In this episode of Black-Liberation.Tech, Dr. Renee Jordan continues the Digital Literacies lesson series by focusing on one essential skill: Connection. Building on a live session originally shared on social media, Dr. Jordan reflects on how she connects with colleagues, scholars, and collaborators across digital platforms — and how those connections have opened real doors for research, workshops, academic collaborations, and professional growth.

Drawing from personal examples, including reaching out to colleagues on LinkedIn after conferences, strengthening relationships through digital follow-up, and navigating collaborative opportunities that emerged unexpectedly, Dr. Jordan illustrates how intentional connection functions as both a digital literacy and a long-term professional strategy.

She also discusses the challenges of networking digitally — from remembering where you met someone, to creating sustainable follow-up systems, to filtering out bots and maintaining safe boundaries. Finally, Dr. Jordan highlights examples of Latinas, Afro-Latinas, and Black women in tech whose digital presence and community-building practices offer powerful models of how to nurture networks with impact, authenticity, and care.

Listeners are encouraged to choose a digital literacy for their own project, reflect on how they connect with others online, and consider how digital tools can support their personal, academic, and professional journeys.

Episode Highlights

• A deep dive into the digital literacy Connect and why it matters.
• Personal examples of meaningful digital networking that led to:
  • a successful workshop proposal,
  • collaboration across institutions,
  • extended partnerships and paid opportunities.
• Practical strategies for remembering where and how you met people online.
• Discussions on expanding your network through:
  • livestreaming,
  • LinkedIn,
  • conferences,
  • academic spaces,
  • and careful vetting of followers to avoid bots.
• A reminder about digital safety: Never share personal identifiable information with generative AI or strangers online.
• A guided example search featuring Latinas, Afro-Latinas, and Black women leaders in tech whose online networks thrive because of:
  • authentic storytelling,
  • safe digital community-building,
  • targeted engagement,
  • mentorship and sponsorship,
  • platform diversity,
  • and sharing resources generously.
• An invitation for listeners to reflect and choose a digital literacy for their upcoming personal, academic, or professional project.

Reflective Questions for Listeners

1. How do you currently connect with others online, whether professionally or socially? What platforms feel most natural to you — and why?
2. Think back to a time when an online connection opened a door for you. What made that connection meaningful or effective?
3. What challenges do you experience when trying to build or maintain digital connections? How can you create systems that help you follow up intentionally?
4. Which digital tools (LinkedIn, livestreaming, messaging apps, academic platforms) could help you expand your network in a way that aligns with your goals?
5. Looking at the example women highlighted in this lesson, what practices do you want to adopt or adapt for your own digital presence?

In this story-time episode of Black-Liberation.Tech, Dr. Renée Jordan invites listeners into the media center to listen in on four interconnected stories from the Embracing Digital Literacies lesson.

Through the voices of Tia, Nadine, Ebony, Nicole, Jazmin, Sharlene, Dominique, and Jaleesa, we explore what digital literacies look like in real life for Latinas, Afro-Latinas, and Black women and girls—from asking better questions to streaming your work in public.

At the end of the episode, Dr. Jordan invites you to choose your own project focus—personal, academic, or professional—and shares her plan to work on a professional project to promote Black-Liberation.Tech and Jordan Nuance LLC.

This episode is a gentle but powerful reminder: digital literacies are not just for middle schoolers. They are life-long practices for all ages and stages.

Episode Highlights

• A circle of girls, mothers, and tech professionals gathers in a media center to explore digital literacies as everyday skills—not just buzzwords.
• In Embracing Digital Literacies, the focus is on asking questions and communicating with confidence—online and offline.
• In Digital Literacies in Action, listeners hear concrete examples of connecting, DM’ing, dividing tasks, and justifying decisions in digital spaces.
• In The Digital Literacies Journey, the conversation expands to interaction, promotion, publicizing, and streaming as ways to build community and visibility.
• In Digital Literacies Workshop, teaching and taking digital notes become central practices for sharing knowledge and tracking growth.
• Dr. Jordan closes by inviting listeners to choose a project focus—personal, academic, or professional—and models that choice by naming her own: a professional project to promote Black-Liberation.Tech and Jordan Nuance LLC.

Reflective Questions for Listeners

1. Which character or moment in the stories sounded the most like you right now? Was it asking questions, DM’ing, teaching, streaming, or something else?
2. When you think about your own digital life, which literacy feels strongest—asking/communicating, connecting/collaborating, promoting/publicizing, or teaching/taking notes? Which one would you like to grow next?
3. If you chose a personal, academic, or professional project today, what would it be? How could digital literacies help you move that project forward?
4. Where in your current routines are you already practicing digital literacies without naming them? (For example: group chats, reposting opportunities, live-streaming, or documenting your process.)
5. Who are the women in your life—family, community, or online—who model healthy, liberating digital practices? What have you learned from watching them?
6. After hearing these stories, what’s one concrete action you can take this week to move your project from idea to reality?

Receipts, Records, and Real-Life Learning: What a Budget Can Teach Us

Welcome back to another episode of Black-Liberation.Tech. I’m your host, Dr. Renée Jordan — educator, instructional technologist, and your companion on this journey toward digital clarity, confidence, and liberation.

Today, we’re doing something special.

We’re taking it back — all the way to June of 2021 — to two videos that lived on my dissertation website. At the time, they were simple demonstrations of digital literacies. But looking back now? They were snapshots of survival, strategy, and everyday instructional technology in real life.

And today, we’re revisiting them through a liberation lens — asking what they taught me then, what they reveal now, and what they might offer you as you level up in your own digital literacy journey.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

In this episode…

• You’ll hear two archival demonstrations of digital literacy from 2021.
• We explore budgeting as a form of digital navigation, planning, and self-determination.
• We examine credit monitoring as a digital literacy tied to agency, advocacy, and long-term decision-making.
• We connect personal financial management to broader themes of empowerment, community uplift, and tech-enabled confidence.
• We reflect on how digital literacies show up in places we often overlook — especially in Black, Afro-Latina, and Latina communities.
• We make space for thinking about how your everyday digital habits reflect resilience, creativity, and purpose.

REFLECTIVE QUESTIONS FOR LISTENERS

1. When you think about your digital habits around money — budgeting, banking, tracking, planning — what do they reveal about your relationship to stability and self-trust?
2. What digital tools do you already use to support your financial, academic, or career goals? How might you use them more intentionally?
3. How did you learn your earliest financial lessons, and how do those memories shape the way you navigate digital platforms today?
4. Where in your life are you already practicing digital literacy without naming it?
5. If you could build one new digital habit this year — big or small — what would it be?

If you enjoyed today’s episode, go ahead and rate, review, and follow the podcast so more people can discover this work.

And until next time, remember: your digital skills are not just tools — they are pathways to freedom, clarity, and possibility.