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EME6414 Week 3

Social Butterfly Challenge

Talk about hands on experiential learning! It took me a while to fully embrace the Social Butterfly Challenge this week, but I did it! The first part of the challenge was to comment on three different peer blogs that I have not previously commented on.  Easy enough, I really do enjoy reading the blogs each week.  Micah blogged about teens and social media and as a mom to two teens this is something that is always on my mind.  Lauren blogged about how she handles her role as a school counselor in this digital age, from teens and social media to parents as digital immigrants.  Finally, Jen wrote about networked relationships and I was able to connect with the idea that social media does not impede personal relationships as many think it does. 

The second part was to engage with people in two other spaces. This was quite challenging for me.  Not so much the talking to strangers part, but finding someone I wanted to engage with in a different space was the hard part. I looked all over X, but anything that I found interesting was old and I didn't think there'd be much engagement. I found some interesting things on LinkedIn which was a new experience for me.  

   

I left comments for some classmates on their Instagram posts.  I found the #eme6414 posts and looked through all of those. I was a little confused by one that said they were doing a challenge, but I could not find that challenge anywhere in the class materials. Then I realized the date was not current! I thought this post by lottaskaos was funny.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Lotta (@lottaskaos)

    I accidentally learned that my Instagram account must be linked to my Facebook account because I was getting notifications from my FB account that people were liking/commenting on my post. I clicked over to see what post everyone was suddenly interested in and it was the one for this class.  That led to some interesting discussion.

Photography is one of my hobbies and it works out well because I'm able to take tons of pictures at my son's swim meets. His friends like to post the pictures on their Instagram pages for college recruiting for and other kids to see.  Recently, they have followed me and I had to laugh when these teenagers were liking my homework post today.  Do they just automatically like everything they scroll by?

My Connection to Chapter 6 - Networked Families

I chose to read Chapter 6 from Networked Part 2 for my piece of the Jigsaw. Chapter 6 is called Networked Families and that really grabbed my attention. My family has been my entire world as a stay at home for the last 20 years. Communication in any relationship can be challenging, but my husband has always traveled with his job as a pilot, even before we were married with children. This adds some extra challenges when the option of communicating face to face is simply not an option. We have gone from being networked via landline phone calls and emails to cell phone calls and then to FaceTime calls and text messages. My husband is not a fan of FaceTime and I can't say it's my favorite form of communication either, but my son, who is in college, likes to call me on FaceTime. If a teenage boy contacts his mom in any fashion...she answers!

This chapter takes a look at how families have been changing. Fewer people are getting married and more people are in partnerships and living together but not getting married in 2007 than they were in 1970. People are starting families later in life and they are having smaller families. More people are not having children at all for one reason or another. Table 6.1 made me a little nostalgic for the days of running around barefoot until the streetlights came on. The table compares life in the 1950s to 1960s to life in the 2000s to 2010s. The items that stood out the most to me were how mom contacts the kids: yell out the window compared to calling the child’s cell phone and how to contact a spouse at work. I would never think about calling my husband at work, even 30 years ago unless it was a major emergency. As a little side note here, when I went into labor with our oldest son, my husband was at work. We did have cell phones at that time, but it was the middle of the night and he had it turned off. I had no idea how to contact the company so they could let him know I was going to the hospital! Luckily, a friend of ours is a pilot for the same company and he was able to help me out. In contrast, today I have already exchanged eight text messages with him and it’s only 10:00AM. Don’t worry, he doesn’t text and fly, but there is plenty of time in a pilot’s day when he is just sitting around waiting for passengers.

Networked Families touched on how often families eat dinner together. I was surprised that a survey in 2008 showed 93% of families eat dinner together at least a few times each week. In my family, I eat dinner when it’s ready! If you’re home, you can eat then also. If not, you can eat when you do get home and I will still sit with you and chat about your day. This old lady just can’t stand eating dinner at 8:00 after sports practice! I suppose technically, the survey doesn’t say that dinner is eaten at the table at home. Dinner could mean eating from the drive-thru bag in the car between school and practice.

Television with today’s networked family is not as prevalent as it was a generation ago. Although we love to find a series we can binge as a family, the only real television we watch together is live sporting events and even then it’s not uncommon for everyone to have a device in their hand in addition to watching the tv.

Families are more connected now than they were twenty or thirty years ago. Even though families may be more spread out and constantly on the go, the technology we have at our fingertips makes it easy for quick check-ins throughout the day. I can remember calling my grandparents every Sunday night and giving them the updates of the week. It was usually about a 15 minute call and that was it for the week. If we talked to the grandparents any other time than Sunday night, something bad must have been happening. Now, the grandparents get daily updates on the grandkids complete with photos or a livestream! It helps the generations have a closer relationship even though the distance is still far apart.



References

Lee Rainie, & Barry Wellman. (2012). Networked : The New Social Operating System. The MIT Press.

Tools of the Week

The tools for this week gave the perfect excuse to dust off my Instagram account. I opened an Instagram account many years ago. I wanted a place to keep a journal, of sorts, of my kids events and activities but I wanted it to be for my eyes only. I didn't want to be "that mom" that flooded my Facebook feed with kid stuff. I'm not sure why I didn't just start another Facebook account or a blog, but I decided Instagram would be better for this purpose. Quite the contrary, I think I posted a few pictures and then didn't touch it again for years. Once my kids became more involved with Instagram I started looking at it more often, but still not posting. The amount of suggested content was just too much for me. I was getting follow requests from people I don't know and I'm quite certain they wouldn't be interested in my life anyway. I was also getting requests from friends and family that I left untouched because I wanted my account to be only for me. Fast forward to this class...my son thinks it is absolutely hysterical that there is a Wiki on how to use Instagram. I think it's wonderful that I'm not alone in my Instagram avoidance!

I've accepted some followers and followed them back. I've been sucked in to the mindless scrolling! I can see how this becomes addictive. Why am I watching a gender reveal video for people I don't even know anyway? I think I found our class using the #6414, but the only current post was from the professor so I will just wait a bit before I interact with that. I did see some posts that looked like they were from classes in previous years and I'm a bit intrigued by the challenges that will be posted for this class.

The RSS Reader is a very convenient tool that I can get on board with. It's like Facebook without the ads and "Suggested for you" posts. It was easy to set up a feed with all of the class posts. At first I wasn't thrilled with it because, although I could see posts from my classmates, I couldn't see the pretty backgrounds or any images they posted with their blog. Then I realized, that's exactly what I DO want! Less clutter. I can read the blogs all in one place and if I want to read further or leave a comment, it's just a click away. Last week, following the blog links from the main page worked, but I would forget which ones I read and the back and forth between pages could get old quickly.

OK, I'm off to read some blogs and see what my creative classmates have been up to this week in world of Web 2.0.

Digital Immigrants vs. Digital Natives

My boys are considered Digital Natives.  However, they were not allowed much time on screens at all when they were young, they watched an hour of PBSKids in the morning while they had breakfast and maybe a video in the afternoon while I was making dinner.  The tv was not turned on during the day and we did not use a computer or ipad for daily school in the elementary years.  They did not have smart phones until they were in high school and even then we used screen time limits and had rules about keeping the phones out of the bedrooms and parents were to be granted access to the phone at any time without notice.  Oddly enough, I never did randomly "check the phone."  Social media was a definite no.  When my youngest son joined the high school swim team the captain liked to share team info via Snapchat, but we stuck to the rule of no social media until 16 so he ended up missing a few messages.  Eventually the captain adjusted and would send my son an email or a regular text.  Both of my boys did start Instagram accounts around the age of 16.  The oldest one posts stories frequently and scrolls quite a bit.  The younger one rarely posts and tries to self-regulate his scrolling to keep it at a minimum.  All of that backstory just to say that despite our efforts as parents to limit their access to technology, they were born into the digital native era and there is no getting away from it.  The younger one though despises the "screenagers" and does his best to make sure he's not glued to his phone 24/7.  He is very mindful of keeping balance in his life. The older one does not do that and I definitely feel it changes his brain chemistry when he's allowed himself too much screen time. 

I was born in the era that is now considered Digital Immigrants. I can clearly recall teachers telling me I had to learn how to do math with pencil and paper because I wouldn't always be walking around with a calculator in my pocket.  That of course, turned out not to be the case at all! Aside from that, which I love that I always have a calculator available, as a Digital Immigrant I do prefer to talk to people rather than text and I do not turn to the internet first when I want to know something.  The funny thing is as I was reading the article, I thought the term Digital Immigrants perfectly described my husband and me, but my parents fit right in with the Digital Natives.  They are retired, but spend several hours a day watching YouTube videos, mostly educational but some just purely for entertainment.   If they want to know something, they immediately ask Siri.  Finding people on Facebook that they haven't talked to in 50 years is a full time hobby. My mom even opened an Instagram account so she could follow the grandkids!

As far as educating Digital Natives goes, I think the philosophy holds true that you have to meet students where they are. Educators just need to be mindful to use the tools that are available in a way that enhances and supports learning and don't just use a tool because it's popular and available.  

References

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.

 

Social Media? Get serious!

    Before reading "Social Media? Get serious! Understanding the
functional building blocks of social media" this week I had not given much thought to the purposes behind the different forms of social media.  In my mind it was pretty simple Facebook is for "old" people like me, Instagram is for the younger crowd, YouTube is for watching funny videos, occupying small children in a restaurant, or watching a video to learn something new.  Twitter, in my world, was just something famous people used.  I was also told that college coaches like to recruit high school athletes using Twitter although for both of my high school athletes this proved to not be the case.  I found out that I actually have a Twitter account because I tried to set one up for this class and my email and phone number were already in use, but I couldn't remember my username or password.  After some serious brain-scratching I did vaguely recall needing to have a Twitter account to get updates about weather delays at a swim meet we were attending and to access the race results.  

    Now, rethinking my presence on social media sites, I realize (1) I have more social media accounts than I thought I did and (2) I use them all for different purposes, but maybe not the purpose the provider intended.  For example, I used my Linkedin account to search for jobs I could do with a teaching degree that weren't teaching. That's how I learned about instructional design and ended up in this class. I have no connections, posts, followers, etc. I use this site in a very Web1.0 way...for now.  Facebook is a site I use primarily for relationships and groups.  I belong to several special interest groups: pilot wives, homeschool moms, parents page of my son's college, etc.  It's strange to think that some of my best friends are people I have never met in real life! Over 20 years ago I was in an online support forum for women who had experienced a pregnancy loss. I started having conversations with four women who could relate to my exact situation.  The four of us supported each other and we have even stayed close through the births of ELEVEN healthy babies. Now that I think about it, that support forum was my first time dipping a toe into 2.0 

For Better or Worse

I actually enjoy creative writing and a blog seems like it would be a great place to do a little bit of that. I'm not sure why I'm having a hard time getting started! Well, maybe I do.  As a student, I'm used to checking boxes, which is not the way I operate in "real life." If the teacher says, "You need to write a three paragraph response to Article 1 and include X,Y, and Z." I can do that without a problem. However, I tend to be more of a reflective thinker and I like to make connections to what is happening in my little corner of the world.  I suppose that can seem self-centered to some readers, but the beauty of a blog is those readers can just click on the next link and move along.  I spent years teaching kids to connect with their text and now it's just part of my reading style.  Writing in this way is personal and it makes me vulnerable to put my thoughts out into the world.  But, after my last class, which was the first class I've taken in over 20 years, I promised myself that in my next class I would not sit quietly on the sidelines and worry if my ideas were way off base. I would be an active participant and if I'm totally wrong about something or ask a silly question...so be it.  It seems a class on social media is the perfect time to be interactive! For better or worse, if you are reading this blog you will get a peek at some of my most random thoughts. 

First Post

 Good afternoon! I am making this my first post. I'm just figuring things out and trying to make it look right.