Welcome to our second week of class.
Before we move toward the readings, discussions, and assignments for week 2, let’s overview quickly our week 1 activities.
Last week, we covered the class documents, such as the syllabus and the adjacent documents explaining the class workflow. According to those documents and most of your responses to the question “Why are we here,” we seek in this class to move out from our comfort zone.
If your comfort zone is “Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram etc,” namely tools for personal social media, in this class, we seek to expand our horizons and learn the potential for the professional use of social media.
In that sense, I strongly encourage you to go carefully again over the D2L content topic “LIB 290 Social media tools” in the very first module of the D2L Content: https://stcloudstate.learn.minnstate.edu/d2l/le/content/3980495/viewContent/33552311/View
And consider testing and driving the social media tools listed. If you have experience with any of those tools, great; do share your impressions in the FB group discussion (it will count toward your weekly discussions). If you never used any of those tools and test them, great: share your impressions and it will count toward your weekly discussions. If you want to ask questions and further discuss the proc and cons of any of those tools, great; it will count toward your weekly discussions.
As shared multiple times, each week increments, including the past week 1 and the upcoming week 2 will move in the following fashion:
- Read your articles, research and contribute with your own readings, if possible. Wed-Thursday.
Discuss your findings in Facebook (brainstorming), Twitter (microblogging). Thursday-Friday. Respond, provide feedback to your peers. Friday-Saturday
If you have hesitations to start a discussion in Facebook, you shouldn’t. There is a lot going on in the world, so finding a global issue to discuss should not be a problem.
IN addition, I offer you the #SundayScoop, where our class can generate our list of “hot topics.” In addition, on a daily basis, I am offering you global issues, most of them in the realm of social media and you are most welcome to share your opinions about them.
“Lurking” is acceptable in social media, but it will not bring you points in this class. A FB “like” is a good sign about you reading the posting, but not sufficient to indicate discussion. You have to take the poles under the FB postings and respond in a meaningful and well though-out way to earn discussion points. Your best bet to acquire your weekly points will remain your ability to engage your peers into discussions related to the main topics of this class. - Complete the short class and home assignments in Evernote. Saturday-Sunday
- Post your mini paper in the D2L Discussion and provide feedback to your peers’ mini papers. Sunday-Monday.
- Explore your Educause blog and expand your knowledge on blog maintenance and its connectivity to the mainstream social media, such as our Facebook Group, our Twitter thread (#SCSULIB290) and your personal social media.
- Work toward your final project: creating a social media strategy regarding a global issue
If you are behind on any of those activities, especially discussions, make sure to catch up as quickly as you can, since the rest of the class will be focusing on the discussions for the next week and might not be able to focus on discussions
This coming week 2, we will be making sure that we understand the technology behind social media. We want to make sure that the entire class is on the same page when we talk about hardware and software. When we try to figure out the difference between software and applications. We want to understand the “cloud” and why it is so important for social media. Bonus points for those, who dive into Boyd and Ellison article and discuss with the rest of the class the issues raised in this article, since they are paramount to understanding social media.
This coming week 2, we will start our own blogs. Directions to the SCSU Edublog system are posted in your Evernote documents for week 2: http://web.stcloudstate.edu/pmiltenoff/lib290/Directions4LIB290Blog.docx
Now, I understand that “blog” does not sound nearly as sexy as Yo https://www.justyo.co/, or Kik https://www.kik.com/ (please share your impressions of those SM apps), but you are missing the foundational role of blogs in the SM world. Blogs are actually the places were your company’s real and solid information will be presented and shared with your customers. The difference from the old-fashioned Web 1.0 company web page is in the dynamic of update, which a blog provides. The difference from the social media apps such as Facebook is the more structured way to present your information. You probably are already understanding the microblogging disadvantage of Twitter compared to a blog.
How do you organize your blog activities with your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Flickr, etc activities can have decisive impact on your institution, being that a corporate company, private business, or non-profit. This is why, we want to move as quickly as possible to the details of the blog maintenance and sometimes by March be able to build our own SM strategy, including our blogs and the rest of the social media we intend to use.
The rest of week 2 is the same as week 1: discuss, share your mini paper, complete the two short Evernote assignments and work toward your final project.
I encourage you to seek class support, which will help us work as a team. However, if you decide to turn directly to me, please use this Doodle link to seek a personal, live communication with me via Adobe Connect or old-fashioned phone call (320 308 3072). I will do my best to help you success in this class