Final Post

This is my last full semester as a Stockton undergrad. I'm slated to graduate in the spring of 2020. It seems unreal, but in reality I have been on this journey for a significant portion of my life. I'll be sure to include all of the arduous details in my memoir, but for this blog post I'll narrow it down to my Digital Portfolio class highlights.

Building a PLN:

LinkedIn - This class was my first introduction to LinkedIn. More on that later.

Twitter - This class was also my first introduction to Twitter as a professional platform to share relevant articles and thoughts. It has become an easy resource for me to turn to if I need inspiration for content, as well as a carousel of informational links and tidbits hand selected by the people I follow.

Blog - Designing and personalizing my site was fun. Writing for my blog became a weekly ritual and proved to be good practice for professional writing. I enjoyed synthesizing my own content based off of the variety of reading materials, which included books and articles posted to LiveBinders.

Books - The most impactful book we read, in my opinion is Light, Bright, and Polite by Josh Ochs. I found the tools detailed in the book applied to different aspects of digital citizenship - professional, personal, and private. The detailed tips and guidelines really helped me to reframe the way I approach social media. LOL OMG was probably my second favorite because of its simplicity and focus on teenagers in high school or middle school. Finally, with Untangling the Web coming in last, partially because some of the websites and applications mentioned in the book are no longer active.

LiveBinders - I enjoyed reading the variety of content we had to choose from on LiveBinders. Having access to different articles made the material more interesting, and allowed me to focus on specific areas of the general topic that appealed to me. A variety of material was far more interesting to read from than a traditional textbook. Also, since we accessed the content online, we were reading current information, unlike the slightly lagging information often printed in textbooks.

Guest speakers:

One of my favorite class experiences was the Interviewing Roundtable we had with Elana Leoni and Don Rescigno, in which they shared insights about the job application process, interviewing, and building a professional social media presence that works for the candidate on an individual level. This talk opened my eyes to the benefits of curating my LinkedIn profile.

Projects:

MicroBit - On the last day of class, my partner Alyssa and I teamed up to create an interactive MicroBit experience. We had never seen a MicroBit before. We struggled to get things to work throughout the project, with a few successes sprinkled in. We made a good team and didn’t give up trying, despite falling behind other groups and becoming a little bit discouraged at times. Alyssa really pulled us through, and figured out how the code worked. At the end of the activity, it was revealed to us that the point of the exercise was not to judge how well we understood how to code, it was to experience a F.A.I.L. This acronym stands for “First Attempt In Learning,” which appropriately describes the way I felt while creating the project.


 


We experienced the following issues:

• We had trouble from the beginning of the project, starting with constructing the cardboard goal post.
• We did not measure or cut the cardboard or tinfoil properly.
• We thought the green paper was optional and ended up skipping the step, which made things difficult later on.
• We were able to figure out how the puzzle pieces of code fit together fairly easily.
• We also tried attaching the micro bit to jump wire instead of using the red and black battery wires, which caused us a lot of confusion and frustration.
• We didn’t use play doh initially, which helped to secure the wire to the board.
• Confusion about whether we were working on the code or the board.
• Struggle...and success! Our goal counter counted to 2 and then stopped working.

This was my first attempt using the MicroBit, and my first introduction to the F.A.I.L. acronym.

App Smackdowns (specifically presenting them) seemed daunting at first, but this exercise helped me to build confidence presenting simple technology demonstrations. The best apps I learned about in class were not apps that I found, but apps that students in other majors introduced to the class. Below are the apps our class was exposed to during the semester.

Website Design

The digital world is only as good or bad as we make it. Josh Ochs writes, "online social norms are still being decided by you, and people like you." Och explains that this gives us much more control than we might think.

I have created the following info graphic to display his 10 rules that conscientious internet users can ask themselves when evaluating their posts:

Educators, students, and parents are learning about responsible internet use. Critically, this requires contentious digital citizens to develop reliable information about someone before doing business with them.

"The true real identity movement will occur when we begin to see the aggregation of information from all of the sites that you use come together to create not only a verified identity, but a robust, data-based, reputation."

With Peer-to-Peer transactions on the rise, the impact of the internet on real life will continue to increase. The internet will act as a powerful deterrent to bad behavior, with the potential to encourage people to treat one another better, online and off, because their online reputations will matter so much.

Most importantly, the author reminds readers to embrace the changing environment of the internet by being a conscious creator of content. He closes on a positive note, writing "your online reputation will increasingly affect your life. Don't just avoid having a bad one, but actively building a good one."

Augmented and Virtual Reality

What is the difference between AR and VR? This article explains: virtual reality creates a totally immersive simulation, and augmented reality adds labels, captions, and other helpful overlays to a user’s view of his environment. In class, we had the opportunity to experience augmented reality ourselves!

We discussed apps like Office Lens, Bing Translate which can be used to aid everyday professional and personal tasks. We also explored Quiver Vision, Zoo Kazam, and Merge Cube, which can be used for educational purposes and bring a diagram to life. 

QuiverVision

I had the opportunity to try on VR goggles and receive a short training on how VR can be used in practical application. The most fascinating part of the experience for me was the medical demonstration. I felt like I was really in the room - it is easy to imagine getting very comfortable wearing the goggles for extended periods of time.

VR allows trainees to retain information better than they could from traditional books or manuals. AR can help increase our attention spans.The cost of VR equipment remains a barrier, and there is discussion that using the headsets for longer than an hour can cause the user to become disoriented.

The article explains that the scanning technologies have improved, but how that image is displayed has remained the same since the 1950s.

Imaging can now be performed in real time at the point-of-care during procedures, both big and small. AR could be used in surgeries and other technical procedures to increase the surgeon's accuracy by overlaying the patient's scans on their body, allowing the surgeon to focus without having to turn their head back and forth between a 2D image and the patient. This also reduces cost by making better use of the display screens.

Further, "AR’s potential ability to concurrently display imaging data and other patient information could save lives and decrease medical errors." While the future looks bright, "It will take gifted computer scientists and visionary physicians to make augmented reality an actual reality in medicine." The authors write that their hope is that AR in health care will be just as commonplace as use of a stethoscope.

AR also has something to offer for the general public. Target now allows customers, via AR, to see what furniture will look like in their space before purchasing it. Customers start by taking a photo of their space. This article explains, "when you choose a virtual item from the product list, just tap "See it in your space" and position and scale the couch wherever and however you want." From there, customers can add the item to their cart. 

Preview of Target's AR app

Interview Roundtable

According to this article, sending a thank you note after an interview is polite and indicates that someone wants the job. Sending a short note says that the applicant not only have good manners but also resourceful enough to find the email address for the interviewer, something they likely weren’t given. Taking this initiative can be helpful in ensuring an applicant is remembered in a positive way. They suggest sending a short note 24-48 hours after your interview thanking the interviewer for taking the time to talk and briefly reminding them why the applicant would be a good fit for the job.

The S.T.AR. interview method allows an applicant to organize important data points about their strengths into a series of tiny stories that accentuate how good they are at their job. The author suggests that using this method allows an applicant to show the interviewer “far more data to work with than a line on a resume”. The method and its advice is outlined for applicants below:

Situation: Relate a previous experience to the interview question. For example, one could say “I was on a tight deadline for a project a year ago — we had to get X project out before X time.”

Task: Explain in detail what needed to get done. For example, “I had to put together X number of slides or make X number of phone calls.”

Action: Explain how you solved that problem.

Result: Now, mention all the good things that happened because you took action.

This article lists some fashion pitfalls applicants should avoid during their interview. Clothing that is too flashy, bright, or busy can draw negative attention. Showing too much skin is another mistake, so applicants should lean towards slightly conservative outfits to leave a good impression on the interviewer. Wearing heavy perfume or cologne can be distracting and even change the mood of the interview. Striking a balance between very casual or ill-fitting clothes and overly sophisticated is important for making a good first impression. The author suggests that applicants should use makeup strategically, aiming to look natural and smart without heavy makeup and jewelry. Finally, dirty or wrinkled clothing is inappropriate and should always be avoided.

Our class had the opportunity to join in on an Interviewing Roundtable with Don Rescigno of Insight Advance and Elana Leoni, CEO of Leoni Consulting Group. I took the following notes on our discussion. I chose to focus on how I can present the best version of myself in interviews.

Social Media Strategies

In chapters four and five, Josh Ochs discusses social media strategies that students can use to impress employers. He suggests "letting your  real self shine through," while carefully considering and curating "what the public can see when they search you." Importantly, he emphasizes that the great thing about social media is that we can control what others see and know about us. Separate social media handles can help separate personal from professional accounts, but consistency in the frequency of content an individual posts demonstrates thoroughness. This does not mean students have to become experts in every social media service, instead they should take what they already have and grow there.

"If it's online, people will find it." - Josh Ochs

Ochs suggests that students create great content to push the less savory "bad stuff" down in search results. Considering that advice, it makes sense to purchase one's own domain name and having others review it and provide feedback. This allows candidates to to own something online that can ultimately help them control what shows up on Google's front page. Also, creating a clear and concise bio will help people understand what your goals are. Critically, using a professional email address with the student's full name suggests professionalism to future employers.

To cultivate a positive online presence, Ochs suggests that students take a tasteful group photo to demonstrate their volunteer or professional development activities. Taking these photos and posting them within positive context provides "effortless, positive advertising" for the group and organization. He emphasizes that thanking the organization and complimenting those we work for shows integrity. When it comes time to create a resume, including a one-sentence description of the organization's role in its industry and explaining what accomplished in their position will provide an employer with context about the applicant.

"All jobs teach you something - even the worst jobs." - Josh Ochs

Including a letter of recommendation goes a long way in terms of representing an individual's character. Having another organization provide us with an endorsement has a far greater impact than self-promotion. Having a catalog of positive experiences posted online can give the savvy student a leg up in the hiring process.

Presentation Tools

Google Slides

This article puts forth six benefits of using Google Slides. I have displayed them using Google Slides!

 

Microsoft Sway

I learned about Microsoft Sway, and compiled my findings into a Sway presentation:

Office Mix

Microsoft Office Mix is no longer available, however many of its features have been integrated into the latest version of PowerPoint.

I created this PowerPoint presentation to describe some of the benefits to teachers who use the program.

Readings

Matt Ivester explains why and how users of social media might choose to present themselves, drawing their own lines with regard to what they share online. He suggests we take some time in advance to think about what types of content we will and will not share online and understand why. 

Knowing why we post certain types of content is critical because it allows us to weigh its value against potential risks. We should always consider who our audience is. To make this easier, he recommends separating contacts into three groups:

Separating audiences in this way can be a useful tool in evaluating what we post. While we should keep in mind that our digital footprint is permanent, certain services allow users to custom tailor their post visibility on a person-to-person basis. 

As a personal example, I have my Facebook settings set so that all of my “friends” (both known and unknown in real life), but only friends and close family can see my posts. 

Instagram follows suit by allowing users to select which of their followers can see their story. Additionally, the app allows users to further control their audience by giving access privileges to users on an appointed “close friends” list. This is particularly useful, since most of the times I really only intend my story to be seen by a few specific friends. 

Job seekers and social media stalkers: how to get hired, and how to get fired

Career Center Presentation

In class, we had the opportunity to talk with Patrick Burns from the Career Center at Stockton. He gave us a really informative briefing on Professional Image and Job Searching. During the presentation, he emphasized the importance of deciding how to present ourselves online, with consideration for what field we are in (or desire to be in) and what the standards for those fields are Once I establish that for myself, it would benefit me to curate online content related to my major.

Something important Patrick talked about is that the goal of our professional online profiles is to expand our human connections online. This fits right in with that age old saying about business: "It's not what you know, it's who you know." As job-seekers, we should actively maintain professional digital profiles because doing so has the potential to link us to people and jobs we would not otherwise have access to.

One part of the presentation was about job searching in a relatively painless way (meaning avoiding taking random shots in the dark at applications). I have found the application process arduous and annoying, and a little demoralizing. I have, thus far, only applied to jobs using the shot in the dark method. 

My main takeaways are:

• Strategize. Figure out a plan for the next step. We revise as we go.
• Ask, "what do I want to do?"
• Learn about the industry.
• Direct my resume to specific area of the industry, meaning gear the message of my resume to the type of job I am applying for.
• Consider, "where or how can my first job help me to my next?"

I have found these tips to be really useful, and I was even inspired to sign up for my first career fair. Additionally, I plan to seek out some of the resources the Career Center offers, such as resume polishing, interview practice, and job search tutorials.

Social Media Presence 

While most candidates understand that their resume should reflect their best qualities, we may not be
considering the content we post online as part of our complete digital profile. However, employers do. Social media continues to change the way people do business, notably changing the employer/employee relationship. Most employers and recruiters expect job candidates to have a professional online presence. Glassdoor poses the prevalence of social media in the workforce as a unique opportunity for candidates to create their own personal brand, in order to stand out to employers.

Having great profiles can provide employers a more complete picture of who the applicant is while they are not in an interview. Poor perceptions of an employee’s social media profiles can cause recruiters to turn down an applicant. Even after hiring a candidate, 48 percent of employers report that they use social networking sites to research current employees, and 10 percent of these employers do it on a daily basis!

Generally, here is what employers are looking for on a candidate’s social media profiles:

Source

More specifically, recruiters’ criteria are broken down into smaller data in the graph below, displayed as percentages.

Red bars represent factors that hiring managers consider to be disqualifying red flags.

Blue bars represent factors that hiring managers see as green flags.

Source

“A resume can tell them your qualifications, but your social media profile can help them determine your personality type and if you would be a good fit for the company culture.” - career coach Hallie Crawford

Career coach Hallie Crawford states that when searching Twitter, recruiters are looking for mutual connections and connections within the industry. She suggests following others in the industry. Instagram is primarily used to see how a candidate represents themselves in photos, the way in which they socialize and interact, and who follows them. Recruiters are looking at an applicant’s about me section on Facebook to see if the way he or she portrays him or her-self there reflects the information on his or her resume.

Curation Tools

In Untangling The Web, authors Steve Dembo and Adam Bellow introduce the social bookmarking movement. We have a finite amount of time and have to prioritize it to best suit our individual needs. They explain that the advent of bookmark sharing essentially took a person’s curated file drawers of resources and opened them up to the world. The three resources discussed in Chapter 1 include Symbaloo, Diigo, and Participate (formerly EduClipper).


Symbaloo is designed as a dashboard intended to be used as a home page or launchpad. Its grid layout is ideal for people who are less proficient with technology. This tool is great for teachers because they can create webmixes, giving students a variety of activities to choose from within a specific topic. Additionally, these webmixes can be sent home to parents to work on with their students.

Diigo serves as a place for universal online bookmark storage that can be accessed anywhere. This tool features a social aspect which allows group members to assimilate into a personal research team, much like a PLN. This feature is extremely useful because group members bring resources directly to the user. Additionally, research is collaborative, but individual work is individualized. 

Participate (formerly EduClipper) is inspired by visual bookmarking tools like Pinterest. It allows users to create personal digital portfolios and research. Importantly, this service features an EasyBib integration that automatically cites sources. Teachers can control the features students have access to. I am personally interested in this application because it has the ability to allow students to showcase their best work in a nontraditional way. A student’s proficiencies and weaknesses can be assessed in a more holistic way than traditional routes like group projects, tests, and homework.

Content Creation and Curation

Content Creation

Nowadays, everyone online is a content creator. This unique time in history affords us the ability to share, produce, and consume content easily and cheaply. It is easy to post online about a temporary thought or feeling, and just as easy to overlook the potential ways in which posting that content can cause us harm.

“Collectively, all of the digital content that you and others create becomes your online reputation.”

Author Matt Ivester states that understanding an audience’s biases is a critical part of making informed decisions regarding the content that we decide to post. Importantly, when we post online, we should consider the fact that we are giving up control of that content forever.

Biases impact how we are perceived. Some unconscious ones that future employers may have include:

• Superiority bias - people generally believe they are less likely than others to make mistakes online.
• Ambiguity effect - people tend to avoid questions that do not have clear answers, and may post online without considering how others perceive them.
• Attribute substitution - people replace difficult questions (i.e. “what will the world think of this post?”) with simple ones (i.e. how their friends will react).
• First impression bias - people make unconscious snap judgments about others based on first impressions. 
• Negative information bias - people weigh negative over positive information, often remembering bad things about character most clearly.

Knowing that our online reputations are often the first impressions that we create, it is especially important to promote our best versions of ourselves and avoid unnecessary pitfalls. 

Google!

Source

On Wednesday, our class presenter John Neale gave us a few helpful pointers on ways to better utilize Google Slides. 

I used his tip on how to make video clips more succinct. This can be done by right-selecting an embedded YouTube video and choosing “format options” from the drop down menu. Next, I selected “video playback” and trimmed one second from the beginning and one second from the end of my video. This allows me to bypass YouTube’s default settings (to play a commercial before the video plays and suggest content after the video has ended) during my presentation.

By working on a slide and selecting the “explore” icon, I was able to choose from several pre-designed layouts to add to my slide. 

Anyone who is interested can find my finished Slides project here.

One of my favorite Google Slides tips actually provides a workaround solution to Google’s lack of simple text boxes. This is achieved by changing the default page setup to mimic a standard size 8.5”x 11” sheet of paper.

An interesting Google feature we looked at in class is the Google Earth timelapse, which allows users to select an area on the globe and view an animation of how that area has changed over time.

Source

We also discussed how using Google Scholar can be used as a research resource. The application’s settings allow users to narrow or broaden their results as needed. This tool is perfect for weeding out the slew of irrelevant results and advertisements that appear in a regular Google.com query.

Source

Google Trends provides users with the most searched terms every day, with options to display results based on geographic location and category. This article explains that Trends only shows data for popular terms, but eliminates repeated searches from the same person over a short period to provide an accurate picture. ToolsRush explains that Trends works by analyzing a portion of Google searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms entered, in relation to the total number of searches done on Google over the same time.

Source

After class, I wanted to find more Google tools to use. I read an article that introduced me to Google Keep. This feature works beautifully alongside the Docs application, as well as an organizational tool on its own. I find it to be particularly useful in its smartphone format, working like a system of digital Post-It notes. I can add links and photos to my notes as well, which makes ordering from my online shopping list very convenient.

Source

All of these practical applications available from Google led me to an important question: what am I exchanging for all of these resources? 

The short answer is privacy.

This article offers tips that range from helpful (signing out of all Google accounts) to nonsensical (avoiding correspondence with anyone who uses an Android phone). The site suggests using duckduckgo.com as an alternative to the standard Google search engine.

Additionally, services like WhatsApp offer users the ability to communicate online via encrypted messages. Their website boasts:

“WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption ensures only you and the person you're communicating with can read what is sent, and nobody in between, not even WhatsApp.”

While these encrypted applications may offer users some privacy, the takeaway from this finding is that it is virtually impossible to avoid being tracked by Google (or other providers) entirely. Privacy is no longer to be expected in online spaces. As author Josh Ochs remarks on page 35 of his book, 

“Everything you say online is your public diary.” - John Ochs

This is no less true for college hopefuls and job applicants. In fact, according to this study from Jobvite.com, “93% of recruiters check social media activities” and “up to 30% of college recruiters are doing the same”(Ochs, 31).

Source

For these reasons, author Josh Ochs offers tips for students and job applicants to bolster their chances of success. The author encourages candidates to cultivate a positive social media presence by observing the following guidelines, which I have listed using Google Keep:

My takeaway is that the utmost care should be taken when constructing my PLN, as well as what I post on my personal networks. Josh Ochs finishes my thought perfectly when he says, “consider rereading all of your tweets twice and asking yourself, ‘How can this go wrong?". 

Inception post

In the first chapter of his book titled lol...OMG!: What Every Student Needs to Know, Matt Ivester briefly outlines some common pros and cons of being a digital citizen. The benefits he attributes to internet citizenship are well understood by students as well as by society at large: unprecedented ease of access to information, powerful programs and applications, and innumerous channels of communication with broad networks of people.


He suggests that the widespread use of social networks paired with the public and permanent nature of the internet pose a unique risk to the privacy and safety of young people. The risk is especially elevated for students, who may be going through the tumultuous period of emotional growth college is famous for. Information about an individual can be created, curated, and weaponized by anyone with nefarious intentions and an internet connection. Ivester asserts that students’ relationships with the internet can be as complicated as navigating college itself. No contest here.  

I have reaped the benefits of living in a time before the internet was part of my daily work, school, and social life, and I know that experience has colored the way I view social media. Even before the advent of massively large social media networks like Twitter and Facebook, I was taught as a child to exercise extreme caution online much in the same way I was advised to stay away from strangers and be aware of my surroundings. While I was originally skeptical about the practical application of social networks, in adulthood I am learning how social media can benefit me in a professional way. Curating my own Professional Learning Network (PLN) on Twitter is proving to be an interesting project for me.


My recent discovery that Twitter can be a useful tool coincides with this article about how teachers can benefit from using Twitter. The authors suggest that to tap into Twitter’s professional development platform, it’s important for educators to follow people who share similar interests and passions. Noted. The authors tout Twitter as a free tool for professional development allowing educators to develop their own PLNs; facilitating chats among colleagues, as well as collaborations with individuals outside of a particular school or organization.


Incorporating Twitter into her curriculum allows one teacher to improve standards and keep teaching methods current. Additionally, Twitter can bridge the gap in communication between the community and important information. Gone are the days of mailboxes stuffed with paper event flyers and loudspeaker announcements. Twitter offers a way for the community of students, parents, teachers, and staff to share and find event and emergency information instantly.


Traditional conferences may require teachers to spend time, money, and energy traveling to attend the workshop or lecture. This article poses that utilization of Twitter by educators has the potential to “improve their teaching and, subsequently, their students’ learning.” Sounds like a noble pursuit to me!


Here’s how using Twitter can help educators achieve that goal:

• Bolster employee retention by creating a network of emotional support systems
• Provide a continuous feedback loop of information that is both simple and convenient to access
• Facilitate communication with professionals from around the world
• Open the door to an array of professional opportunities, including speeches and grants
• Improve teachers’ technology abilities

Safe to say, I am excited to dive deeper into this whole Twitter thing. Follow me on my journey here.