To blog or not to blog ...

Now you've blogged for 2+ months. Depending on who you are, you've embraced it, struggled with it, been excited by it, been bored by it, felt it was a chore, had a million thoughts about what to blog ... and maybe you've experienced all of these sentiments. Now that you've had this experience, it's a great time for us to think about what it means to blog. A blog is a platform. It is a place to showcase one's voice and vision. To blog is to lead the charge in one small corner of the internet. It is proactive rather than reactive -- the exact opposite of a discussion forum, where instructors post questions and studnets respond. A blog can document a student's journey through a course in a way that discussion boards do not. Each blogger owns their own space, and made choices about what is posted there. No matter how you feel about blogging, I encourage you to take this opportunity to review your blog, and your journey. You may never blog again, and that is fine. Blogging is not an activity that everyone enjoys. You may find that you blog in the future, but in an entirely different genre. Or you may just keep blogging. Whatever you do will reflect your interests, comfort, and needs ... and no matter what you do in the future, you will be able to say that for at least a little while you were a blogger. Signed, A fellow blogger

A week of challenges: The weekend challenge

 We've had a week of challenges, and now the finale:

The Challenge Challenge!

I sure hope a lot of you undertake this challenge!

Step 1. Come up with an idea for a challenge! Get it all set up. Use canva.com to create a challenge graphic. It is an AWESOME tool. It's not a social media tool, but it is a social media helper tool. I use it for all of the challenge graphics in this class, canvas banners, etc.

Step 2. Share your challenge. Post it on Twitter, Instagram, your blog, etc. We can get it posted on this blog, too (a good idea to get folks involved -- just coordinate with Vanessa and/or Daeun). 

Step 3. (optional) Design a badge for your challenge. Coordinate with Daeun and she'll award it in badgelist.

A week of challenges: Day 5

I'm not sure how this challenge will work -- it's a first for me -- but I wanted to try it. If the technology doesn't work, well ... we'll learn something all the same.

Let's play with collaborative playlists!

 It's Friday. Almost the weekend. Do you need some good summer tunes for the weekend?

I started a playlist for some good summer tunes. 
Add to my spotify playlist.

I started the playlist with Vacation by the Go-Go's. Yes, I am a child of the 80s, and this song always makes me think of summer.

I also dropped Manic Monday on there by The Bangles. I feel like that's the song that should end this playlist. It's always a Manic Monday after a fun summer weekend, right?

Please add some songs in the middle.

And if you want to do the challenge part and earn a badge, here's your task:

1. Add to my playlist (fingers crossed that this works, technology-wise) and comment below about what you added and why you chose that song.

2. Create your own collaborative playlist (you can choose whatever tool you want, I picked spotify because that's the music service I most frequently use)

3. Write a blog post about your playlist (kind of like the bit I wrote above about my collaborative playlist) and invite us to add to it. 

Get creative with it! I've seen people create playlists to go along with books, for special events, etc. I even tried to start one with social media songs, but I didn't get too deep there (and I was struggling to find songs). If you want to add to that one, it's here.

A week of challenges: Day 4

 Today I bring you the #EME6414 Word Cloud Challenge. A retro challenge of sorts.

Find an online word cloud tool and build a word cloud based on your tweets or perhaps even a hashtag, blog post, or some other body of text that interests you. 

Save the end result and:

1. share it to the class hashtag on Twitter and/or Instagram. 

2. post it to your blog, along with a post about how you might use word clouds generated from social media sources to support learning and/or performance. 

Here's one I created for my tweets using https://floom.app/service/twitter-wrapped:

I love that "challenge" showed up big and in the center.

Here's another from https://www.wordclouds.com/

The source material is this blog.

Any ideas how you might use one of these word clouds to support learning or performance?

A Week of Challenges: Day 3

  Let's play with Miro!

The challenge has two parts.

1. Visit the miro board I created for this class and add something to it.

2. Create your own miro board that depicts some part of your EME6414 journey and link it to the board that I created.

Link your own board? Get a badge!!!

Note that there's a little bit of a learning curve with miro, and you may find yourself needing to zoom in and out to see what you want and change perspective (the zoom function is on the bottom right). 

Also, note how I have set up the space to begin. I've left a few stickies on there. Also an image and an emoji. Since taking the above screen shot, I even added a link (just back to the course blog) embedded on a sticky to provide an example of sharing a link. It helps learners to have an example rather than a blank screen, doesn't it?

A week of challenges: Challenge 2

 Your third challenge? It's the make-it-up challenge.

Sometimes you want to emulate social media, but not actually post there. Well ... there are tools to help with that, too. 

In this fun challenge, dream up a reason to make up a fake tweet, Instagram post, or Facebook account. Maybe you want to imagine what a historical figure (long dead) or character from a novel would say if they tweeted. Get creative with it. Even make up a dialogue!

Generate your fake tweets/posts/whatever, and then share them in a blog post. Comment here if you did it and share the link.

Some resources to help:

• https://tweetfull.com/blog/fake-tweet-generator/
• https://generatestatus.com/generate-fake-instagram-post/
• https://www.classtools.net/FB/home-page

A week of challenges: Challenge 1

 Let's kick off Week 10 with a week of challenges! 

Challenge 1: Google Maps

Visit the google map I created for you. 

Note that there are TWO layers to it. Contribute at least one pin to each layer. I recommend adding your name like I did in my examples so we know you've been there and what pins you shared.

Then create your own map and share it in a blog post. Encourage the rest of us to drop pins on us. 

Comment here if you have completed the challenge and give the link to your blog post so folks will wander over.

Do we have some energy for some challenges?

Hope so! I think that for Week 10 I'd like to kick off a week of challenges.

I'll drop a new one each day. First is queued up for Monday (12 am).

These will be our last challenges for the course. Consider them a way to get some energy around trying new things ... and if you don't have energy for them right now, they're always options for a rainy day.

Google Maps

 One of our tools for next week is Google Maps. You probably use it all the time, but have you REALLY used it? Have you created a map? Have you engaged others in participatory map making?

It’s surprisingly easy.

Here’s a map I created when ISLT was doing a faculty search during COVID. We couldn’t bring our candidates to campus, and they had to make decision about whether they wanted to move here, sight unseen. I created the map and then asked my colleagues and some of the students to contribute pins to the map. What do you think?

Hey, Threads, how’s it going?

 Glad you asked.

Found myself playing the role of “passenger” again today (and thus I spend too much time on my phone and iPad, doing things that can be done easily on those devices), so I cranked up Threads. 

Maybe this Thread sums things up?

Is that Kourtney Kardashian at the top? (See her expanded thread below)

And is the other person some sort of celeb? So not my world.

Anyway, the response to KK indicate that everyone wonders what they’re doing here.

However, I was pleasantly surprised when I first logged in to find that the top items on the feed were a good match for me. Basically, they were accounts for news sources I regularly read. That was nice.

Beyond that, I’ve no idea when or why I would return, except to be able to report back to y’all about the great social experiment. 

To be fair, every tool has to start somewhere.

Is anyone else on there with me?

Badge Awarded!

Hello class!

This is Daeun. I've just awarded the badges for the challenges from Weeks 4-8. Check out the class Badgr page if you haven't already.

                  

Here is the list of the awarded badges:

Week 4

• Social Bookmarker (Diigo challenge)

Weeks 5-7 (Ultimate Challenge)

• Ultimate Challenge Winner: Christy
• Ultimate Challenge Finalists: Gabrielle, Young, Megan

• Twitter days of the week
• Pin Creator
• Vision Board
• Twitter Chat
• Digital Detox
• Collaborative Author (Flampad challenge - Easter Egg)
• Story Creator (Stories for School challenge)
• Goodreads
• Fiction Reader (social media fiction challenge - Easter Egg)
• Collaborative Concept Map
• Blog Makeover

Week 8

• Recreate Art 
• Instagram Days of the Week

I manually tracked your challenge completions, so there might be some mistakes. If you haven't received a badge for the challenge you completed, please email me (dj19@fsu.edu) 

Have a great rest of the week! :) 

Daeun

The moments when you most need to be connected

 Today is a difficult day for me. Yesterday was, too. I feel helpless as I sit back and watch my hometown devastated by flood. Making this experience all the more surreal, I was JUST THERE for 2 weeks, and drove home this past weekend. I apparently just dodged the beginning of the rains, making it home safely as Sunday tumbled into Monday. I am still exhausted from the long drive. Exhaustion and sadness do not go together well.

What does this have to do with social media? 

In this moment, I am so grateful for the connection and crowdsourced knowledge. It's not like major media outlets are right there in Montpelier to capture it all. However, the locals and friends of friends are providing updates online.

Last week I watched the 3rd of July parade on Main Street. Here's Bernie! He's a Vermont institution.

Today, I watched social media and captured the flooded views of Main Street. The photo in this tweet is from the same part of Main Street, but taken from the other side of the street.

 

VT 🇺🇸 Montpelier resident Lynnea Timpone paddle boards at the intersection of Main Street and East State Street on July 11, 2023 in Montpelier, Vermont.
📸 Kylie Cooper / AFP pic.twitter.com/kBG8ie6tWU

— Antoine D ☭ (@AD1968F) July 11, 2023

I just bought books in this store: 

A piece of my heart will always be in Montpelier, and the rest is breaking. Stay safe all of you VCFA lovelies. pic.twitter.com/Dxp0GNqga7

— Jacqui Castle (@JCastleWrites) July 12, 2023

On Twitter and Instagram, I see the devastation of places that hold so many memories for me. 

I feel the need to be connected. My mother, sisters, our husbands, and I have texted each other all day with images and videos found on social media, through our different networks. We've compiled the information, shared stories from our respective friends, and shared our sorrow. We were all together there last week, and it was sunny and lovely. Now the road to the place where we picked strawberries on the 4th is washed out. The parade route is traversed by kayaks. The State House steps where we watched fireworks are partially immersed. My mother can't get to town, not on any of the routes. She is safe, but the water is everywhere. 

I spent a few minutes thinking about how we would experience this event without social media. Would I have been aware of it as it unfolded? Would my mother have called to tell me? Would she know as much as she does about which roads are out and where the damage is? I think social media has helped people better manage and survive during this difficult time. (And now I think of hurricanes -- and how social media has helped keep the info flowing then, too.)

Threads

 Well, well, well. Don’t we have some exciting stuff going on this summer?

Several years ago we had the launch of G+ during summer — a new playground for the EME6414 class (although the rollout was uneven, so not everyone could play).

And this year we have Threads, which comes to us from Meta and is tied to your Instagram account.

I read about Threads this past week. 

[CNN story that gives a decent overview: https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/06/tech/instagram-threads-app-explained/index.html ]

[The kind of stories I’ve been seeing that are just cracking me up, because oh the drama!: https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-calls-mark-zuckerberg-a-cuck-as-threads-nears-100m-users]

I debated if I really wanted to try another tool right now, especially one that is being compared to Twitter, which kind of exhausts me IYKWIM.

Well, reader, I took the plunge:

I signed up. At the last minute I opted to use my EME6414 Insta account and not my personal one. I figured that would make it easier for y’all to find me on there if you wanted to interact, and it would give me time to think about who or what (or IF) I want to be on there as me. 

Account initialized and … within about .5 seconds I regretted my choice to sign up. I was immediately presented with a screen that looked like any other social media feed, filled with posts from people I don’t know. And they were crude posts, my friends. Including dick jokes, solicitations, and an image of a woman sitting atop a flying eggplant. First impressions …

So, I pondered whether or not Threads will become a pseudo porn hub. I countered the thought with the knowledge that it’s new, the porn industry pioneered most online technologies (ask me about my days working in VR/head mounted displays in the 1990s), and maybe I need to find my peeps and tailor my feed.

I searched for “teaching” and found … not what I wanted, really.

Then I searched for “FSU” and found some of the regular FSU accounts.

The COE is on there already! I liked their first post. So did the FSU business school. Seems they both got right on there and are trying to figure out how they’ll use this space.

And then I decided to really leave my own mark, and write my first post. Here it is:

So, what happens next?

An open love letter to Padlet

 Dear Padlet,

I hope this is not to forward of me, but: I love you.

I did not expect to love you. It was not love at first sight. Not even close. When I first met you, I was introduced by a few enthusiasts over the course of a year. You reminded me of the stickies feature on my computer, which I used at the time, but I didn’t feel a strong need for yet another tool just to facilitate public sticky notes. I was okay with just defaulting back to fairly linear/hierarchical discussion board posts for sharing. And I really love comments and threading, which wasn’t really your thing at all.

And then you grew, and I grew and here we are.

I dabbled here and there, but when the pandemic came around I spent more time playing with a variety of tools and there was a spark. I got some ideas. I kept putting you to the test in different contexts, and as long as I could beckon others to contribute, things were great.

Shall I share some of what I love? Some of what you have helped me accomplish?

I love the ability to organize content. To share content. And to have other people share and comment on content. 

Take a look at this! It’s the “base” Padlet I created for a class! I used a shelf format, with a week by week layout. Each week I was able to link in resources that we would use in class and interaction spaces for class activities and homework (including other Padlets). I controlled the base Padlet structure, but set it so students could add resources to a given week as well. Everyone could comment and like, too. The sub-Padlets, set up for activities, could be set up in a variety of formats and ways. I remember doing a timeline activity, for example. Oh, and if I planned something for one week and we didn’t get to it? I could just cascade it to the next week’s shelf with a simple click and drag.

I also love the ability to share so many different media types and sources in one spot, along with a title and annotated commentary. Text! Images! Videos! Web sites, including other interactive tools — anything with a URL works! Even VoiceThreads! I mean, you can even embed from Spotify or record quick videos on your webcam. 

Padlet, you have encouraged me and my students to create and share in a variety of ways. You may not be the best tool for carrying on in-depth discussion, but that’s okay! We have threaded discussion boards for that, and I can even link them directly to you! 

You are my center. You are my hub. You keep developing in new ways. Just this summer I found your new nested templates (sections and subsections!) and greater ability to control the order of posts. You let me copy and move items between Padlets. You have become so flexible and user friendly.

So, it’s me and you … and my students! You welcome them in and make it so simple for them to share, curate, create. After years of frustration with trying to get students to find and post resources on discussion boards (students will share, but as sharing interfaces go, d-boards get clunky and make it difficult to order and re-order and save and like), I finally have an option that feels more organic and visual than a series of threaded text-boxes. 

Sigh. I love you, Padlet.

Sincerely,

Vanessa