Leah's Education Blog

Given work, school, and life in general I wasn't able to do the no technology challenge back when it was issued. After stepping up my social media presence and connection to online tools, I really think it will be valuable to do try this once class ends next week. So I'm vowing to go technology-free for 24 hours.  I don't think being off social media will be the hardest thing for me. I would say texting followed by television will most likely be my struggles. Of course this will have to take place on a weekend since I need my computer for work. While avoiding TV won't be too stressful, as I have a hard copy book I've been putting off reading because of my Audible membership ( Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult), I imagine it will be hard to have plans with anyone other than my husband during this time. Usually when I have plans I'm texting to confirm or letting them know when I've left, and what if they need to cancel? They won't be able to get ahold

When I think about online communities, I keep thinking back to our text Networked  referencing how many people living with disabilities, especially health conditions connect with others this way (Rainie & Wellman, 2014). I came across this post on a blog for Cystic Fibrosis, titled " How Connecting Online with People with CF Changed my Life ." The author writes about how when she was first diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis, or CF, her network of people she knew who also had the disease was very small and limited to those in her geographic area, it then grew a little and she became 'connected' virtually through Facebook, but only in a very one-dimensional way. She explains that she would view photos and read posts, but there was limited or no engagement between them. This eventually changed when she was encouraged to log on to a video chat.  The author then shares how this video chat experience helped her launch a new digital platform to connect people with CF, subm

In   Tweet me, message me, like me: using social media to facilitate pedagogical change within an emerging community of practice   Goodyear, V. A., Casey, A., & Kirk, D. 2014) the authors use social media as a platform for teachers to communicate about their work. The beginning of the article introduces that only five of the seven teachers connect with the researcher on social media. Reading this article got me thinking, what is "normal" or "acceptable" when it comes to connecting with colleagues on social media?  I generally exclude LinkedIn from these discussions, since the purpose of LinkedIn is professional networking (for more reasons why you might consider a LinkedIn page read my blog post on 7 reasons why it should be ).  A quick Google search will show you that people are pretty split on their opinions. This article from Forbes  gives a pretty unbiased view, and one can think of pros and cons: connecting allows you to build relationships and use social

In reading one of the articles this week,  The use of social media in the Republic of Georgia and a discussion about American academic freedom with electronic communications   ( Noniashvili, M., Batiashvili, M., & Griffin, G. 2014), one of the many surprising facts I learned was how few people in Georgia were " internet subscribers". The article reports that approximately 500,000 people, or 10% of the popluation, have internet access ( 2014 ). Of this 10%, Facebook is the most commonly used socail media platform, with Twitter and LinkedIn growing in usage as people become more accustomed to technology ( Noniashvili, M., Batiashvili,  M., & Griffin, G. 2014). Curious to see how this related to other developing countries, and even how statistics have changed since the article was published, I wanted to see what else I could find. I came across this article from Pew Global, entitled  Social Media Use Continues to Rise in Developing Countries but Plateaus Across Develop

I've tried a lot of new tools this week, and I've tried some familiar tools in new ways. There's been some reading and researching, and a lot of thinking about how to engage this technology with students. So I thought I'd take a little time just to reflect on what's worked and what hasn't. In Favor VoiceThread From the beginning I enjoyed that our "lectures" were in this platform rather than reading PowerPoint slides. The shorter format, combined with audio recording, and ability to interact was very appealing to me. Creating my own was a little intimidating, but shockingly, I still really like this platform. I can see myself using VoiceThread for online lectures and will try to find ways to use it at work. It was very simple to navigate, so ease of use always helps me feel comfortable, but I do enjoy the different ways it allows learner to engage. Pearltrees Unlike some of the other curation sites, I find this one to be helpful for academ

"The most striking finding of the national survey is the extent of peer-to-peer help amount people living with chronic conditions...One in four internet users living with high blood pressure, diabetes, heart conditions, lung conditions, cancer, or some other chronic ailment (23%) say they go online to find others with similar health concerns. By contrast 15% of internet users who report no chronic conditions have sough such help online." (Raine & Wellman, p.145) When I made the switch to higher education my first job was an advisor in the Office for Students with Disabilities, and it was an enlightening experiencing that has stayed with me. Since then I've been able to remain a liaison to those offices at the different places I've worked and try to help support people with diverse abilities in their career development. So I couldn't blog through this whole course and not talk about the impact that technology and social media has had on this community.

Those of you in higher education may be familiar with the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), but here's a little bit about NACE directly from their website : " Established in 1956, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) connects more than 8,100 college career services professionals at nearly 2,000 colleges and universities nationwide, more than 3,100 university relations and recruiting professionals, and the business affiliates that serve this community.  NACE is the leading source of information on the employment of the college educated, and forecasts hiring and trends in the job market; tracks starting salaries, recruiting and hiring practices, and student attitudes and outcomes; and identifies best practices and benchmarks. NACE provides its members with high-quality resources and research; networking and professional development opportunities; and standards, ethics, advocacy, and guidance on key issues." NACE provides caree

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

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

In reading about the topics this week, crowdsourcing stood out to me as a term I had heard of, knew a little bit about, but hadn't ever really given much thought to. The more I read about it though, the more I kept thinking about different ways I've seen, or even been apart of, crowdsourcing. In the article,    Stolen snow shovels and good ideas: The search for and generation of local knowledge in the social media community   ( Konsti-Laakso, S. 2017), the authors provide a literature review on online communities and crowdsourcing. The article references " three basic components of crowdsourcing: individuals (the crowd), an organization looking to benefit from the crowd's inputs and an online platform through which the communication occurs (Nam, 2012) ."  There are lots of examples of crowdsourcing, the article above makes reference to government policies that are affected through crowdsourcing, other articles discuss scientific ideas that were assisted through

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 Star

The more tools we discuss the more I wonder how else we can use them for learning. Pinterest is a platform that I can spend a lot of time on when it comes to trying to find new material. I've noticed though, that I typically use it to find  ideas for a lesson or workshop, rather than looking at ways to use the platform in the classroom/to teach/as part of the learning. This sort of ties into one of our themes for this week, curation. I mostly use Pinterest to curate my ideas for things I could do with students rather than actually using Pinterest as a tool in learning. The University of Southern California Rossier Online Blog provided 14 Ways Students Could Utilize Pinterest in the Classroom . I thought it was great that #10 was Lessons on Copyright and Digital Rights  given our topic for the week! I wish it would have given more ways to use it for this, but I guess in the interest of creating my own content, I'll have to think of my own. Another favorite of mine is #12, Glob

This week I read Chapter 8 of Networked (Raine & Wellman, 2014) ,  entitled "Networked Creators." The main focus of this chapter was on content creators, the people writing content, and connected by a network.  This chapter highlighted a few key points, and many of them felt eerily relevant to where we are today. For example, the chapter begins by sharing an example of how a man begins blogging about his poor experiences with the train system, safety concerns, overcrowding etc. and connects to others who also blog about their poor experiences. These collective blogs raise awareness and noise until they become public and are brought to attention in mainstream media, at which point, change is enacted. This type of content creation led to real a change in the rail system. I feel like this year we have seen content creation, especially on Twitter with the use of hashtags, cause change all around us. Another example the book discusses is the Egyptian Revolt, and how social m

Let me start this post by saying that I am not an expert on LinkedIn. My profile is average. Some of that is on purpose (I'll explain that part in a bit) some is in the "do as I say, not as I do" category. I know a bit, I read more and I hear things from employers, I'm not always the best at keeping my profile up to date. Despite this, I'm a huge advocate for LinkedIn. I recently facilitated an interactive LinkedIn workshop for graduate students. Even though it's summer session, we had a full house! You can check out the Twitter photo  here . Referencing a previous article I used, Pew Research Center has 18-24 year olds using LinkedIn at 25%, this increases to 34% for 25-29 (Smith and Anderson, 2018). This makes sense, and anecdotally echoes what I see: students begin thinking about LinkedIn around graduation or in grad school. The trouble with this topic is convincing students that LinkedIn really is worth their time. Add in the fact that these workshops ar

Happy 4th of July   to   everyone stateside today. In honor of today's holiday, I thought I'd be a little thematic with my blog post. Last summer (2017) I had the opportunity to spend a week in Quantico, VA at the U.S. Marine's Key Educators and Leaders Workshop. It was by far one of the absolute best professional experiences I have been apart of. Not just because of the cool activities we got to take part of (HMX-1 helicopter ride, martial arts training at Quantico, the Sunset Parade to name a few) but also because of the great men and women we met, who selflessly serve our country. So you might be wondering what all this has to do with Web 2.0, social media or networks. Well, the entire week there was a Marine whose job it was to take photos, Tweet, and run their PR. Since they were tweeting out our pictures I started following them @MCRCPAO (MCRC Public Affairs) was updated with all of the photos for our week. It also led me to keep up with @MCB_Quantico which is &q