Learning Socially

Technology has changed the way learning happens, in and out of the classroom. Starting from projector heads, VHS, Mavis Beacon typing, and Oregon Trail, kids have been using computers in school for several decades now. Social media however, has been able to bring learning together, made it more group oriented, and more sophisticated. Studies have shown that children are learning through digital media and that what used to be feared, is now being rethought as inspiring. Using media to teach, to learn, to create increases brain function and creativity. There is a campaign that kids should be taught with what they find interesting, which is through digital media arts. This idea is called a "flipped classroom". While some believe technology has hindered new generations' social/communication skills, one can see it from a completely opposite view point.

I recently watched an interesting documentary on a newer school in New York called, Quest for Learning. All I have to say is I'm jealous. I have always had a hard time paying attention in school from a young age. I couldn't wait to get home and jump on my computer and create houses, cities, and empires or play different memory and board games on various CD-ROM games for PC I owned. These students at Quest for Learning do not sit in lectures with teachers drawing on chalk boards telling them to sit up straight or to pay attention. These kids each have their own computers and stay active all day long creating and designing digital art/media and then sharing them on social medias, as well as learning from lesson plans, which have been created by instructional design.

As a 5th year in college, I have had to use social media for classes. I have also used them by choice for group projects and presentations. I can't imagine having to attend college before these tools were invented. The funny thing is however, a lot of what I have learned thoughout my college career, which I had to know for my job, I taught to myself through the amazing world wide web. Because of social media and user generated content, I have been able to find almost any question I have whether it is about creating something using Adobe Photoshop or creating html for a Facebook page. Means of communications and technology will always change, keeping teaching up to date with what is necessary and practical is the real lesson societies need to keep in mind. Do not fear how technology will affect new generations, but embrace it and incorporate it to increase education and understanding.

Below is a short clip from CNN on the school, Quest for Learning:

Promoting the Emotional

With a new election coming up, I've become weary of of not people posting political issues on Facebook and Twitter such as articles on propositions, or who they are voting for as president, but of the conflict people bring upon themselves of stating they themselves are annoyed of reading peoples opinions on social medias (which they themselves also do, most of the time). If social media is not a paradigm of platforms to voice opinion and reach out to others, then what are most social medias for? However, its a long known rule, one has to be careful when discussing politics. 

 This new election is going to have a large impact on the type of company I work for. Being in an economy recovering from a financial/housing crisis, regulations, committees, organizations, and politicians will all affect housing/home buying guidelines. As a marketing director for a mortgage company, I feel that I am obliged to try to create awareness for our followers on which candidate/proposition will mean what for the housing industry. However, promoting politics as a company or brand, is much trickier than as an individual - the stakes are much higher. Since I do not fully understand the market my company is in, I asked my boss to write a matter of fact, no opinion or slant article on Obama's "Mortgage Refinance Relief Plan 2012" and  Mitt Romney's “Securing the American Dream and the Future of Housing”.  His reply was unexpected and dissatisfying, saying "Mitt is a Twit". Even though we have all the same political views, I thought this was funny; however, it did not produce the results I wanted to distribute to our followers. While I do not think my boss would ever publicly through our company try to promote or sway others to vote Obama, I believe he could not feel comfortable writing anything about Romney's platform. So far for my job, I try to find objective articles written on reliable mortgage/news blogs and post the links to our social medias, just in case followers want to read them.

There are some who do not want to be objective with politics, and there are some who cannot read about people's opinions that are different from their own. However, one can not expect people to stop discussing the election and propositions online. It is inevitable. One of my issues though, is how much information there is available. I am not very familiar with politics, and growing up with a very conservative Republican father, made me stay away from them. However, since being at my job I try to keep up with housing issues which tie in with politics, corporations, and government run identities who monitor the industry. The more I read, the more I get confused. Twitter especially, has made it easier for someone like me to not only find political information, but want to learn more so I can keep up with all of the conversations going on in the nation. If this is how social media has affected someone like me, who has never been interested in politics before, I can only imagine its amped a huge amount of other people up as well. I still remember the beginning days of "Rock the Vote" from MTV using very famous celebrities, and I think Facebook, Twitter, and others have gotten younger people to be engaged much more successfully. Youtube has also had an incredible impact on the elections, especially the 2008 elections. It is so nice to be able to watch short sections, or see debates on Youtube when I do not have the time to watch TV. When it comes down to it, it is everyones' personal prerogative whether they voice their opinions, but at least people have to opportunity as well as see others views.

Image from http://mashable.com/2010/06/09/political-campaigns-social-media/

User-Generated Content

Online discussion boards, threads, user chat rooms, instant messaging have all been around for many years now. Now however, people online are able to discuss, debate, rate, and share more than ever with  the integration of Web 2.0.  However, while it seems simple and mostly unsophisticated, it is an outlet of controversies.

"Web 2.0 is a concept that takes the network as a platform for information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the Internet or World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in asocial media dialogue as creators (prosumers) of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users (consumers) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them." (Wikipedia, 2012).

User-generated content is communities of people with shared goals and objectives, seeking out new information for the greater good. Pierre Levy has coined this idea into the term "Collective Intelligence". With the new age of social networking, apps, and integration of softwares and platforms, people have been able to connect all over the world on any topic their hearts desire. When people are given a utility to broadcast their voice, it gives them power. This interconnectivity allows and brings back creativity. Consumers become creators. People don’t just have to listen to others knowledge but are allowed to express themselves, add ideas or advice to current ideals or theories. It gives people the chance to stand up for what they believe in, instead of being labeled or clumped together with whatever political and corporate powers believe the masses should believe. Since any average Joe now has this more power than ever before, this freedom of expression, freedom to connect, is problematic for different reasons and different entities. Media fandom guru, Henry Jenkins, believes "collective intelligence will gradually alter ways commodity culture operates".

• User-generated content allows for people to critique current hegemony. 
• User-generated content leaves the experts behind and makes the Internet even more haphazard and reckless. 
• User-genrated content crosses lines of copyright and ownership

When people are connected all over the world, with freedom of press, with no limits, and in modes of interest and similarities, gaps of international relations and suspicions are compressed. Citizens can debate, share, and organize against political identities. Consumers no longer have to put faith in what a company promises their service or product’s value, but can decide based on others experiences. However, how do you put your faith in? How does one know if another's "testimonial" is based on accuracy and honesty? There is so much posted or "published" out there. How does one know if someone already has published an idea? Does posting online automatically give it credibility and ownership? Larry Lessig made the observation that kids are knowingly and willingly breaking the law. So does the government punish the masses, or does it study the evolution and make changes to the rules? Will it ever go too far? If complete democracy is chaos, will there be a solution or a limit set in place before there is anarchy?

I do not have the answers to these questions. In fact, I don't think anyone, not Google, nor Microsoft nor any media master has been able to answer. However, I believe there's an ethical need to be a way to test and approve credibility, honesty, accuracy that should be addressed with priority (depending on where or what the content is on). 

Here are my experiences with my personal life and work:

Personal: If something really stands out to me, I’ll “like” it, or give it a “+1”. However, if a company really disappoints me, I’ll write a negative review. The middlemen usually get left out. However, it really has helped me because being a college student on a limited income, I don’t want to chance spending money on a bad experience. This new age makes businesses more reliable, more than when reviews were by word of mouth or by an expert critique to read in a published paper. Most of the time however, I enjoy the fact that I am able to easily access others opinions, and glad I do not have to post my own. I think Amazon.com is the most incredible use of user-generated content as well as algorithms to connect them in different ways. 

Work: One of my biggest pet peeves is logging into my company's website, seeing there are new comments, and then realizing they are spam; user-generated content that has no relativity to our company to drive traffic somewhere else. Most of the times, the comments left aren’t even in English. We still have an old-age way of doing things where we add clients testimonials to our site ourselves. We do not make up any of our testimonials, however the few negative responses we have received are not published. At the same time, these clients have the ability to log on to a plethora of websites to make remarks or rate our company, negative or positive, which has been almost non-existent, aside from a few "recommendations" on our Facebook Page that we got from having a contest based on if someone wrote one.

Jenkins, H. The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence, 2004
Wikipedia "Web 2.0" Updated: October 1, 2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
Larry Lessig: Laws that Choke Creativity, Ted Talks, March 2007 http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html

Picture borrowed from http://www.mediosenlared.es/tag/sustainability-of-social-networks/

Social Media & Relationships

"Single", "Married", "In a Relationship", "It's Complicated". Aren't all relationships complicated? Brand and identity are extremely powerful driving forces in todays globalized, tech-savvy world. Whom one associate yourself with, what your relationship status is, and how strong your relationships all effect one's (businesses included) "brand". When a person is "single" or "in a relationship", there are certain expectations and assumptions of that person by their followers. While there is no real set of rules of how one must act socially when single or in a relationship, many would probably agree that there are different levels of appropriate web-based interactions depending on the status. I have personally had social media cause issues in romantic relationships as well as casual relationships. When one's identity is on display, one are vulnerable; issues that used to be kept more personal or secretive in the "old" days, now have become everyones' business. The more one keeps personal information out of the public's eye, the more personal power and usually respect one retains.

For businesses it is a little different, but nonetheless tricky as well. I am in charge of all social media platforms for my company, which is a DBA of a large corporation, which means we do not go by the same name. I try to make our company seem as personable to our followers as I can, especially since we are a small company and already have a reputation of being warm and inviting. At the same time, there are certain limitations to follow. Because my company offers more services than products, most of our services involve working with many other businesses, such as Realtors. Many of these Realtors work for different companies and sometimes have rivalries. Therefore, I cannot over display our relationships or make it seem like we have any sort of favoritism. I also have to be careful not to stray too much from our corporate office's brand image, or to make relationships with those they would not approve of. However, being a small office, in a small town, offering limited services, our followers do not try to connect back with us very much. We are mostly for informational use.

My roommate also has relationship issues with her job, that she has just enlightened me on. She works for an online boutique. A major factor for this industry is fashion bloggers. These bloggers will wear clothing from stores and link to them. However, sometimes bloggers have loyalties to certain stores, and some bloggers are competitive with other bloggers. So for business networking socially, I'd say keep it casual.

When it comes down to it, whether promoting oneself or one's business, who ever is following wants to feel connected. A follower does not want to feel like they do not exist or are not acknowledged. Just like a relationship outside of cyberspace, the connection needs nurturing, support, and attention. And I believe a huge aspect to a prosperous relationship is honesty, which I especially recommend for business.



Some Interesting Statistics I found: 

Match.com and Chadwick Martin Bailey 2009 - 2010 Studies: Recent Trends: Online Dating

Marriage Survey:
• 17% of couples married in the last 3 years, or 1 in 6, met each other on an online dating site.
(Table 1)
• In the last year, more than twice as many marriages occurred between people who met on an
online dating site than met in bars, at clubs and other social events combined. (Table 1)
• Approximately twice as many recently married couples met on Match.com than the site that
ranked second. (Table 2)

Online Dating Survey:
• Match.com has led to more than twice as many dates (Table 3) and twice as many relationships
(Table 4) as the site that ranked second.
General Survey
• 1 out of 5 single people have dated someone they met on an online dating site. (Table 5)
• 1 out of 5 people in a new committed relationship (including marriage) met their significant
other on an online dating site.

Introduction

Welcome!

My name is Kelsey Paterson and you have stumbled upon my blog for one of my communication design classes. The world is rapidly changing, learning, growing, and connecting which have all greatly been influenced by the Internet. When I think of my relationship with the Internet, I think of social networking and other social medias. Starting from my awkward middle school days of Myspace, I have used certain websites and tools to connect with friends and family all over the world. The way I view, use, filter, and exploit myself online has changed over the years, especially now that I am (finally) an iPhone owner. Now that I am taking a Social Media class, I am going to use  many social media outlets and understand not only how they work, but their strengths, weaknesses, and impacts on our American way of life. 

Currently, I work at a local mortgage company. My title is a "Marketing Coordinator", although I do much much more. Technically I don't believe there is a correct job title for the broad variety of work I do: from using Adobe Creative Suite to design post cards, ads and fliers, to retaining all past clients' information, to using html on our website, to researching the mortgage industry to write articles, sending out mass emails, marketing our local radio segments and posting them to our website, marketing Real Estate seminars, to promoting contests and giveaways, creating a board game explaining how a mortgage loan process works, to answering office phone calls and making copies for people, and a whole bunch more. Whew, I just made myself realize how much I actually do!  This last summer I was in charge of designing and marketing for Paradise Rotary's Relay4Life team. In doing so, the team raised well beyond their goal of $10,000 which went to the American Cancer Society. 

So, back to my blog. The point or theme I am going to therefore focus on for this blog is how I use these social networking/media tools for my job and compare and contrast it to how I see other companies/corporations use them, as well as I how I use them personally. Stay tuned!

Meeting my nephew for the first time