Conveniences of Social Networking

This week, I discovered an interesting app that allowed me to schedule reminders or just automatically handle tasks that I would label as a hassle. IFTTT is an amazing app that can tie together two unrelated devices. Users can create recipes that cause one device to trigger a response from another. Why is this useful? Well, you can decide for yourself after checking out these few helpful recipes, including:

Social Notifications: Connecting your smart lights to any social media and allowing that to help notify you whenever there’s an update.

Weather: When weather conditions change, linking weather apps can help notify you of temperature or just bad weather. It’s pretty convenient.

Light switches: I personally find this the most helpful. You are able to link your lights at home to your car, meaning there will be less instances where you waste electricity.

Another helpful app that I have recently decided to use again is Pinterest, a well-organized social bookmarking site. This site covers many fields of interests, and it just so happens that it’s perfect for illustrators. I can find many great art tutorials, inspirational images, or just reference images for poses and such. Users have boards which they pin bookmarks to, these can be from mostly anywhere on the web. If a user decides that they would like their board to gain popularity, be helpful, and help them build connections, there are many methods to help them do so, such as:

Keywords: Something as simple as this can make navigating to your board much easier for others.

Avoid spam: This is common sense, however many people can forget that tons of pins at once can cause inconvenience for your followers. Don’t be surprised if you lose quite a bit in this case.

Organization: I definitely stress this as one of the most important methods. I personally loathe poorly constructed, illegible, and ugly pages.

New pins: rather than simply repinning (like me), it’s important to introduce pins that people have never seen before; it’s simply more eye-catching.

Moving on, my professor recently presented great information about the bio page of a website. The page is generally known as the “About Me” page. Unfortunately, I talk very little about myself, which means my bio page is generally… let’s say one sentence or less. Informative? Very much so. I now realize however, that this page can be used as a mini-portfolio. The “About Me” page is the perfect way to portray one’s personality, background, and provide visitors with a means to contact you. Doesn’t that sound like a business card? Next, you can provide a photo that can further emphasize your personality because it’s easy to judge a book by its cover when given little information. It’s time to work that in your favor. For more information, check out this article.

Lastly, I would like to touch on a few social networking tools mentioned in Untangling the Web. The authors, Steve Dembo and Adam Bellow, firmly believe that social media is a great way to connect with people despite all the interaction being digital. Rather than replacing real life meetings, it can allow for people to create a chance to expand on personal meetings through the internet. It’s a great point, but what of the socially awkward people? Whether they communicate online or offline, they’re still awkward. I believe one main cause of this is the lack of face-to-face interaction. When they suddenly have access to a large, expanding digital community, how are they able to use these digital connections to further their personal connections? Just a thought. Anyway, Dembo and Bellow introduce extremely useful tools that aid in digital communication:

TodaysMeet: The app essentially allows users to create a room that can be used for discussion. In an educational environment, this allows students and teachers to freely discuss issues without time restraints. Students are also able to discuss problems with each other, creating an ideal, out-of-class learning environment. Since everything is digital, it’s much easier for the shy students to speak up. Students can help each other or just consult with the teacher and receive an answer that benefits the entire class.

Skype: This extremely popular app was considered taboo in my high school; students were banned from using it, and those who did received a polite invitation to the principle’s office. The main advantage of Skype is the video chat feature. How can this be used in classrooms? Students can simply connect with other students from all over the world. I can see language courses benefiting tremendously from Skype. The app now contains a feature specifically designed for education. Teachers are able to connect with professionals using designated Skype lessons, which essentially allows students to have professional contact before stepping into the real world. This feature is definitely revolutionary to education and should see an increase in usage when more educators realize its significance.