Lauren C's EME 6414 Blog

As pointed out in Kim et al.'s reading for this week "Effects of Group Reflection Variations in Project-Based Learning Integrated in a Web 2.0 Learning Space," participants for their study consisted of young adults who were very familiar with Web 2.0 tools, but conceded that conducting the same study with certain age groups - namely older adults and very young children - may have yielded very different results. This caused me to wonder - as instructors, to what extent should programs that rely extensively on Web 2.0 tools and technology be tailored to specific age groups? While children may not be expected to engage with an extensive amount of interactive web-based tools, the skills of older adults are likely to be much more varied.  With that in mind, how can we accommodate those with more experience without losing the interest of or overwhelming older adults that may not have much experience? It seems like it would be a delicate balancing act to account for the needs of...

So, when thinking about networked knowledge activities and the tools used to facilitate them, I can't help but think back to my Master's program (which was completely online) and the amount of team work we were required to do. Obviously, in a situation where each member may be located in different parts of the country, if not the world, we had to find a way to collaborate with each other taking into account each person's schedule, time zone, etc. I was fortunate to be in groups with individuals that had advanced knowledge of different communication systems and platforms that were extremely helpful to us as a group in overcoming what we initially felt would be onerous logistical difficulties. First, with regard to communication, we set up a Google Hangouts account which allowed each member to stay updated on pertinent communication if they had to miss our scheduled weekly meetings. A group email could have potentially served the same purpose, but by activating the notificati...

 Hi all,  So, I thought I'd complete my reflection post first this week since I've been giving a lot of thought to the upcoming assignment. First, while I do think I have the hang of it and can create an adequate deliverable, I'm a little disappointed in the response/engagement rate. To provide just a bit of information about my project: I am curating a list of books that have been part of the ALA's Top Ten Most Challenged Books List. I have 22 books total; I'm posting two per day and I've increased the tags from one to two. Before I get to the end of the list I intend on having a total of four tags (which will hopefully boost engagement). I wanted to use our class tag last (#eme6414) last because I felt like including it earlier might artificially boost the engagement rate and I was curious as to what the rate for each tweet would be on its own merits.  Turns out - not much. Which is fine, I started this account for the purposes of this class and therefore any ...

Reflection Post Tried two new sites this week (Goodreads and futureme, yay! I've never been a huge tech person, but I'm really starting to get over much of the anxiety that comes with attempting new tools. Some, I think, are more useful than others - I spent a good bit of time on Goodreads - and being a voracious reader, I'm sure I'll be using it well into the future. I was surprised about the group feature, although I suppose I shouldn't be given that it's technically a social media site (duh), I guess it just hadn't occurred to me that there were other people to connect with that enjoy the same types of literature as I do. To me, that's one of the most valuable things I'm gaining from this course - the new discoveries that happen when I move out of my comfort zone and explore new things. I'm certainly looking forward to more!

A point in the Dennen, et al. (2020) article that I found very interesting discussed the difficulty in determining the intent of acknowledgments on social media. As the authors state: "Distinguishing among users who click on these indicators to say “I saw this,” “I like this,” and “I want to save this so I can find it later,” can be difficult if there are not corresponding linguistic cues in a comment that explain the user’s intent" (Dennen, et al., 2020). I'll bet we've all come across this issue at some point in our social media journeys. Some social media sites have addressed this issue by adding a wider range of emoticons that allow a wider variety of expressions than simply 'like' or 'not like.'  Facebook, for instance, allows for more expression these days, but Twitter only allows one option for those that prefer non-textual acknowledgments. So, when someone tweets something understood to be negative or upsetting, the only non-verbal option would...

Hi all,  So, in light of our upcoming assignment and consistent with a few of our readings for this week, I've been giving a bit of thought to the idea of collection versus curation. If I understand it correctly, collection suggests gathering together a group of materials or objects that have some type of similar theme whereas curation would be isolating specific elements from the overall corpus of materials based on predetermined characteristics.  For example, when thinking about the upcoming knowledge sharing project, I was thinking about gathering together a collection of YA novels that have been challenged the most according to statistics provided by the ALA. This would be a collection. However, if I wanted to focus on novels that were challenged due to a specific rationale - that would be curation. There are a number of reasons given for why certain books are challenged - so for instance, if I wanted to feature books that were challenged for violent themes, profanity, uns...

Whew, so this has been a very hectic week! For my reflective post this week, I'd like to echo the sentiments expressed by Beth Kanupp on her blog. Sometimes life does get in the way. For example, I'm TA'ing in another course and my professor asked me to cover the class next week - which, since there was nothing prepared beyond a basic theme, took me days to complete the research and draft the PowerPoint, script and activity for the class - I'm exhausted.  Coincidentally, the topic I'm covering is IP, ethics, copyright, so I don't feel like I missed too much. But like Beth, I'm also ready to get back into it next week and I agree that the freebies we do get in this class are life-savers! I did have a chance to review a lot of my classmates' blogs as well and like always, they were super informative and illuminating!