My Friday and Saturday

Lee Price Friday Today we started to learn about social media in much more detail. We discussed the history of social media, from the first recorded mail delivery back in 550bc, and through to modern day electronic social media. Until now I had not considered postal mail to be social media, it was something I had taken for granted. Now I can see how social media is about interaction between humans, sharing our thoughts, feelings, and experiences. I think that living in the information age and using electronic media to communicate so quickly, we can forget that the interaction and exchange of information is between human beings. Friday was a beautiful day and we were able to spend time talking with the locals of Rabka. We were finding out about their personal feelings and uses for social media. It was interesting to speak to a variety of men and women, young and old. Most of the people we spoke to had accounts such as Facebook and YouTube, those who did not still had a good idea of the uses. This really shows how much electronic social media is a part of our modern day culture. We also wanted to explore peoples thoughts on the negative side of online interaction, the main concerns were; • Invasion of privacy • Becoming addicted • Wasting too much time • Replacing real human interaction • Cyber bullying Almost everyone we approached was happy to speak with us for a short time. I was really grateful for the time they gave to us. We then took the information we had gathered and used it to create a video presentation. We highlighted the pros and cons and presented them to each other. It was interesting to hear how the older people we spoke to were more aware of the privacy issues and the potential for bullying. The younger people seemed to be thinking more about the potential to waste time or to become addicted, I wonder if this was through experience? (It was for me!) The day was informative and fun. The course was picking up momentum and I couldn't wait for the next day. Saturday The main focus of today was how to properly leverage social media to get that dream you want. We started the day with a talk from a social media specialist, Kasia. The presentation was really helpful and contained different ideas and ways to get yourself out there. I was impressed with the creative ways people have already made CV's for particular jobs, from interactive YouTube resumes to short flash games. The rest of the day we focused on the same subject and shared different ways and resources to find work through Europe. Today was hard work, tiring, and totally worth it. Our hard work was more than rewarded, later in the day we had a great surprise. Everyone was taken by horse and carriage into a nearby wood with the most beautiful clear sky I have ever seen. Not once have I seen so many stars! Just getting there was amazing, then in the dark of the night a parked car threw on it's lights. We were met by cheers and a trio playing traditional Polish music for us by a camp fire that was soon lit. Let me tell you, I was simply blown away! Such hospitality is always well received! We shared food, drinks and some of us danced around the fire, it was a brilliant evening. After the band left, we told stories, sang, and played our own music. This was an unforgettable evening!

Our week in a video!

Myself, Basia and Sali made this video today. We had from yesterday evening to do this so I'm really proud of us!


Hope you enjoy and hope it tells you a bit about our week :)

 http://youtu.be/nM3TL9_jo0I

Message from the trainers

Hi our names are Ania and Aga and we are trainers during this project! Working with this group is real pleasure and it would be hard to imagine a better group for this project. People with different experience in different areas of social media, sharing with us and working really hard during our sessions is just what each train can dream of.  

To projects is almost ending which makes us  sad because  we will for sure miss energy and synergy of this group, their wonderful ideas and the way they actually in intercultural environment.  Personally (Aga) I was thrilled watching their Social Media CVs and watching their theatre about how social media replaces face-to-face communication. 

Through the Mission Impossible our group succeed the impossible and bonded even, more which made me so happy while seeing their results!(Anna). I love to work flow and will really miss our  “inside agents”.

TEAM CHALLENGE FROM THE UK

Can we get some of the Mediaployment people to do some very short interviews. For this to work they need to answer the following questions:

1. Who they are and where they are from
2. What they have learnt from this project
3. What they will take away from this project
4. Who they would like to work with in the future (say which country and why)

Finally please put a photo of the person being interviewed. Between 5-10 interviews would be great (short and sweet) x

Don't be a bully, be a Unicorn!

Please note the following story contains language some people might find offensive:

 

I remembered this story this morning, it just backs up what I was talking about in my last post about cyber bullying.

A friend if mine wrote it and I find it really inspiring! The Author is Liam Bond;

www.theotherbond.co.uk

I received an anonymous message not so long ago and it read: “This might sound very personal but have you ever had suicidal thoughts/acted on them. Just want to know If I can relate to an idol.”  And I encouraged the person to get in touch with me in hope that I could maybe – considering for some reason they referred to me as an idol – help them out as they were clearly in a dark place. Anyway, today, a kid got in touch and told me his story. How he’s being bullied pretty bad and how nobody’s there to help and he harms himself. It made me feel pretty depressed and then I didn’t know what to say and I get even more depressed when I don’t know what to say; but then I remembered a story. I won’t name names, but this is for the kid who knows who he is. And that’s important, to know who you are.

This is a true story and you may have read it on the old website, but anyway, there was this kid and he was pretty small. It’s pretty hard being small in a big world. And he was kinda nerdy. He was the kind of kid who didn’t have a girl and didn’t have a hope. And in school, for every one nerdy kid, there’s a scumbag bully who wants to make someone’s life a living hell.

Anyway, he got bullied pretty bad for about a year and he told his dad how he couldn’t stand it anymore. How he was being pushed downstairs, how his head was being flushed down the toilet, how they were calling him ugly and spotty and nerdy and how the girls laughed and how the boys laughed louder.

His dad was a crazy army nut. Went to a war of some kind and got pretty fucked up. Sat around his house all day drinking whiskey and sharpening his blades. But he worshipped every word his mad father said.

“Dad, can I take one of your knives to school?” He asked.

“No. Of course you can’t. Just stand up to the bullies and show them you’re not scared.” His father replied.

“But I am scared, Dad. They’re stronger than me and there are too many of them.”

“The finest men are those who don’t need to resort to violence.” His father told him. Despite being an ex soldier who sharpened blades all day.

He took his father’s advice but it didn’t change a thing. He kept getting bullied and he started becoming a bit crazy, to tell the truth.

Anyway, one day he’d had enough. He couldn’t take it anymore. He sat at his father’s table where he sharpens his knives like a madman and he thought it was time to kill or kill himself but didn’t have the balls. He was too scared to hurt others and too scared to hurt himself. He just wanted it to stop. It was at that moment that he heard his father shouting outside the front door. His father was only a little man but he was crazy as fuck. He walked to the front door and opened it – he was pretty scared. His father was screaming pretty loud. He looked outside and his father was in a heated argument with a man who was about twice the size of his dad. He didn’t know what it was about, and he wasn’t about to ask.

“I’LL CUT YOUR FUCKING FACE OFF!!!!” His father screamed at the man twice his size.

“You’re fucking crazy!” The big bastard replied and ran off to his car and drove away.

He didn’t ask his dad what all the fighting was about, but he was impressed that his crazy bastard father had managed to scare away a man who was twice his size.

Bearing that in mind, he woke up for school the next day and he snook into his dad’s bedroom – he didn’t wake him up, he couldn’t wake him up, he was always in a deep, booze-induced coma. He took his dad’s long army coat out of his wardrobe and he put it on. He was only a small kid and it pretty much went all the way down to his shoes. He picked up his father’s boots and put them on too. They were about six sizes too big. He doesn’t know why he put the clothes on, to tell the truth. He still doesn’t. If you ask him now he’ll probably just tell you he felt mad as fuck.

Anyway, he went to school in the long army coat and the big boots and still to this day, hasn’t got a clue why. Everyone stared at him. He was walking through the corridor and the bullies saw him and ran over to him and all flocked around him like vultures.

“HAHA! LOOK AT THE FREAK!” They pointed and they laughed.

They pushed him against the wall and realised that he had no plan of action. He had no idea what he planned to do when he got to school in his dad’s army coat and boots. He thought he was going to cry but he didn’t. To tell the truth, he got a bit crazy.

“WHAT ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO BE, FREAK!?” One of the bullies asked him.

And he doesn’t know why he said what he said next. And if you ask him today, he’ll say he doesn’t know. He’ll say he was mad as fuck. Anyway, he shouted:

“I’M SUPPOSED TO BE A FUCKING UNICORN!!!!!!!”

He doesn’t know why he said unicorn. Maybe that’s just a sign of madness. Maybe sometimes we get so mad that maybe we think we’re unicorns. I don’t know and neither does he. He’ll tell you that, even if you ask him today.

“I’M A FUCKING UNICORN! DO YOU FUCKING HEAR ME!? I’M A FUCKING UNICORN!!!”

He put the coat over his head and started running around and he doesn’t know why. And he put his arm out of the top of the coat to make it look like a unicorn’s horn. He was absolutely fucking crazy. He was barging into the bullies and random kids in the hall and they were all scared as fuck of him. That’s the thing with us humans: We’re all scared of the unknown. We don’t like the unexpected. We’re scared of it. It’s just the way we are. We’re all fucked in one way or another. We’re all terrified of what we don’t understand.

He was just a small kid. He was spotty and pretty useless. But for that one minute when he was running around the corridor, he was untouchable. He was a unicorn.

Anyway, he unsettled the bullies so much that they were too scared to approach him again in case he went absolutely crazy and maybe killed them or some shit. For the rest of his school life, they thought he was weird as fuck. And funnily enough, he ended up with a pretty hot girlfriend because for some reason, the girls like the weird ones.

That’s the story of the unicorn and it’s a true one. So, kid who messaged me, I hope you realise that self-harm is not the answer and to tell the truth, there is no answer. Just be proud of who you are. Be proud that you’re not one of them.

Don’t be a bully, be a fucking unicorn.

Tags: Bullying

About the Author

Liam Bond is Liam Bond.

Intercultural learning

Now it's already 6 days that we are here together in Rabka talking about social media, pros and cons, exchanging information about how it works in our countries, what we have to take into account etc.

But apart from the program we also have a lot of informal space which for me personally is also very interesting. It gives us the chance to get to know each other and keep talking bout all those topics. But we are also from twelve different countries (two people per country except for Georgia, there's jut one girl), the East and the West, if we want to put it into two categories. Which also implies different languages.

Our official working language is English, but the unofficial one is Russian, since there are many people from Eastern countries whose first or second language is Russian. For me it is very interesting to see how we communicate, and now I refer to non verbally, between each other and how important it is to be sensitive in this way, because it is so easy to misunderstand each other due to different cultural keys.

We actually had an interesting workshop about it: how we can make business with other countries and what is important to know about this culture and their way of communicating. I think the same just applies to us in this group. I am very happy to meet people from some countries that I've never spoken to someone from this place, and now for example I share room with someone from Georgia. Apart from what I've learned about social media I will take home with me also this intercultural learning that for me is very special.

Polish Pub

Sorry for cutting a few people of this I didn't realise!