My Linkedin account sumarises my education, work experience and skills i possess. I talked about what I study in Ucd- Economics and Information and Communication. I talk about how I have been working in the catering events industry since I was aged 15 setting up bars for events and now managing those bars at events. I also put down my current part time job working as a bar tender in the Horse House pub. I had to put down what sector I think Id like to work in. The part I struggled with most was listing my skills as I feel I am only young and wont have developed many yet that could be used in the working world.
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
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
I have learned that is possible to control your digital reach to a certain extent. Media users can make decisions which will help limit their reach. Decisions such as how many friends/followers/contacts they have on media is a way of trying to limit their reach. Another way of controlling your digital reach is editing your privacy settings. People can choose who gets to see their posts or what they like and are interested in. Unfortunately some social media sites have in their privacy policy that they can share posts and photos with other companies, therefore making it harder to control your reach. From reading Anderson’s 2017 article I learned that Instagram are allowed to sell on user’s photos to other companies.
Once you put something up online its very hard to control your digital footprint. Even if you take the post down, it off your page, but can still come up on another person’s page if somebody else has liked it. Again people can edit their privacy settings to protect their digital footprint but it is very hard to control. Social media users can block people so that they can’t see what they are posting. They can also put their accounts on private to help improve their privacy.
Refferences
A lawyer rewrote Instagram’s privacy policy so kids and parents could have a meaningful talk about privacy, Quartz, January 6th 2017, Jenny Anderson.
Today I created my first ever Linkedin account. It was very straightforward to do. It can take some time as well as thought as you get to decide what you want on your account. I think of it as a virtual CV. I put all of my work experience down on my account as well as what I am studying in college.
I had always heard of linkedin but I had never had a proper look at it before. I think it is an exciting way for graduates to market their skills and experience to employers.
My CV tells viewers that I am currently in my second year of a Social Science degree studying Economics and Information and Communication Studies in UCD. I also talk about my own personal work experience. I have been a rugby coach for one year in my old school Blackrock College. I also say that I have been working for my Families business since I was 15, setting up bars as well as working in them and managing them at events such as concerts eg- post malone.,rugby matches and horse racing festivals. I also put down on my CV that I am currently working part time for my families pub in Ballsbridge called the Horse show House.
Rule 2 and 4 would be the most important rules in my private policy to me.
Rule 2 is important to me as this stops Instagram from targeting people with their advertisements. A personal example of this would be recently I liked a gym equipment page on Facebook and now I get adds which are constantly advertising pieces of equipment that I don’t need or want.
Rule 4 is critical as this is private between the user and the person he\she is messaging and there is no need for Facebook to be allowed see this and use the info contained in messages. I do think authorities like the police should be allowed access to this kind of info as sometimes it is within the best interest of the 2 messengers.
The photos users post on Facebook can be used by Facebook only after getting permission from the person who posted plus the people tagged in the photo. If Facebook does receive permission it is for Facebook’s use only and therefore is not allowed to be sent on to other companies to use.
Facebook does not have permission to share personal data with other companies such as what they like. This is to help protect users from being targeted buy adds.
The user must be given the option to allow adds to pop up or not. These adds must be clearly portrayed as an add and not a post.
Facebook should never be allowed use information such as who a user is direct messaging and what is contained in these messages unless it is of importance to the authorities such as the police.
Facebook is not allowed remove one of your posts unless it has been reported as inappropriate or offensive.
From taking part in digital badge 3 I have learned a few new skills that I can definitely use in the future. Ive learned how to work with screencast o matic software to make a video.
I have learned how to add music using youtube editor. I would have liked to add narrations to the video but I couldn’t seem to figure out how to do this. I used my own personal google account to log into youtube which was very convenient and handy.
I think I could use what I have learned to help my friends if the they have a problem in our other modules such as economics. I could make a video solving an equation and send it on to them so that they can see how I went about solving the equation they had trouble with. This could be very helpful to all students. I am delighted I now know how to work with this software as I will be using it in the future most definitely.
From taking part in this assignment I have learned loads. At first I was scared to make a blog and make a video of myself but I learned from doing the peer review videos that it only gets easier which was a huge positive for me. I learned how to give positive yet constructive feedback as well as receiving feedback.
One challenge I faced was using the word press site. I am not the most technically gifted person so I struggled at the start but after a bit of practice I got the hang of it.
I think I certainly use many skills learned to help with my academics in the future. One of the biggest things I learned was to be more confident on camera as everybody’s in the same boat so nobody’s going to think its easy. I can use this in other academics as maybe I’ll be more confident in class to ask or answer a question or look for help when I need it.
This module has been very interesting and also different to the other modules i have done. I have never registered to a module that all the lectures are online. This can be a positive and also sometimes it can be challenging. It can be handy as I can listen to lectures from home meaning that i don’t have to be physically in UCD for 9 on a Friday morning.
One challenge is trying not to forget that i have a lecture on, to be fair Crystal emails us to help remind us when the lectures are so that alwas helps.
From a content point of view I am learning how to use word press correctly. I have also learned about social influencers and the way they use the internet.
This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.
Rory Madigan 18394423 