My understanding of Social Networking
With the advance of technologies, especially the mobile technologies, Social Networking has become an essential part of many people’s life, both personally and professionally. For me, the impact of technology on our life has never been unilateral, nor is the social networking.
As a teacher, I have been witnessing the double sided effect of the social networking on teaching. On the positive side, it improves work efficiency by simplifying the communication and facilitate cooperation between colleagues; on the other hand, in addition to the issues such as cyberbullying and privacy, there has been a growing demand of integrating social media into the classroom curriculum, which could pose challenges such as time commitment, pedagogy and technology on teachers (Abe and Jordan, 2013, p. 20).
Common social networking technologies and sites I am using:
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- Facebook – I mainly follow the news of my friends on facebook. Professionally, I use it as a learning tool by joining some groups related to my profession
- Wechat – It is used as a tool to communicate with my families and friends overseas.
- YouTube – I have been using this as a learning and teaching tool both personally and professionally.
- Twitter – has been one of the main information sources for me to track the latest news.
What I expect to learn from INF506:
Overall , I am not very active on social networking sites and I barely post any information due to privacy concerns. So my adoption of Social Networking technologies in both personal and professional life is quite limited.
I hope to achieve two major objectives after completing INF506. Firstly, I would like to explore some social networking tools and sites that I am not familiar with. Secondly, I would like to learn how to integrate these tools successfully in a school setting and how to deal with the issues of implementing these tools in teaching.
Reference
Abe, P. and N. A. Jordan (2013). “Integrating Social Media Into the Classroom Curriculum.” About Campus 18(1): 16-20. doi:10.1002/abc.21107