We are nearing the end of term and the means ALES 204 is coming to an end. Throughout the term, we learned about various types of social media, some of which I had used before (or at least heard of!) and others that were completely new to me. If I hadn't been in this class then I likely would never have tried out any of these new platforms because I didn't know anything about them. I didn't know what I was missing out on! I have learned how to use Facebook for a more professional purpose, LinkedIn, Twitter, Delicious, Flickr, Tag Clouds, learned how to edit Wikipedia article stubs and more!
It seems like everyone has discovered a lot of really interesting things through this class, you can see some of the blogs that I found interesting in a blog post I had written earlier, or click this link to go directly to that post. Alternatively, you can click these individual links to go to each blog separately: Paula V. in ALES 204, Eat Me! - The Road to Registered Dietician, Love, K, Phantastic, and finally, Naomiblogs. After checking out other people's blogs, you will see how diverse everyone's interests are and how that has led to differences in what people post and the overall appearance of their blog.
We also had a series of labs throughout the semester (1 per week) where we could try out our new and developing social media skills and receive feedback from our TA. This was a great way to put into practice what we were learning about, especially since some things are easier to learn when you can ask questions and not be panicking at home because you can't figure something out!
Social media applications like we were using with Twitter and Google Docs are really useful for sharing our work and thoughts. For example, earlier this month I was thinking about getting a Blackberry Playbook, so I sent a tweet to #yeg (Edmonton) to see what people here thought about the device. It's really easy to get information from anyone, anywhere with these communication mediums.
