Homework Week 10: Managing Social Media Accounts

This week we looked at 3 different platforms to manage our social media accounts, these were Hootsuite, Socialoomph and Everypost.

Firstly I joined Hootsuite which was very easy to set up and link with my social media accounts, the number of social networks that Hootsuite users have access to is determined by their account level: Free, Pro, or Enterprise. If you're a paying customer you can connect to more social networks on Hootsuite than any on other such tool. The flexibility of sharing and scheduling posts can be appealing, especially for businesses. It offers all in one interface which allows you to divide engagement activity into social networks and streams but if like me you like simplicity, then having so much going on can be a bit overwhelming. Hootsuite can incorporate analytics from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Analytics and its own Ow.ly shortened URL metrics which may be beneficial if using Hootsuite for business. I found an interesting blog post about using Hootsuite by Ian Anderson Gray which can be found here

http://iag.me/socialmedia/reviews/7-reasons-why-you-should-use-hootsuite/


SocialOomph wasn't as straight forward to set up and when I tried adding my Facebook account it wanted me to pay and I certainly won't be doing that when I could use another platform such as Hootsuite and add my Facebook account for free! Scheduling of posts on multiple accounts is SocialOomph’s specialty but you can do that on other platforms so I can't see what it offers that the other free ones don't and in this day an age, most peolpe have smartphones and there's an app for everything but it seems there isn't one for SocialOomph. I'll be deleting my account,I'm not impressed

Everypost was easy to set up and it had a 7 minute long YouTube video showing you how to use the platform which I thought was very useful for someone like me who's never used any Social Media Managing tool until today. It offers more or less the same as the other platforms but in addition it also allows you to add your Pinterest account which I like because it's something I use.

On the whole I don't think I'll be using any sort of Social Media Managing Tools as I don't post often but I think it's a great time saving tool for businesses and could be very beneficial to them.

Homework Week 9: Online Presentation Tools

This week we collaboratively worked on a presentation using google slides to evaluate the pros and cons of the social media tools we've looked at over the past 8 weeks.

Here is a link to our presentation

Homework Week 8: Online Meeting Tools

This week we looked at Online Meeting Tools and how they can be used for learning and support. Beth and I had a Skype meeting which was easy to set up but it is very limited in terms of learning and support. This tool would probably be more suitable for one to one language training but not for much else. Next we looked at join.me which is great for online presentations, video and audio conferencing it can also record your meetings so you can go back and refer to them later, or share the recordings with others. Join.me also allows you to screen share so for example, if a student was having problems downloading a piece of software they can allow their tutor to take control of their computer and show them how to do it whilst doing it for them but unfortunately, to benefit from all it's features, you have to be a paying customer. Lastly we looked at google hangouts, this tool is the best of them all as it has all the features Skype and join.me have but it is completely free, therefore students could be located all around the world but they could all access an online presentation through google hangouts with no extra cost of a subscription. This tool saves on carbon footprint, travelling time and costs, it can be used for distance learning and working collaboratively on a document. All in all, google hangouts is a fantastic Social Media Tool for learning.

Here is an Online Meeting Tool review blog that I found on the web
http://blog.webconferencing-test.com/

Homework Week 7: Facebook

This week we're looking at why Facebook pages can be used as a marketing tool. With over 1.55 billion active users each month, having a Facebook page has many benefits for businesses and is a great marketing tool to reach out to existing and potential customers. It is a lo-cost way of sharing information, building a good reputation and trust between the business and customers. Having a Facebook page can raise brand awareness, steer traffic towards the business website and for a fee, Facebook will analyse all the information that millions of users enter into their profiles and they'll use this information to deliver targeted advertising to a specific group. These are only a few examples of why Facebook can be used as a marketing tool, there is plenty more benefits to explore.

Here is a link to an article I found on Social stream marketing on Facebook: a case study

http://www.inderscience.com/offer.php?id=53268

Homework Week 6: Pinterest

This week we've been looking at Pinterest. I think Pinterest is brilliant! It's a great tool to access all kinds of information whether for educational or personal use, there's something for everyone on there and sometimes visual information is much more effective than just plain text!
I have a wide range of boards on my Pinterest account from recipes, wedding ideas, educational tips and more. I like the fact you can set private boards that you don't have to share with others because it's nice to have some privacy, even on social media! Here are some infographics I found on social media for learning. The first one is to teach you how to use social media effectively, the second is a useful pin for tips on essay writing which I found very useful.

https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/360569513896399385/

https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/360569513893640649/

Homework Week 5: LinkedIn

This week we had to create a LinkedIn profile. Jill Duffy of pcmag.com says "LinkedIn is the most important cross-industry professional network around, despite some gripes most people have with the interface or service. Everyone serious about their career should have an account." (found here http://uk.pcmag.com/linkedin/8297/review/linkedin) but I wasn't very keen on doing this as I don't feel my resume is very impressive and the fact it's online for everyone to see makes me feel uncomfortable. When compared to other people, my resume makes me feel embarrassed and I don't like it being widely available. However if I had achieved many things in my life, had a successful career and an impressive resume, then I'd happily have a LinkedIn profile for all to see as this could improve my career prospects and give my family and I a better quality of life. Here is a link to my profile.

https://uk.linkedin.com/pub/donna-roberts/109/78/907

Homework Week 4: Google Docs

For this week's homework we had to collaboratively write a blog post in google docs evaluating the three social media tools we have looked at so far. Here is the link to our evaluation.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E0XvdkvlYnq9gYayn-5_CF0q7n1zL1p3km7EGRgmA7g/edit

Homework Week 3:Twitter

This week I’m using twitter to try and find information on the latest craze, the balance board aka the hover board. My son wants one for Christmas and I want to know spending at least £250 on a piece of plastic on wheels is worth it! Using the hashtag BalanceBoard I found plenty of advertisement for it and several companies trying to sell their stock via Twitter using videos and offering discount, but it’s hard to find specifications. The price of a balance board varies widely, but unfortunately using Twitter, I can’t find what the most expensive ones have to offer that the cheaper ones don’t for them to justify the price difference and I’ll have to find that information elsewhere. If I looked elsewhere such as google, I’d probably get all the information in one place.

https://twitter.com/GadgetGaddict/status/652592646033145856

Social media is obviously very popular amongst teenagers and I believe Twitter could be a modern tool used for educational purposes such as tweets from teachers reminding the class and their parents about assignment deadlines or to remember their p.e kit. It could be used to keep parents informed whilst their children are on school trips or even to produce a mathematical graph using trends. If Twitter is not already widely used in schools I’m sure it will be in the near future.

Twitter is also used in higher education as method of research. Twournal Of was the world’s first twitter only academic journal and although some might be sceptical

“Studies show how tweeting out papers and research findings can boost citation count” (Miah, 2014)

Although it probably isn’t the first place I’d look to do any research, I will keep an open mind about it and will probably use it in the future to see if it can be useful to my studies.

Miah, A. (2014) Twitter journal: would you shareyour original research on social media?. Available at:http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/jan/27/twitter-only-journal-academic-research(Accessed: 20 October 2015).

Homework Week 2: YouTube

This week Steffano set us the task of viewing three topics to learn about using YouTube videos, here are the three topics I chose.

I searched how to make a fishtail braid because my mam has really long hair down to her waist and likes me to experiment with it sometimes. I chose to watch this video by Beautyklove dated 16/03/12, because the girl has similar length hair to my mam. To start off, the video is a little annoying because there's a lot of background noise and its a little slow getting to the actual tutorial.Once she got going it was easy to follow, clear how to to do a fish tail braid but a little to repetitive verbally.

The second video I watched was 'why do onions make you cry' by Intrgueology dated 9/02/13. I chose this video because cartoons look more appealing than watching someone talk whilst cutting an onion! I liked it's simplicity and humour, it was straight to the point with no distractions. I can't really find fault with this video other than maybe it went a little to quick between slides but I now know the answer to my question and know how to avoid crying when chopping an onion so I'm happy!

Finally the third video I watched was Microsoft Excel Tutorial for Beginners by Motion Training uploaded on 15/04/08. I find people either love or hate excel. My partner raves about it and thinks it's the best thing since sliced bread, basically because it does everything for you which means less work for him! Others say its boring and you might think of all the subjects in the world why would I chose to learn about this but I'm glad I did. After watching this easy tutorial, I've realised anyone can use excel for anything, even to calculate how much you spend on clothes every month! Although I probably won't do that or I'll be divorced before I'm married! Really like this video, very easy to follow and listen to as it's very informal.

Homework Week 1: Blog Posts

This week we were given a task of finding learning blogs and pick three blogs we thought were best and evaluate them. These are what I’ve found.

Steve Wheeler’s blog titled “learning with‘e’s” means the guy must have a sense of humour right? I had a look at his Danger Illustrated blog on October 2^nd 2015 because it was about critical thinking. He says that students struggle with it and I can definitely relate to that! He gives an example of how to critically analyse a bottle of water, he gives ideas that I certainly wouldn’t have thought of but he says there are “endless possibilities” to critical analysis, but to really help us students, a few more examples would have been great! However I’ll probably use this blog to remind me how to be a critical thinker in the future!

The second blog I read/ watched was by Cathy Moore dated 21^st July 2013. I like the title to her blog, “let’s save the world from boring training” if only all education sectors and employers thought the same eh! She’s made a short video on how to improve training and although it’s good, it’s not for the slow reader. I wouldn’t call myself a slow reader but even I had to pause and rewind! On the whole she has great ideas on using different ways to teach, like she says we don’t all learn the same way.

Finally I enjoyed reading Craig Weiss’ blog it ‘bothers me-what about you?’ dated 4th August 2015. This blog is something most of us can relate to. Amongst other things he tells us how it bothers him how once you sign up for something that’s “free” you end up getting a bunch of marketing calls, emails and newsletters that you didn’t ask for. It’s true, I signed up for online bingo once, and now I’m inundated with offers to join casinos and other gambling websites, I’m sure they do a good job of keeping gamblers anonymous going! So I liked that I could relate to some of this blog but he uses a lot of abbreviations that I can’t work out, I don’t know if it’s me that thick or him showing off! 

My first blog post

My name is Donna. I'm a 33 year old mother of one from Llangefni. Having had a number of different jobs through the years ranging from waitressing, support worker for children with special needs, taking 999 calls for the ambulance service, stacking shelves and being a receptionist, I feel if I want to make something of myself then I need to stop making excuses!

I am currently studying a degree in combined studies at Bangor University. As part of the degree I'm doing a module called Social Media for Learning. I'm hoping this module will help me use social media to learn new skills and help me with future modules and possibly find something that'll make writing essays easier!

I won't be qualified in anything in particular at the end (which I often get asked "what's the point then?!") but hopefully by successfully completing this degree, I'll have better employment opportunities preferably in the IT industry, and I'll be a good role model to my son who also wants a career in the IT industry when he's older.