Cumulative Learning from Digi Life
What I learned throughout the Module?
I learned the difference between scholarly and popular sources. Scholarly sources are written by specialists who use technical language. These sources will have a full list of citations and will be peer reviewed. Popular sources are written by journalists and professional writers. They rarely give the reader a full list of citations and tend to be shorter than scholarly sources.
The next thing I learned about was influencers and how they affect social media users. People with big followings on social media are employed by companies to use their products in their posts and to advertise it in a positive way. All of this is done in the hope that people will see their “heroes” using a product and they will think they need it and therefore they go and buy it.
In week 3 I made my WordPress account and began to familiarise myself with this site. I made my fist blog post and gave my first peer review as well as receiving my first peer review.
One of the most beneficial parts to this module was learning how to create my own map. I never knew google maps allowed the public to create their own little maps. I made mine of ancient oak trees located around Ireland. This assignment did take me a lot of time but the file with the step by step guide given to us by UCD really helped me. I then created a Pocket and Pinterest account, both of which I had heard about but never used before. I personally thought the Pinterest was a great idea. I just submitted what I enjoyed and posts about what I liked came up. For example if you like cooking, cooking posts would appear with a picture of the food, the ingredients and the instructions of how to make the meal.
Another big thing I learned was how to use the Screencastomatic software. This thought me how to record what I was doing on my laptop and edit the video. As part of assignment 3 I had to make a tutorial on how to conduct a Google image search for UCD. I added music to the background to keep the video from being boring and uploaded it to You Tube. I learned that this could be a great way for schools and colleges to use social media to help their students learn. This is probably one of the most important things I learned as it is a very useful tool that could be used during this pandemic, Covid-19.
I became familiar with how to identify social media trends and how hard it is to identify trends in their early stages so that I could use them while they are still unique. During lockdown I noticed a trend in the fitness industry. Fitness equipment suppliers have started doing online competitions to win some of their stock. Contestants are usually required to, like, share, and tag 3 people in the post. This creates publicity for the company and gets their name out on the market. It was a great idea at the start only one or two companies were using this trend, but now every company is doing it, therefore becoming an old trend and less valuable to businesses.
My last assignment was to create a Linkedin account. I believe this was very important as it is something that the majority of graduates will do once their finished their education. I think its been beneficial to learn about this to give me a head start on trying to make my account as appealing as possible to employers. I created a CV on my account to display what experience I had and what skills I possess. I hope that this Social Media will help to connect me with other individuals in the same field as me and possibly put me in touch with future employers.
How Your prior learning before this module has helped you progress Your learning?
I had not got any prior learning in an academic sense relevant to this module. I feel the Other Information and Communication modules I had done before were not very similar to this. I was familiar with some of the content just from using Social Media in my own time. I used to think social media was only used to help stay in contact with friends, but now I have learned that businesses use social media to advertise and target customers using social media influencers. One thing that stood out to me was how little I knew about Privacy policies and what companies can do with my posts and my personal Information.
How did the Peer feedback process help you with your learning?
Peer reviews allowed me to get other people opinions on my work. It helped me to review and edit my work. It was good to have other peoples perspectives as it gave me a different point of view. The peer reviews reminded me of what I had learned throughout lectures as sometimes I was very focused on what I had learned from the assignments and was forgetting about the content we went through in class (virtual class).
How you plan to apply your learning in your future studies and career?
One thing I think I can apply to my future studies is the learnings I got from the Screencastomatic Assignment. I could potentially use this as a way of me and my peers helping each other with work if we are unsure on something. I think I could see myself using this for maths that is used in economics, I could send and receive videos of how to Complete a question.
The second learning I will be able to apply is How important Social media could be for my future career. Platforms such as Linkedin can put me in contact with people who could help me find a job. I could also use social media if I was to be in a business. A lot of marketing these days is digital and I could potentially use socially media to target the customers my business sells to.
References
How to identify social media trends before everyone else, Rocksdigital.com, Lissa Duty
Meet the top 7 micro influencers of Instagram, Socialreport.com, September 28th 2018
Influencers of Instagram: Antecedents and consequences of opinion leadership, Journal of Business Research, Luis V Casalo, Carlos Flavian, Sergio Ibanez-Sanchez
How today’s Colleges and Universities are using social Media, VTLdesign.com, Doug Ridley
RORY MADIGAN
18394423
Rory Madigan 18394423 