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.