Post 26: Social Media Sabbatical

Can I interest you in a Social Media Sabbatical?

We all know that social media can be addicting. Some of us are on these platforms for hours upon hours for different reasons. I think that it can sometimes be fun and scrolling through my feed is a little relaxing.

But what happens when social media becomes a daunting task? When it starts feeling like a job? When you start dreading it?

Take a Break! Unplug!

Unplugged by las is licensed under (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

I know that I will be taking a quick break after the semester finishes for rebooting and refocusing my attention. I would like to start using social media in my professional development and I think I might take a little time just mapping it out.

Will you be taking a social media sabbatical?

Here are some reasons why taking a break from social media might be a good option:

1.       Social media provides a distorted sense of reality.

2.       Social media can sometimes be a distraction.

3.       Social media does allow for interaction with your friends, but not always in a substantial way.

4.       Social media might cause you to seek validation from others. Too focused on how many “likes” or “retweets”.

I think social media can be a great tool in many of our endeavors, I would just like to find a balance on how many hours I spend on these platforms.

Post 25: Google+ for Curation!

I think Google is trying to take over the world. It has so many tools and offerings for users that you can’t help but want to create a Google account. They just recently launched the Google “Collections” feature.  

“…users are now able to build content collections based on topics and interests.

These collections include a group of posts on a particular topic that can either be shared publicly, privately or with specific sets of people – similar to Google+ posts themselves.”

This feature is very similar to the curation tools that you are already used to. Some suggest that Google was inspired by Pinterest. Are you a Google+ user? I never use my Google+ profile. I do use Google+ to login to other websites.

Do you use Google+?

Not sure if this new feature will be used by the community as expected, due to the fact that most Google+ users do not use this platform as their main social media tool. 

Post 24: Now What Do I Do With All This Junk?

As you can tell from my blog, I prefer to use a pseudonym for the many adventures in this class. With every social media tool introduced in our class, I have used the pseudonym. I created a separate gmail account for this pseudonym and tie every registration to this account. I only use this gmail account in this class and do not give it out otherwise.

From time to time, I check this gmail account for updates from social media sources.

Come to find I have a total of 207 emails! (That includes Primary, Social, and Promotion)

These are emails that I have received from the online communities I joined, Scoop.it, Delicious, Edmodo, Voicethread, Pinterest, Twitter, Quora, Diigo, Wikispaces, and all the other tools that I ventured to try in addition to the ones recommended.

Some of us are desensitized when we look at our inboxes and see hundreds of new emails. Most of the time, these emails are notifications, updates, or promotions. It takes me about an hour to ‘clear’ the junk and for a few precious minutes, my inbox is empty.

To the people that used their regular email accounts, have you also encountered a bombardment of social media emails?

Not to worry, most of the time these platforms, let you unsubscribe. Now the task is to figure out how…

Post 23: Digital Kidnapping...huh?

I think this would be tagged on the course blog as “internet creepiness”. On the topics of privacy that we are reviewing this week, I thought it would be apropos to discuss this interesting term.

So what is Digital Kidnapping?

It is essentially where users find a baby photo they like or want to have on social media, and ‘steal’ this photo and later post it and claim it as their baby or child.  I cannot even fathom why someone would want to claim to have a baby that is not their own or “play house” online. Parents who later find their babies’ photos being used elsewhere feel violated.

“Type "#BabyRP" into Instagram search. Thousands of photos of babies, children- even ultrasound pictures- will pop up. These photos do not belong to the users posting them.”

I do not have children of my own, so I would like to hear from the parents in the class... What are your thoughts?

I remember when my sister had her first child. My brother thought it would be funny to take a photo of her baby and make a meme out of it. She was extremely upset about it and did not let him post it anywhere. I guess she did not like the idea of her baby’s picture being plastered all over the internet on chat forums, websites, and/or social media.

Again, we circle back to the idea that we must feel comfortable with everything we post on these social media platforms because this information is not under lock and key. Others can and will take the information you provide (including baby pictures) and use it as they please.

What can you do to avoid digital kidnapping?

1.       A reverse image search on Google can help you find out if your photos are being used on other websites or social networks.

2.       You can watermark your photos before you post.

3.       Set your accounts to “private”

Post 22: Falling into the Quora hole

I have been entranced my Quora lately. If some of you have not tried Quora, I recommend that you try it out at least once.

 

Here are some observations and benefits I have found using this platform:

·         There is a designated space to answering questions instead of “Googling” or “Binging” the answers and sifting through search items

·         Answers are from real people in real time as opposed to SEO sites.

·         You can follow both people and topics.

·         The Answer/commenting system has a voting system to promote effective items and suppress the ineffective responses.

·         Quora only allows you to search for questions; this prevents initial bias on answers.

·         Most of the time, you will receive more than one answer and source on a question.

What was your experience?

Post 21: Is Social Media Changing Language?

Social Media is changing the way we communicate with others.

I cringe sometimes when I see the texts loaded with acronyms or hear people use the acronyms or phrases while speaking. I do not know why but I still like to spell out words and avoid acronyms.

Here are some words that were created from social media use or have been given new meaning through social media:

• selfie
• unfriend
• troll
• rickrolling
• status
• meme
• hashtag
• viral
• tag
• trending
• tweet
• wiki
• avatar

Can you add to the list?

If students are relying on new vocabulary and social media to communicate with others, where are they going to practice good language mechanics? In other words, if a student is consistently using social media language can we still hold them accountable in the classroom? If they are not practicing grammar, spelling, and punctuation, will those skills start to slowly disappear?

In my opinion, social media is contributing to poor spelling, grammar, and punctuation (skills that are still very necessary in this society).

I wonder how English teachers are solving this issue in the classroom? Can anyone share their own experiences?

Post 20: Slacktivism: “Token Displays of Support”

I just learned a new term. I stumbled upon it as I was researching how social media is used to promote causes and issues around the world. I began to read this article “Does Slacktivism Work?”.

We all can observe that social media is a powerful communication tool. Stories spread faster through social media than waiting for the 6 o’clock news. Social media has the ability to grab our attention and even regulate the kinds of conversations we are having with each other ‘around the water cooler’ at work.

Yet, the real question we need to ask ourselves is:

Once social media promotes awareness on a cause, are there subsequent tangible actions that follow?

In other words, do these causes generate more support after being blasted through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.?

I’m sure you have seen posts on Facebook that ask you to ‘share’ or ‘like’ a post if you are in agreement with its message. But once you do those actions, is there anything further that happens? Or if you have just been asked to ‘retweet’ a tweet that promotes awareness on an injustice, what happens next?

Most people say nothing happens next. This is an interesting phenomenon where social media brings issues to light but doesn’t necessary spark action within its users. Some say that when you share, like, and/or retweet, most users feel like they have met their societal obligation. They have shared the message along and have made a contribution.

So how can we repackage our social media message to ignite tangible actions?

One solution is having “charities promote the values underlying their causes if they want to turn more slacktivists into committed, policy-changing activists.”

What do you think?