Skip to main content

Instagram Challenge Review

The Instagram Challenge was surprisingly more difficult than I first thought it would be. When I looked at the list and saw there were only 10 items, plus a few bonus items I didn't think it would be too bad. It really surprised me!

A few came easy: 
# 2 A book with social media for an author - I used this as an opportunity to highlight Elin Hilderbrand (@elinhilderbrand), one of my favorite summer authors! Her new book just came out last month, I'm listening to it on Audible now.

# 7 A government agency displaying social media - with where I work, I new we had pamphlets, handouts, business cards etc. from recruiters that I could use for this one!

# 8 A place where social media could be being used, but wasn't - I grabbed a photo of a Starbucks sign, but there was also no social media tags on either of the doors going into the Starbucks on campus (would've taken those photos, but didn't want to be too creepy!). Considering all the social media presence Starbucks has, this really surprised me, and seemed like a missed opportunity.


# 10 Overt encouragement to post - I think this one could've been in a few places, but over the course of the weekend, several spots, especially restaurants encouraged you to follow them, check in, or leave reviews.

The challenge:
# 1 Business card with LinkedIn info - I knew this would be hard for a few reasons, I wouldn't be getting a lot of business cards over the weekend and most business cards I get don't have LinkedIn on them. I usually see LinkedIn URLs on resumes. I'm curious how often people put their LinkedIn on their business cards in the professional world? 

#6 A commercial with a hashtag - I was shocked at how long this one took me to find. I guess between DVR and streaming networks, I've cut out a lot of commercials these days, but I just thought hashtags appeared everywhere on TV. I had to wait quite some time before finding one! Although I thought the one I found from Allstate, #Weddingsaremayhem was quite a gem.

Final thoughts on the challenge, I thought finding a tweet incorporated into a new story wouldn't be impossible, but after the commercial adventure seemed like a daunting task. I did find an old Foursquare check in logo paired with Facebook and Twitter!  Overall, I posted more on Instagram than I ever have, it made me notice considerably more social media, tags, and connectivity than it would have otherwise. Despite not completing everything, I'm glad I attempted it because it definitely made me look closer at things.

In considering some of our readings for this week about folksonomies, particularly, Building a collaborative knowledge base in Diigo: How links, tags, and comments support learning (Im, T. & Dennen, V. P. 2013) I found the content about how the class decided on their tags relevant to my Instagram challenge. I always felt tagging and determining hashtags seemed slightly haphazard, it helps when you begin typing and Twitter or Instagram auto-populates a tag and lets you know how often it has been used, but when the article briefly discusses the students' rationale for how they determined some of their tags and the debate they had regarding their opinions, I appreciated the insight into that discussion. As outsiders who so often only choose tags that are pre-determined, this was helpful information to read.

Overall, while I did not complete the entire Instagram challenge, it was a great learning experience that allowed me to grow with a new social media tool, as well as think about how I might interact more with the people and places that a I frequent.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Integrating Web 2.0

In learning about Web 2.0 concepts this week, I, of course, began to see Web 2.0 everywhere. I can see how meaningful the relationships can be when people, and for my work, students interact with one another and generate their own content on these Web 2.0 platforms. We love to see students engage with us and participate in career discussions. While working on a project today, I was reminded of Web 2.0 concepts although the project itself was not digital content. The task was to create a worksheet that outlined career-readiness competencies and examples. The worksheet would also have blank spaces where the students would be encouraged to write in things they have done to gain those competencies/skills ( generate content ) and space to brainstorm organizations or activities on campus where they could achieve those skills ( connect with others ).  As we were working on this project, I was starting to notice similar concepts to Web 2.0 definitions.  It made me wonder if we are d...

Two Favorite New Tools

We're three weeks in and I've tried many of the tools that have been mentioned. Sometimes I only get as far as exploring the websites or apps before deciding it's not really for me, other times I post once or twice or at least lurk. However, this week there are two clear winners for me: Pocket  and Goodreads .  Pocket was new to me, and as soon as I downloaded it and read the instructions (I put it on my phone) I knew it would be a great addition! I am guilty of keeping far too many tabs open on all my devices. I like to read a lot of articles, but don't always get time to finish them, or I find recipes I want to save, places I want to visit, etc. Pocket is like Pinterest but I think the functionality is more practical for me. I could log in with my Gmail account, which makes it even easier and all my articles are saved right there. There's a page for trending articles, and you can even see how many times pages have been saved. This tool will be so useful in keepi...

An Introduction to Wiki

I was introduced to Wiki not too long after this class started. Only about a week in, really. Before that, I had thought it was some offshoot of a Wikipedia page, I guess. I was working on a student who was job searching and he shared that one of his sources was a Wiki page. Obviously, this confused me. I am always open to learning new resources for job search sites, but a Wiki page? He explained that on the page people start a thread for when new academic jobs are posted at an institution, then they update each other on where they are in the hiring process. For example, whoever gets a call for a first interview will share when they got the call and when they are scheduled for that interview. Second interview candidates are supposed to give that information, and so on. The purpose being that other people who have applied aren't feeling like they are in limbo uncertain if that university has begun the hiring process or not.  While in theory, this sounds like a good idea. I'm s...

Twitter

Pinterest