Doing the LinkedIn Thing

 ISLT EdD student Jason Harle is a total LinkedIn Guru. 

Here's a post he wrote recently about getting more active on LinkedIn.

Me? I've never fully warmed up to it. 

Some part of my brain is still stuck back in early LinkedIn, when it was an online resume space. I had a job, my field doesn't hire that way, it was of little use.

Then came the posts and feeds, and it started to feel like Facebook for work. 

I can see the value in posting there, but on some level it's just not me. I tend to shy away from announcing my accomplishments, even though I know I should be shouting them out like seemingly everyone else.

In part after seeing some encouraging posts from Jason and in part because of this class, I decided to post my latest big accomplishment.

I won't lie -- I totally smiled at some of the comments and was delighted to (re)connect every so briefly with a few folks. I'm thinking about what I might want to share in that space next. But I'm still not really comfortable with it.

However, I think it's time to issue myself a LinkedIn challenge. Y'all can help me build it. Some of my ideas include:

• post publications and presentations (but only once per conference for presentations, even if I do multiple)
• post about my upcoming keynotes
• post about my students who successfully defend a dissertation (I did this recently; skipped the other one because they weren't connected to me on LinkedIn for me to tag them)
• Leave at least 3 likes somewhere on there per weekday

And what else? Give me ideas in the comments. (Or tell me to not do this because I don't need to and it will just be one more task on the list. That's possible, too.)

Padlet and Miro in the Business World

I had a little side convo with a class member in which the question about how Padlet and Miro might be used in the business world was raised. And I thought others might wonder the same thing, so let me blog about that!

Miro

Oh, let's see ... it's used in product design, UX, project management. They have a lot of videos online that show how it can be used. Here are a few.

Their website has a ton of ideas and tutorials, too. Grab a cuppa and tour around for 30 minutes and you'll get some ideas.

Padlet

IMHO, this is the more non-business environment of the two tools, mostly owing to look and feel, but that could also be my impression based on having seen more use cases in K-12 and higher ed. Also, I think they market more to education settings.

BUT: I've seen it used in business settings for resource sharing, interactions during training (capturing ideas/group brainstorms), project management, etc.

The ISLT faculty use it all the time -- it's flexible enough to support a running agenda for our faculty meetings and allows us to link in necessary documents.

Instagram Days of the Week Challenge (Ultimate Challenge Week 3)

Heads up!

For Week 3 of the Ultimate Challenge, we'll do the Instagram Days of the Week Challenge.

This challenge is designed to stretch your Instagram knowledge and skills a little bit. If you want to participate and don't want it to appear in your regular account, create a new account! Easy enough.

Remember, tag things with #eme6414 so we see it. Also save evidence of your contributions to share at the end. Oh, and Instagram offers help if you need it: https://help.instagram.com/  

TechMotivation Monday

#motivationmonday is a thing, but let's motivate people with technology. Share a post that motivates people to use a specific technology or to use it better.

Hashtags: #eme6414 #TechMotivationMonday

TechTransformation Tuesday

Choose your format (post / story / reel) and share how technology has transformed a part of life (your own or life in general).

Hashtags: #eme6414 #TechTransformationTuesday

TechWisdom Wednesday

Post a reel in which you share some form of technology wisdom (interpret that as you will).

Hashtags: #eme6414 #TechWisdomWednesday

TechResearch Thursday 

Create and share an infographic (as simple or complex as you like) with interesting internet research summarized. Be sure to include attribution to the study! 

Hashtags: #eme6414 #TechResearchThursday

FindOut Friday

Post a poll (you do this via stories, in the stickers) that asks some sort of technology or social media related question.

Hashtags: #eme6414 #FindOutFriday

Saturday Stories

Post a story or multi-image post that sums up your challenge contributions

Hashtags: #eme6414 #SaturdayStories

SumItUp Sunday

No need to post to Instagram this day. Write a blog post that reviews your daily Instagram activities for the challenge and your new insights on the medium.

Random Fun // Wikipedia

 Today on LinkedIn I saw someone post (brag, really) about their new Wikipedia entry. I thought "hmmmm" and checked it out. I was surprised to see that they had a Wikipedia entry. I know enough about Wikipedia to know that you can't create your own entry, but you can suggest it to Wikipedia editors and see if you can get them to undertake it. I also know that you need to have a certain level of accomplishment in your field. (My father-in-law has a Wikipedia entry)

Somehow that got me to wondering what my Wikipedia entry might look like if I had one. I asked ChatGPT to create one for me. It's not entirely correct, but it's nice to see that ChatGPT thinks I have enough notoriety as a scholar to warrant a Wikipedia entry. 

If you want to see it, look below the fold.

I earned a badge, should I share it?

 Badges are all around once you start looking for them. 

Some of us don’t notice, or don’t care. Often that’s me. I know what I accomplished and I’ve no idea what I’ll do with the badge. Sometimes I get in a MOOD and want to be silly with such things, like the time I saved up paper “certificates of attendance” from a number of conferences and hung them up in my office. I thought that was funny (I have received them at international conferences, and it seems to be important to some attendees as proof to their institution that they were there).

I’m flying home from a conference today, a conference where I gave a talk. I noted that I received a digital badge through the conference platform (Whova … and that’s a whole post I could write)

Here it is! Should I share it elsewhere? Should I post it to my LinkedIn and see what happens? I mean, the platform provided tools to share it to socials — that’s the whole point, right?

 I typically present a at 5-7 conferences a year, so at this point it doesn’t feel like a big deal to me. I list it on my CV, and move onward. It’s just another requirement of my job. I might have found it special the first time or tow.

But I actually have a bigger question for y’all. Please feel free to weigh in here.

This time last year I embarked on a journey to become a leadership and performance coach. There are many whys for doing so, and I’m happy to share, but most importantly let me state that I am not leaving my job at FSU and switching careers.

I worked hard for my Level 1 certification, which I earned in March. I’m now working toward ACC level certification (need to get about 25 more coaching hours for that — I can coach students as part of my job at FSU and count the hours, so feel free to HMU if you want to try it).

Anyway, I got a badge and digital certificate when I completed my Level 1. I’m also really proud of my accomplishment. To me, this is much more meaningful than celebrating another conference talk.

When I finished Level 1 and got the badge, it was a super hectic time. I told myself I would update my web site for coaching and then share the badge on LinkedIn. I’ve not done that yet. Is it too late? Is it silly of me to even think about sharing this? Or should I go ahead and do it? 

Who knows, I may be in this dilemma again in a few months, after I get my hours, take my test, and get ACC certified.

And yeah, the badge is from Brown University, which amuses me because my husband did his undergrad there. I like to joke that now we’re a Brown family. :)

Social Media Fiction Challenge (I did it, too!)

 I read a YA book for the social media fiction challenge. 

Should I award myself a badge?

I chose The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler [on Goodreads]

This book was about a teenage girl who had just received a computer .. and her friend next door, who brought over an AOL CD-ROM. Yup, it’s set in the early 1990s, and the main characters use dialup to log in to AOL. How does this relate to social media? Well, through AOL they find a secret portal to a ‘website” called Facebook that shows them the future. Like, 15 years into the future. And they are confused (is it a scam? A virus? Is someone pranking them?). Over the course of a week they check in on their future selves, gleaning details of their adult lives through posts, relationship status, friend lists, etc. And when they don’t like what they see, they start to realize that they can make small changes in the present that affect what they see of the future on Facebook. They know they shouldn’t, but they can’t help themselves. I’ll stop short of giving spoilers, and just say that it’s an interesting view of how we provide information on Facebook.

Great fiction it isn’t. But it’s an easy and charming read.

Tech struggles are REAL

One of your classmates noted in a participation log that tech struggles are real.

I am here to confirm to you all: Yes, yes they are!

If I may break through the fourth wall (or maybe better in this case to say “pull back the curtain”) and share some of my process in this class … well, the tech struggles are REAL.

I’d like to think that I’m good with tech. I was using computers in the late 1980s, creating art, programming HyperCard stacks, etc. I was on email in 1991. I remember using FTP services to upload/download attachments, with fussy file naming conventions. I hand coded websites in html. All of that.

Still, the reality of my every day is that I’m not on Pinterest/Instagram/LinkedIn/X/every-other-platform daily, and even when I’m on the platforms I’m consuming more than anything else. New features come and go, the platforms themselves evolve quickly and are often unstable, and then each summer I get to this class and I have to set everything up again and figure it all out.

Folks: Tech struggles are REAL.

If by some miracle I’ve made it look easy, well … can I get a badge for that? Because each week I’m setting up tools again, fussing with features that allow people to join groups, clearing out old posts, setting up demos. And the tools are always changing, sometimes dying, sometimes being born. I miss Twitter’s good ol’ days, and I posted updates there a lot. It was a great hub! But no one wants to be there since the algorithms changes and a lot of the content took a turn for the more toxic. LinkedIn has really upped its game, but it’s a real-name professional platform, so we don’t want to use it in that way. Instagram just doesn’t work in that same way, even though it offers hashtags. Each week it’s a mess of setting up, testing out, copying over, etc. And I struggle.

That’s all. I just wanted to validate the struggle for everyone. If you’ve had moments of “why won’t this embed/upload/link/whatever” … we’ve al been there.