Emily's Notions

 How many times can you say that you've put yourself out there in the online world, especially with people you don't know? I personally did not like commenting on peoples posts or jumping in on discussions with random strangers. The whole thing felt awkward and made me uncomfortable. I was constantly worried that the people I would be communicating with wouldn't understand what I meant or would misread a tone. That alone made me wary of interacting online with people I didn't know. Recently, I joined twitter for this course and began following/interacting with people I didn't know. The only word I can think of to describe my experience so far is welcoming. My fears and uncertainty subsided when I found people to interact with that were open and encouraging of a conversation. I found the weekly lrnchat on twitter was a great place to start. The conversation topic changes weekly and it's a great place to interact with others.  What chats or groups have you found w...

 This was a week of exploration for me. I tried to become more of an active user, rather than a lurker on the various social media sites I use. It was interesting to see how my interactions varied and how my comfort levels increased. Prior to beginning this course, I much preferred to be a lurker in the background,  with the occasional message or comment exchange with someone I already knew. I look forward to continuing this journey and seeing what I other tools I can explore. Another area I was able to reflect on this week was my personal learning networks. Looking over this week's readings I found several similarities in PLNs and communities of practice. Due to my profession, I belong to several different education related personal learning networks and often find them informative and interactive. While networking and interacting in groups was normally one of my strong suits, I've noticed that they have begun to take a lot of energy out of me. If anyone else has any networki...

Micromanaging: Meaning too tightly control something or someone's work. Let's all take a minute to remember a time where we were micromanaged in our workplace. I distinctly can think of 2 times that really stood out to me, even though it has occurred much more than that.  1. My first ever teaching job, where the parents had free rein and demanded to see everything and anything I would be teaching in my lesson plans, even though they were already approved by admin.  2. Another employer would second guess everything I did. She would require me to take on several different roles outside of my contract and then have someone redo or take credit for the things I worked on.  In article I read in Forbes it talks about the distinction between micromanaging and delegating. It also offers some ways to delegate rather than micromanage. The article talks about how some leaders fall into the routine of micromanaging, because they aren't used to relinquishing complete control to delegat...

 Reflecting on this past week, I have found myself becoming more comfortable with the set up of this class. I like the freedom we have been given in the way we interact with each other, it's so much different than the rigidness of some of the other classes I've taken where we are confined to the discussion board. This week had me thinking more and more about my usage of social media and how I interact with people online. Usually I'm not one to share my opinions readily and so publicly, however I've been communicating with classmates and others on twitter that I've never met in real life. I've never been one to put myself out there in this manner, but I can feel that changing with this class. I'm pretty familiar with the tools this week (Twitter and Instagram), but I also learned more about the RSS Readers that I had never used before. Overall, this week was informative and allowed me to express my thoughts in various spaces.

 Throughout this week, I've noticed a common theme that keeps popping up among twitter feeds I follow; anonymity. In this digital age it's easy to hide behind our screens and not have any accountability for the things we post under the guise of an anonymous poster or a screen name. Our class blog had a post by Dr. Dennen that really got me thinking about how we interact with people when we know we have the ability to be anonymous. Yik Yak was a popular app when I was in undergrad and was widely used on my campus during the height of its popularity. It was basically an app where people were able to gossip about each other or things on campus, since the app was location based. Often times I wondered if people were forced to say the things that they had written about people, would they still do it? Most likely not, but because they were protected by anonymity they probably felt safer doing so. I personally don't enjoy commenting on things online anonymous or not, but when I do...

 With the influx of people working from home last year, it wasn't uncommon to find someone you knew working past their contracted hours. Due to the lack of commute, one gains more time but how they use it obviously varies from person to person. After talking with some of my colleagues about this, I began to reflect on my time teaching from home. While it was a hectic transition to change from in person to online, I found myself more focused and able to have more time throughout my day. All of these things were great for me in the beginning, however I quickly began to fall down the rabbit hole of working after hours or staying up later to get a head start for the next day. None of these activities are uncommon for teachers, but after awhile it began to eat into more of my free time even before the pandemic began. Talking with other teachers, I began to realize that the convenience of working from home was a blessing and a curse. I hadn't set boundaries before I began and therefo...

    Produsage was a term I continuously came across in my reading for this week. In my own words this phrase means that the producer is also the consumer, and therefore is the one who takes the content they are working with and develops it into something new. Initially when I was reading about this term, my mind immediately went to Tik Tok and Twitter. Often times while scrolling, I have passed a meme or a specific type of  Tik Tok that people have recreated. Naturally they aren't each the same exact version of the original content, but they are similar with different changes in them to suit their target audiences. The content creation communities that were also mentioned reminded me of the different groups of content producers across the various platforms (I.e. Tik Tokers, Youtubers, Instagram Influencers, etc.) Can you think of any examples of produsage in your life? Let me know in the comments!

 Hi everyone and welcome to my corner of the internet! I'm so excited to start this blog and begin this adventure in EME 6414. For my first post I wanted to touch upon social media and my usage of it. Since this class focuses on social networking and learner interactions I decided to take a look at my own usage of social media. To be completely honest, I don't find myself to be a social media guru, although I have a presence on several popular platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc. This is most likely due to the constant change and updating of these platforms. They are always being updated with the smallest of changes in order to retain the attention of their various audiences. In my opinion, I think social media is a great way to network and connect with others you may not have thought to originally. I grew up in a time where technology was really starting to advance and social media was in what I consider to be its early stages. I distinctly remember in middle ...

      Coming into this course, I obviously expected to learn about social media and aspects related to Web 2.0, however I didn't expect this course to take such a hands on approach. Personally, I really enjoy having the opportunity to be able to be fully immersed in the course material. The ability to collaborate and communicate with not only my classmates, but others in my various areas of interest has been great!     The readings assigned for this week have made me take a closer look at how social media and the interactions we have are designed. The majority of people, including businesses, have some type of presence on social media. Even though I am an active user on multiple platforms, this was an eye opener for me to see how these interactions or posts can directly effect each other.  I am really looking forward to the rest of the summer and continuing to grow and adapt with the knowledge I gain from this course.