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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.