Last week

Hey guys! I had a great time this summer. Learned a lot about Web 2.0 tools and more importantly, I learned about how these tools can be incorporated into education. I truly hope that this won’t be the end of such a great community we have built. I want to thank everyone for the feedback, comments, and fun times. I have truly taken a lot out of this class. Thank you Dr. Dennen for sharing you knowledge and expertise with us! Have a great rest of the summer everyone!
Here are a few pictures of me at Legoland. I’m a kid at heart and I love Legos so I had a blast! If you can, you should definitely check it out whenever you have the chance!

Good Luck Everyone!

It has been a great summer filled with fun, excitement, and, most of all, work! How are you guys feeling now that we are nearing the end? Don’t be shy, I know most of us are probably burned out haha. It’s absolutely normal. Go ahead and take a vote!

I wanted to wish you all good luck on your finals these next couple of days. You can do it!

New website on trial. You’re the Jury!

Hey guys. I recently launched an online community forum for volleyball. Yet, I somehow did not feel really satisfied with it (mostly visually). And so now I want to share this with you guys as well. This cool website is my latest attempt at an online community. If you guys would be so kind as to check it out and let me know what you think, I would greatly appreciate it. I am using both sites for my project. But I definitely welcome any advice and/or comments 🙂

 

Social Media Tones

Have you guys ever wondered about social media tones? I was reading the title to one of my posts earlier and I started thinking “hmm, people who read this might think I am being rude or condescending when in fact I am just being curious.” This got me thinking about how many times I have probably misread or misinterpreted what someone was trying to say online. Thus, came to mind the question, “Does tone affect social networking?” Have you guys ever been in that situation? I decided to look online for some answers and I found this website with an interesting article. Here is the link to this article about tones in Social Networking Sites (SNS). The information on here is pretty interesting. There is a lot of interesting data on here about minorities, baby boomers, Gen X, adults, women, etc. and how they view the tones in SNS. You guys should check it out. It’s pretty interesting stuff.

Because of this, I decided to look for some help in creating the right tone. I stumbled upon this blog which talks about 5 steps to determining your social media tone. On this blog, the main focus is companies, however, I think these steps can be used in general. I hope you guys can find this useful. I certainly did. 🙂

Also, here is another article that might be helpful for finding your inner tone as well. Happy readings!

Should Facebook really be used in higher education?

While reading the Seechaliao (2014) article, I couldn’t believe that many higher educational professors were using Facebook as a tool for instruction. The article discussed how most professors believed that social media tools could be a great way to support learning. And I agree  with that wholeheartedly. However, I cannot, for some reason, see how Facebook could ever be a helpful tool. I just think that it is way to personal of a social media tool to ever be used in education. Throughout these last couple of weeks, we have been learning non-stop about various tools that can support education. One of these was Edmodo. What a wonderful tool for education. I think that if educators wanted to help learners understand the importance of social media technologies, Edmodo would be a great place to start. LinkedIn would be another great tool that they could use. But Facebook? I just don’t see it. But maybe that’s just me. You all know I’m not a fan of Facebook. Never have been for some reason. So I was definitely shocked to hear that it was one of the highest choices for education. What did you guys think about this article? 🙂

Academia Freedom……..Really?

As I read the Noniashvili (2014) article, I kept wondering why there was so much fuss about the intellectual property rights of the educators. I kept asking myself, “Why is the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) so concerned with this?” In the article, one of the reasons as to why they are worried regards whether “the author retains ownership of his/her works…”  With all of the social media going on, the AAUP is concerned that educators’ public and private lines might be blurred. But then I start to think, well, these individuals are all educated. They should know what they need to keep private and what they can say or show in public right? Colleges and universities are all about  being professional. If professors want to show off their own unique ideas with their students, they should be allowed to do so if that is what they wish. I don’t think any laws need to be put in place to be honest. And if some professors share some details or hobbies they enjoy (running, food, gardening), I think that would be great. I’m not going to speak for all students, but for me, I love when teachers do those things. Being a student, I always walk into class nervous about who or how my professor is going to be. It is always refreshing when they show their “human” side as opposed to just a professional aspect of themselves. It’s nice to see that these individuals are just like us. They like the same things we do, they enjoy walking by the beach, playing sports, or just enjoying a nice, quiet night in watching movies. I think that social media has helped me, personally, to be able to relate more to my professors and be more open and  expressive about my ideas. I’m not as intimidated as I used to be a few years back.

Sometimes I get the feeling that (in some unwritten way) we have to automatically assume that professors are smarter and better than us. Of course, I am not saying they aren’t smart. I am just saying that, just because they have a PhD, it does not make them better or superior human beings than everyone else. No, they still have to put on their pants one foot at a time just like everyone else. I prefer to see them as perhaps wiser than some. They have experiences and knowledge that they are willing to share with us. And that’s a wonderful gift that we (students) receive from them. What do you guys think?

Online Forum

Hey guys,

I’m trying to get this online forum running for my project. I want it to be user-centered so feel free to check it out and contribute to it. Let me know if there are any problems or anything like that. I appreciate the help 🙂 Just click Here for the link. Thanks guys!

Mirror Neurons

So, we lost the World Cup this year. Now we have to wait four more years!! But, soccer aside, I wanted to share some information that I think is interesting. Have you guys ever heard of Mirror Neurons? If you click on this link, it will take you to the PBS website in which you can launch a video. You should definitely check this out. Mirror Neurons have not actually been proven to be accurate or not, however it is an interesting theory as to why we learn through modeling or feel empathy towards others. A little bit of information on it can be found on this apa.org article which talks about some studies done on this. And since wikipedia was one of the tools we have used, I thought I would add their information about mirror neurons on here. It’s pretty interesting stuff. Let me know what you guys think?

Hope you had a great weekend. I sure know I had a very busy one hehe. Here’s a little wikipedia humor. See you next week!

FIFA Finals

Hey guys!

I have been keeping up with the FIFA World Cup. There have been some intense games going on. I gotta say I am not a big fan of Netherlands. At this point I’m rooting for Argentina or Germany. Are you guys watching the games? Who are you rooting for?

As we all know, there can be some interesting fans out there; especially for soccer. I decided to look up about the psychology of fans and found this article online that talks about fans while they experience “BIRGing” (Basking in Reflected Glory) and “CORFing” (Cut Off Reflected Failure). I thought this was an interesting online article and thought I would share it with you guys. There are other interesting terms used throughout the article. If you guys are interested in sports and psychology, you might wanna check this out 🙂

Wikispaces

I encountered wikispaces this past spring in one of my courses. We were given an assignment in which we had to create a board filled with specific information about certain terms and topics we were learning. I absolutely loved it! It is such a great way to gather information and present it in a visually appealing manner. I think it was a great collaborating project that teachers should use for their students. This allows students to work together in order to build up a page filled with information on a particular subject. You can use images, videos, audios, add links, etc. And if that wasn’t enough, they also work with glogster. I haven’t talked about glogster but I really love this tool! Wikispaces really is a wonderful tool, in my opinion, for collaboration. If you guys haven’t heard of it or checked it out yet, you definitely should! Here is a tour of wikispaces created by the website. I highly recommend that you guys give it a shot. You won’t regret it! 🙂