Online Communities

Communities are something you might build with or without realizing it. You mingle with your neighbors and classmates, you run into familiar faces at the grocery store and fitness center, you meet friends of friends and talk about shared interests. You are expanding your community and interacting with your community quite often whether you believe it or not.

Online communities, on the other hand, take on a whole different role. You can find people with similar interest and engage in a community with those like-minded people. You can discuss topics of interests, share stories, get feedback, learn from one another. Sounds like normal stuff you do every day within your community, however, by being online, it gives the "community" a new perspective. You can engage with people from all over the world without ever meeting one another. You can learn more from being able to access more information at once with less time demands. You only have so much free time to chit-chat at your local grocery store or mingle after your workout class. Most people live busy lives and don't always have that time for the personal interaction. By having online communities everyone can get involved on their own time, at their own pace, and how often they choose to.

Different communities have different norms. It's interesting after exploring a few online fitness communities to see how those different communities interact. Some communities are more active than others and the members provide plenty of support for one another, while some communities are not as active but provide great resources and tools for their members.

My favorite aspect of online communities is being able to get involved at your own pace. Where as in person you are basically forced to make small talk when you run into familiar faces in your community. Sometimes it can be uncomfortable or timely, and the online community takes away those worries.

What's your favorite aspect of online communities?

Knowledge Sharing

Do you enjoy sharing knowledge? The internet is a great place to share knowledge and learn from others. It's amazing how much you think you know, until you begin exploring the unknown. People share such valuable information and on such interesting topics.

For my knowledge sharing and tracking assignment I thought it would be a good idea to curate some healthy lifestyle tips. I thought I was pretty knowledgable on the subject but I do have to admit I have been learning a lot as I find more interesting tips and trades to share with my readers.

Have you been learning from your knowledge and sharing assignment? Or are you more focused on sharing your knowledge? I believe I am doing a little of both!

Check out my Healthy Lifestyle topic at: http://www.scoop.it/t/health-by-nicole-avarello

FERPA

FERPA stands for Family Educational Rights and Policy Act. This is a very neat topic since I have recently been learning a lot about the HIPAA law from working in the healthcare industry for the first time. In both cases, it's important to have rights over your personal records, whether they be medical records or educational records. I believe have been a stakeholder of FERPAs as a student with protected educational records. It is a great protection to have. No one should be able to see other students grades besides the student themselves and their parents. 

With technology growing, and educational technology being used more and more in the classroom it is important to ensure teachers are following guidelines and continuing to practice by this federal law.

The University of Missouri provides a great guideline for their educators, as I am sure many other universities do as well. I found the University of Missouri's Faculty Guide to Teaching and Learning with Technology extremely useful to learn some more about the topic since they break it down and really explain all the different aspects. It covers everything one needs to know in regards to planning a technology enhanced course, assessment, copyright laws, and FERPA. It's important to understand these guidelines when they have to do with federal laws and protecting students rights. Educators teaching in online environments have to be really careful with what information they make public. Students can even choose to have their name withdrawn from the class directory if they are not comfortable with their information out there and it is their right to do so. Educators have to respect those rights.

Here is something I found very useful from their Faculty Guide: 

References:

http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html

http://tech.ed.gov/netp/assessment-measure-what-matters/

http://etatmo.missouri.edu/file/Faculty_Guide.pdf

Technology Kinks and Quirks

Today during our Webinar with guest speaker Barry Wellman, co-author of Networked, we experienced some technology kinks. We had some trouble at first with the sound and audio since we were set up on a few different computers to portray more of a classroom experience for our guest speaker, Barry. We also experienced some issues getting Barry connected and heard. Once we were all setup, it was a great interactive experience! It was really neat to meet some of my classmates in person, who I've been networking with for a little over 3 weeks now! Barry was able to talk to us more about his experiences and sections of the book. I particularly like the use of the chat so everyone's audio doesn't have to be on, that way no one is talking over one another, but we can all still participate and engage in the discussion. Overall, I believe it was a success but definitely a learning experience.

I learned that, although issues may arise, it's important to continue to have a positive attitude and do what you can to make do with your situation! If I have gained any non-EME6414 readers, I highly encourage you to check out Barry and Lee's book Networked!

Image credit: http://www.amazon.com/Networked-The-Social-Operating-System/dp/0262526166

Social Media Technologies and Relationships

Social media seems to be taking over and the technologies and tools offered are endless. This week we are exploring some new tools including Google Maps, Edmodo, Fakebook, Symbaloo, and Webquests. It is so neat to see all the different tools offered and what you can do with them. While social media has a plethora of benefits, have you ever considered its downfalls? Do you think social media is interfering with your relationships?

Marissa Brown wrote an interesting article on the topic. She believes that social media sites have disrupted our micro, interpersonal levels within relationships. Do you agree?

Image Credit: Yoel Ben-Avraham

Learning on Twitter Chat

I decided I would try another new tool this week! I was very inactive with my Twitter account prior to this course; merely a lurker on the very random occasion someone told me to check out something they tweeted. So after getting back in the groove of tweeting for this course and following my classmates tweets, I was ready to try out a twitter chat!

#lrnchat uses a social messaging service, Twitter, to conduct an online chat. They hold chats once a week from 8:30 - 9:30 pm. Participants are typically those who are interested in learning in formal, informal, social, and mobile ways. It was so exciting and I was fully engaged in Twitter and the participants for that hour! 

It was so neat to generate so much traffic to my twitter account while learning from people all over. A few of my classmates were involved as well and I even had a conversation on the side with one of them and a few #lrnchat participants too!

My Twitter notifications were on overload and it was challenging to keep up! (Good thing it was only an hour!) Here is a recap of my notifications and involvement in my first #lrnchat:

• I gained 5 new followers!!
• Had 19 of my tweets and tweets I was mentioned in favorited!
• Was directly tweeted at from 4 different classmates!
• Was retweeted by 3 lrnchat participants
• Had direct conversations with 5 people
• Was welcomed by 2 lrnchat participants
• And I was added to 2 lists!

Overall, it was a ton of fun and I learned something new!

If you're interested in reading more, check out the full transcript from last night's Learning Quotes discussion !

https://lrnchat.wordpress.com/2015/07/17/transcript-july-16-2015-learning-quotes/

Would you be interested in participating next week? 
Let me know what you think(: 

Perspectives

As I begin to curate resources for my Knowledge Sharing and Tracking assignment, it got me thinking a lot about perspectives. Everyone has different perspectives, or ways of seeing and thinking about things. I hope I can retain followers with similar perspectives, although having different perspectives is beneficial to see the whole picture. Have you stood in someone else's shoes before? Understood where they come from and why they carry certain perspectives? Have you benefited from someone else's perspective? Definitely something to think about.

Photo Credit: Flickr user Dawn Ellner