, I couldn’t help but think about that Ohio Republican Party announcement about making specific outreach efforts to Catholics.  I didn’t see that they are making such efforts with the LGBT community - but then John McCain did meet with the Log Cabin Republicans.

Also, any readers who went to or are otherwise familiar with John Carrol University, also a Jesuit institution - how does this compare to JCU’s relations with the LGBT community?

Just in case you were wondering.

Hattip Daled Amos.

I swear, I thought former Democratic primary candidate for president and OH-10 Representative Dennis Kucinich’s wife, #4 on The Hill’s 50 Most Beautiful 2008 she was 30, like, for, a long time.  But then again, I thought my mother was 44 for about five years.

Read it for yourself, and later today, I’m told, there will be video of the announcement, which occurred in Chicago just about 20 minutes ago.

From the inbox:

Michelle Obama will address a gathering of Women for Obama in Chicago on Monday.  There, she will discuss the campaign’s success in reaching women across the country, and discuss why her husband, Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama, will be a champion in addressing the unique challenges facing working women and families.   Mrs. Obama will also unveil a Blueprint for America’s Working Women and Families, detailing Barack Obama’s agenda to help women balance work and family, to keep themselves and their families healthy, and to prosper in a changing economy.

Michelle Obama kicked off the Women for Obama program in Chicago in April 2007.  Since then, Women for Obama has created a nationwide network of tens of thousands of women working to educate and empower themselves on the issues that are most important to women and families.  Throughout the primary, the group has played a key role in Senator Obama’s campaign through its fundraising, grassroots activity and online organizing efforts.

“We know the importance of women’s voices and votes in this election cannot be overstated, and I am so proud of the progress Women for Obama has made over the last year, bringing the issues that are most important to women and families to the center of this campaign,” said Michelle Obama.  “As President, Barack will change Washington so that instead of just talking about family values; we actually have policies that value families.  Policies that make it easier for working parents to support, care for, and raise their families; policies that no longer force working women to choose between their kids and their careers.  Barack understands the struggles working women and families face every day, because the women he loves most in the world have gone through it.  That’s why he carries our stories – and the stories of women he’s met all across America – with him every day.”

This luncheon, benefiting the Obama Victory Fund, will take place at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago on Monday.

I’ve browsed the Blueprint and here’s a list of the topics covered:

1. Fight for pay equity
2. Making Work Pay for Working Families
3. Increase the Minimum Wage to $9.50 by 2011
4. Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit
5. Provide a Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit to an Additional 7.5 Million Women
6. Create Automatic Workplace Pensions
7. Expand Retirement Savings Incentives for Working Families
8. Expand Family and Medical Leave Act
9. Encourage States to Adopt Paid Leave
10. Expand Paid Sick Days to 22 Million Women
11. Protect Against Caregiver Discrimination
12. Expand Flexible Work Arrangements
13. Expand High Quality Afterschool and Summer Learning Opportunities
14. Fix the Nation’s Health Care System
15. Ensure All Children Have Health Insurance
16. Fight Cancer
17. Supports a Woman’s Right To Choose

You’ll have to read the pdf to get the meat on each of those. But, well, what do you think? Enough? Too much? What would you add? What would remove?

What more do you want to know?

And can you immediately see how John McCain is not an option if you realy intend to improve the status of women and children, on so many levels?

From WBIR, you can read a live-blog of what’s going on in Knoxville, Tennesee at the scene of a church where seven people were shot while church kids performed parts Annie.

Hopefully, the sun will come out tomorrow for all seven who were injured.

Hattip NewsNet5.

Update: And now, two are dead and the suspect is arrested and held on $1 million bail.

The last thing I need is another cable station, especially one with a theme ("The Woodcutter's Channel, bringing you the best in live "axe-tion" tree-felling").

But I'll have to check out Shalom TV, "the first national Jewish cable television network," a recent edition to Time Warner's Northeast Ohio lineup.

Despite programs like "Kabbalah Revealed" and "Dimensions of the Daf," Shalom TV "pitches itself as part of a balanced multicultural diet for cable operators and their customers," according to Catherine Applefeld Olson of CableFax Magazine. (The story is titled "Religion? Feh! It’s Culture, Bubby!")

Shalom TV a "religious channel"? God forbid. The founders of Shalom TV, the first Jewish cable network launched in the U.S., are quick to note that religion is not what Shalom is about.

"Jews are not into religious programming and Shalom TV is not a religious channel," says Mark Golub, president and CEO of the Fort Lee, N.J.-based programmer. "The better model to think of for us is ethnic channels, which in America tend to be Latin networks and other non-English-language networks."

Frankly, "Jewish C-SPAN" and an in-depth view of the opinions of Alan Dershowitz aren't selling points for me.

But the children's show, "Mr. Bookstein's Store," could be a hoot: Just like "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood," but way brainier.




Get the full story from wkyc.com.

Highlights:

Shalom TV programming, found on Time Warner's Channel 1 or Channel 512 in Entertainment On Demand, includes: "Jewish Film Festival" showcasing a new movie each week -- including American and Israeli feature films, documentaries, and Yiddish classics. The 92nd Street Y -- exclusive television presentations of lectures and programs from the stage of the world-renowned cultural center in New York City.

"Jewish C-SPAN" featuring expert guest analysis and exclusive coverage of major events, rallies, and national conventions -- with special emphasis on issues of concern to the State of Israel.

Shalom TV's coverage of "Election 2008" has included such figures as Alan Dershowitz, Mort Zuckerman, Ron Lauder, David Harris and Dana Milbank; and has included in-depth discussions of the sensitive issues relating to the current presidential hopefuls.
...
"Shalom TV Kids," the only place on American television where parents and grandparents can find Jewish programs for children -- including a weekly "Story Time" for very young viewers, and an adventure series for older children called "Agent Emes." Shalom TV has also created an original children's program, "Mr. Bookstein's Store," introducing young people to Jewish holidays, Jewish customs, and the Hebrew alphabet.

Jewish American Heritage Month thrives online

by Lila Hanft, CJN, 05/15/08
For Purim, you have the megillah; for Passover, the haggadah. And for Jewish American Heritage Month, you have the Internet.

In the three years since Jewish American Heritage Month was established, Cleveland, like most major U.S. cities, hasn’t done much to honor or recognize it. And this year the holiday, celebrated in May, has been overshadowed by Israel@60 celebrations.

In the virtual world of the Internet, however, Jewish American Heritage Month (JAHM) is going strong, thanks to the online museum curators, Internet librarians and digital historians who for the last decade have been preserving and democratizing Jewish American history by putting it online.

A growing number of websites not only preserve historical evidence of Jewish life in America (photos, personal stories, songs, news footage, home movies, diaries and newspaper clippings), but organize and present it in creative and thought-provoking ways.

The Yahoo directory contains about 2,800 listings for Jewish-American history websites, which, naturally, vary greatly in quality and usefulness. The best of them, like the websites of the Library of Congress and the Jewish Women’s Archives, contain a treasure trove of online information you could take weeks or months to pore over. Fortunately, in addition to online access to their holdings, ings, these sites also offer carefully- curated, interactive, multimedia exhibits that guide browsing visitors through new terrain.

The Library of Congress

The Library of Congress’s website “The American Jewish Experience” is a state-of-the-art online exhibit built upon “From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life,” its acclaimed 2005 exhibit. A colorful interactive “Timeline of American Jewish History” can be accessed from the homepage (see list of links, below). “Interactive,” used in regard to online exhibits, means that the viewer has the opportunity to control how he moves through the online exhibit, whether chronological or in some other linear way, taking sidetrips to see additional photos or to read supplementary text.

Excerpts from the 1790 correspondence between Moses Seixas and George Washington can be enlarged so the viewer can read the two men’s declaration of American tolerance — “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance” n in their own handwriting.

The exhibit also contains Yiddish and English posters, sheet music, Rosh Hashanah cards. and prayerbooks intended to appeal to late 19th- and early 20th-century Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. There are similar artifacts in the sections on anti-Semitism, nationalism, Zionism, and development of the Jewish social-service system.

In addition to the main exhibit, the Library of Congress has other material related to Jewish-American history (Sephardic music, interviews with Jewish WW II veterans) that can be reached from the Jewish American Heritage Month homepage.

The Jewish Women’s Archive

Founded in 1995, The Jewish Women’s Archive (JWA) collects historical material by and about American Jewish women, offering a vast array of unique online material you would be hard-pressed to find anywhere else.

“Women of Valor” is a series of multimedia Web exhibits which use photographs, documents, and historical artifacts to spotlight trailblazing Jewish women like Henrietta Szold and Bella Abzug, who overcame social, cultural and religious barriers and made meaningful contributions to their communities.

The multimedia exhibit “Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution” looks at the many ways Jewish women contributed to the feminist movement. It also examines how feminists changed their own Jewish communities.

JWA also archives The American Jewess (1895-1899), which described itself at the time as “the only magazine in the world devoted to the interests of Jewish women.” The first English-language periodical targeted at American Jewish women, The American Jewess covered a surprising and controversial array of topics that ranged from women’s place in the synagogue to whether women should ride bicycles. Read the JWA’s blog “Jewesses with Attitude” for posts that use excerpts from The American Jewess to examine whether the concerns of Jewish women in the 1890s resonate with Jewish women’s experiences today.

The Triangle Factory Fire

Websites with a narrow focus can have a powerful impact. For example, the Triangle Factory fire website, created by Cornell University’s School of Industrial Labor Relations, uses layers upon layers of material to bring to life not just the fire, but the extended public outcry which followed. Testimonials from factory workers, speeches by labor leaders, and newspaper coverage of the fire and the trial (in which the factory owners were ultimately found innocent) create an intense, engaging experience.

Vivid evidence of the outrage and distress that followed the fire is seen in the speeches, editorials, political cartoons, popular music and calls for reform.

ClevelandJewishHistory.net

It doesn’t have fancy graphics or much depth of material yet, but ClevelandJewishHistory.net promises to be a singular resource for Cleveland’s Jewish heritage.

Arnie Berger started the website in 2006 because “so little of (Jewish Cleveland’s) nearly 170-year history (is) on the Web.” To address this deficit, Berger has been developing new content and encouraging Jewish organizations to present their own histories online. He has gathered links to little-known resources for Cleveland and American Jewish history, like “The History of Jewish Life in Cleveland” page on the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland’s website, and the online version of the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History.

A newer addition, more than 30 pages about Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver along with 70 photos, is the largest Silver archive online. Berger hopes to add audio files so the user “can experience his eloquence.”

ClevelandJewishHistory.net also offers a photo archive of historic Cleveland synagogues. The archive includes images of the Wilson Avenue Temple, the Euclid Ave. Temple (with its Tiffany windows), and the Morison Avenue Bath House and the Cleveland Jewish Center in Glenville.

Berger will soon add a section on Cleveland’s contributions to the Soviet Jewry movement, and is soliciting images and memories for an upcoming section on Jewish Glenville. ClevelandJewishHistory.net is a labor of love for Berger, who hopes the site will be a catalyst for others to put their local Jewish history online.
Additional sites to visit during Jewish American Heritage Month

1. From the Jewish American Heritage Month homepage you can find visit other content related to Jewish-American history in the Library of Congress’s collection, including:

• Life After the Holocaust: oral histories of six Holocaust survivors who emigrated to the U.S. after the war
• National Park Service Jewish American Historical Places has images of more than a dozen sites of Jewish interest.
• In the music archives, you can watch singer Flory Jagoda’s concert of Sephardic music performed in Ladino, Italian and Serbo-Croatian
• Watch a webcast of Susan Weidman Schneider, editor-in-chief of “Lilith,” discussing her experiences at the helm of the controversial Jewish women's magazine.
• Fighting Nazi Germany contains interviews with and wartime correspondence from Jewish-American soldiers who served in World War II.

2. In a similar vein, The Center for Jewish History’s Letters from the Front: Jewish War Heroes commemorates of the special role played by Jewish soldiers in the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany in World War II. At the same site, visit the exhibit Jews in America: Our Story.

3. The mission of the Goldring-Woldenberg Institute on Southern Jewish Life is to present a history of every congregation and significant Jewish community in the South. Currently, they have completed Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee - and will add other states in the future.

4. The Jewish Museum has several online arts-related exhibits:

• Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976
• From The New Yorker to Shrek: The Art of William Steig
• Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey
• Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting

5. At the Photo Galleries of the American Sephardi Federation, there are photos by Sephardic artists as well as works with Sephardic content, like the the portraits of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

6. A Perfect Fit: The Garment Industry and American Jewry, 1860-1960 at the Yeshiva University Museum traces the early thread of 19th-century Jewish immigrants seeking success in America.

7. The American Jewish Committee Archives’s tagline is “Making History Instantly Accessible,” and its multimedia archives include

• interactive archival timelines
• AJC radio broadcasts (1939-1955)
• historic films and TV shows
• the American Jewish Year Book (1899-present)
• and oral histories.

Motherhood's facts and figures

One last post of for Mother's Day.

82.8 million: estimated number of mothers in the United States in 2004.
Source: Survey of Income and Program Participation unpublished tabulations

81% of women 40 to 44 are mothers.
Source: Fertility of American Women

2.1: the total fertility rate (TFR) in 2006 — the first time since 1971 that the nation’s TFR was at replacement level, which is the birth rate required to replace the population.
Source: National Center for Health Statistics

4.3 million: number of births in the United States in 2006.
Source: National Center for Health Statistics

25.2: average age of first time mothers in 2005.
Source: National Center for Health Statistics

5.6 million: number of stay-at-home moms in 2006.
Source: America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2006

67% of first-time moms worked during pregnancy in 2001-2003.
(44% of first-time moms worked during pregnancy in 1961-1965.)
Source: Maternity Leave and Employment Patterns: 1961-2003

10.4 million single mothers had children younger than 18 in 2006.
(3.4 million single mothers had children younger than 18 in 1970.)
Source: America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2006

55% of mothers with infants were in the labor force in 2004.
Source: Fertility of American Women

49% of U.S. mothers cobble together paid leave following childbirth using sick days, vacation days and disability leave.
Source: MomsRising.org

51%: percentage of new mothers with NO paid leave.
Source: MomsRising.org

4: the number of countries that don't offer paid leave to new mothers (the U.S., Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and Lesotho.
Source: MomsRising.org

44%: likelihood that non-mothers are likely to be hired over mothers for the same job (given the exact same resume and experience).
Source: Cornell University

$11,000: gap between what equally-qualified non-mothers and mothers are offered for that same high-salaried job.
Source: Cornell University

10%: the wage gap between women without children and their male counterparts.
27%: the wage gap between mothers and their male counterparts.
33-44%: the wage gap between single moms and their male counterparts
Source: MomsRising.org

$4,000-$10,000: annual cost of childcare per child in the U.S. (babies, toddlers, preschoolers and special-needs kids cost more.)
Source: Karen Schulman, Key Facts: Essential Information about Childcare, Early Education and School-Age Care (Children’s Defense Fund, 2003).

751,322: the number of child care centers in the U.S. in 2005.
Source: County Business Patterns: 2005

6.1 million custodial mothers were entitled to child support in 2005.
Source: Custodial Mothers and Fathers and their Child Support

54% and 79% of children younger than 6 eat breakfast and dinner, respectively, with their mother every day. (The corresponding figures for dining with dad: 41% and 66%.)
Source: A Child’s Day




(Thanks to ResourceShelf and MomsRising.org)

Last week, I received a fresh market report from China Polling about the growing popularity of the iPhone in China. Some of their results got me wondering.

First, the numbers:

Unsurprisingly, over 65% have heard of iPhone, and among this group, more than 85% are willing to actually buy an iPhone if it’s available here in China.

While the iPhone is not yet *officially* available in China, the price sure won’t be a bargain once it hits the Apple store. This is, after all, Apple quality — you get what you pay for. A cursory search came up with one store in China selling an iPhone for 4,300 RMB (~$600 USD). Still, that price is still well above the average salary of a young person living in major cities such as Beijing or Shanghai (around 2,500 - 3,000 RMB).

There’s more:

Findings show that Battery Life, Memory Size, Style/Design are the top features when picking a phone for all consumers. The difference between iPhone lovers and the not yet converted is all about branding. The non iPhone lovers prefer Music and Camera features rather than being wooed and indoctrinated by the hip Apple brand equity.

I found it telling that the style/design was up in the top three, and also that branding plays a major role in wooing people over to the iPhone.

When I was in college and studying US culture (we read Neil Postman — classic!), our professor once asked us what the real symbol of US culture was. None of us even came close to his response: the car. It made sense because it is something so deeply a part of people’s lives, and, more importantly, it has become a way to express one’s values. Patriotic? Buy American (i.e. Ford/GM). Green? Get a Prius. Wealthy? Show it off with a luxury car (Mercedes, Porsche, etc.). The associations could go on and on, but I think you get the idea.

I have to wonder if the mobile phone is becoming the symbol of China, in the same way. While there are cars in China, not everyone can afford them. But everyone — yes, even those guys out in the fields in the countryside — has a mobile phone. And people are willing to spend thousands of RMB just have the “right phone”. Including getting the hot new iPhone in China (once it gets to China, that is).

I remember back in my office in Shanghai, when the girls in particular seemed obsessed with their phones. They hung all sorts of trinkets and pictures on them. One girl had no qualms about purchasing a mobile phone that had to be more than half of her monthly salary.

What do you think? Are mobile phones the new symbol of China? And how will the iPhone change the landscape?

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Have you swept the tombs of your ancestors recently? In Chinese culture, April 4^th is the Tomb-Sweeping Festival, or Qingming Festival, meaning Pure and Bright Festival. Tomb-Sweeping Festival is on the 15th day from the Spring Equinox and is one of the official public holidays in China starting in 2008. The festival is a time to remember past ancestors, to reflect on past deeds, and is an example of expression of traditional Chinese values of filial piety. During this period of time, people worship their ancestors through visiting the graves of their ancestors, clearing and sweeping the tombs, offering food, setting fireworks, and burning joss paper. It is also a good time to embrace warm spring weather and enjoy the new greenery.

But some reports during this time are worth noticing since they implicate the original meaning of the tomb sweeping festival—emphasizing close family relation and filial piety. In a report, two sons do not want to take care of their widowed mother, refuse to meet her, and even do not phone the mother for months. The old mother expressed a thought provoking complain about her sons: “They do remember to sweep family tombs during Qingming. But why they could not have been nicer to me?” There are other reports that people compete in how many fireworks set and how much joss paper is burned.

Just like an old saying:” It would be better to consistently support the living than lavishly celebrating the dead.” The essential meaning of filial piety should be taking care of parents when they are living.  A better time to show respect and appreciation for parents would be when they are alive. People who focus on the formality of burning joss paper and setting fireworks in front of the tombs neglect the essential meaning of the festival. Their lavish behavior is selfish in that they only care about their own face, and it is unhealthy for a society in that it espouses waste of social resources.

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