Another Week

My presentation is over. it was a mad rush to get everything prepared. The interview part was only ok. It wasn't the interview of the century and more confirmed what my research warned about, and that is taking care to plan use of Facebook and other social media. Asking students to post or friend is not a good plan. It's much better to tailor your use of social media to the lesson while considering student demographics and status. There were some good comments about my presentation. One comment I saw, but did not address said they would have liked to see more examples of Facebook being used in the class. I would have liked that, too and that's what I expected, but after my research and reflection I probably would have needed to scour the country for instructors using Facebook beyond the let's all post, friend, and perhaps we'll have a community. Perhaps we will see more instructors using it for educational purposes once the newness and others start intentionally using it for education. I liked being able to connect one of the presentations with my own research. The presenter talked about how her interviewee used social media in a somewhat haphazard way and they finally called in a instructional designer. In my research I found which kind of socail media you use will depend on the intention and goal of your program or learning. For instance, most people who use Facebook use it to meet social needs and build relationship. ON the other hand, people who use Twitter do not use it to meet their social needs, but use it for intellectual stimulation. This research would drive how ID will choose which social media to use for which lesson plan. This research may generalize to companies who wish to use Facebook and Twitter, but are unsure how to use them.

Share

I couldn't help but notice the first interview projects while not the same topics or tech tools were remarkably focused on building relationships in the online learning environment. For instance, using polls to help students work together or compare results and using wikis for student collaboration of a writing project. I am interesting in student engagement and building student relationships. I have been thinking about how to use the obvious tech tools like Facebook and Twitter to increase student interaction, but have not considered other ways to build collaboration and engagement. The presentations this week sparked my interest in using different tech tools for student engagement.

I've been enjoying sharing and interacting with classmates in Twitter. It's not difficult at all to make the posts and respond to others. My follower list has always included ID folks and other educators so it is no hard task to find links to read and share. Meg and I have been meeting by Skype and discussing class material and other topics of interest relating to ID. This week we discussed the future of jobs in ID. Meg gave me a link to an internship in the cities. It really got me thinking about the possibilities in ID and how there will probably be many jobs in ID not only in the education sector, but in the business sector, too. There will always be a need for employee training materials, technical training, etc. Not only will ID be needed to build courses, but also to update courses as technology and organizational needs change. Talking with Meg helped me view ID in a different way and also created excitement in me for the future possibilities in ID. Now, that's what I call social learning.