My Reflection on the Winter '12 Semester

Retrieved from google.com/images on April 13, 2012

 So this semester in ALES204, Communication Theory and Practice, I learned how to use many different social media websites, as well as navigate around Wikipedia and edit stubs, and upload professional information to LinkedIn. The main focus of this class was to teach us how to be profession but maximize the number of tools available to use to stay connected and up to date in our future careers. Until registering in this course and starting it in January, I did not have a twitter account and I didn't understand how and why it would ever be useful in my day to day life. It finally sank in this morning, when explaining to a friend, that there is much more to twitter than just posting new tweets about whats going on in your life. Twitter is a resource, it is a field of information that is available at your fingertips, and at the click of a hash-tag. Hash-tags, for those of you who don't know, is a way of connecting tweets related to a specific topic, for example, all tweets that are related to this course get #ALES204 linked to them so that it builds a forum type page of all tweets that people have made related to ALES204. Whether you like it or not, social media is becoming a huge part of our everyday lives. Businesses are starting to advertise deals on Facebook, and update customers via Twitter about upcoming events.

Since the beginning of this class I often find myself analyzing different professors, both on how they speak while they are presenting and how their presentations (power points) are put together. I think a lot of professors at the University would benefit on a presentation surrounding Pecha Kecha, and even just a simple "do and don't" about power points. There is nothing worse than sitting through an hour and a half lecture where the power point is hard to read and crammed with words. 

This class has done a fantastic job of bringing to light many different resources that were available on the Worldwide Web. There are so many tools, like Audioboo for doing voice recordings, and LinkedIn for posting things like your resume and staying in touch with your field of work. Not only did ALES204 teach me how to use these resources, it also taught me how to remain professional while still staying in the technology loop. This image below demonstrates a perfect example of someone who could benefit from registering in ALES204.

Retrieved from Failbook on April 13, 2012

 Throughout the semester we were required to view and comment on some of our peers blogs. The fellow students whose blogs I commented on have a range of programs and add some different incite about what we learned this semester. Alex B ,Jen V ,Angela Z ,Andi C ,Erin A  are the five blogs I decided to comment on. With some guidance from Jess and our TA's, the writing of everyone appears to have improved greatly, and I know I have learned some valuable lessons about how to critically analyze not only fellow students work, but I also understand that not everything I read on the internet has been peer reviewed and edited. Everyone has to be careful about what they read on the internet, and not every website is going to be a reputable source for papers, always double check the sources credibility.

I can honestly say I value what I have learned in this class. I will always remember to think twice about what gets posted online and what a potential employer will be able to  find about me out there on the web. For more information regarding social media and professionalism on the internet, refer to the class blog!


Until next time, keep smiling!


Kelsie