Multiple-Shared-Social-Mashing and Me!? - My Multimedia Blog

1.) All of this research and playing with the Multisharma (I've mashed it all

into one word, saves time) has left me empty and exhausted. There is no

end to the material it seems, it just keeps going and going like that cute little bunny on T.V. My skills and knowledge base on this weeks topic is similar to the others, zilch, nada, zip when it comes to the multimedia aspects. As far as the social media aspect thanks to this class I now have a base knowledge of user generated sites, social networking sites, photo and video sharing sites. So much more in my brain then I could have imagined at this point. In doing my research I found that the terms social media, and multisharing overlapped in some cases or were used somewhat interchangeably. I found an amazing article in ScienceDirect called, "Users of the World, Unite! The Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media." In the article the authors classify social media by social presence/media richness and self-presentation/self-disclosure. For example the use of blogs scores very high in the self-presentation/self-disclosure area, but very low in the social presence/media richness. This makes sense as a lot of blogs are mainly just done in plain type. Where as virtual social worlds, such as Second Life rank high in both areas. I'm a bit weary on the self-presentation/self-disclosure being accurate in a situation such as the game Social Life. I have no experience with it at all, but it seems a bit sketchy to say the least. The article goes on and breaks down social media into six categories: collaborative projects (wiki), blogs, content communities (flickr, youtube), social networking (myspace, facebook), virtual game worlds (World of Warcraft), and virtual social worlds (Second Life). I won't go into the details, but a good read for a newbie like myself.

I went very basic and looked up the definitions of social and media prior to starting this post here is what I found:

"noting or pertaining to activities designed to remedy or alleviate certain unfavorable conditions of life in a community..." (quote from dictionary.com)

"the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines, that reach or influence people widely..."(from dictionary.com)

Two things jumped out at me, #1. alleviating certain unfavorable conditions of life, well it is becoming clear to me that social media does this very thing. #2. communiction as radio, tv, newspaper....this was taken from dictionary.COM, and yet no mention of the internet and social media in the definition. I found this odd, seeing as the internet reaches people more widely than any other tool?!
This week has again opened up my mind a great deal to the wealth and the power of multimedia sights such as Animoto, and Voicethread, as well as social media in general. Lee Aase the Mayo Clinic's manager of syndication and social media, uses podcasts, facebook, twitter, and blogs to reach an international audience
for questions and information. He states, "...don't think of social media as another thing to do, but instead as part of your balanced communications diet."(Tactics, October 2009) This quote struck a chord with me, before this course I thought of all these tools as another thing to do, now I'm seeing them as beneficial, useful, and easy to use. I've added a my second Animoto video here, the first one I did is already on my blog, also I've included my Voicethread that I created for my students. The voicethread is also accessible to them on the Wikispace that we (I) created from last week:

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.




2.) From a personal aspect, I've found many uses of social media/multimedia. The ability to use Animoto to show my friends and family our most recent trip, or to use voicethread in the same manner, to get comments from those who were there, and from those who were not, to allow them to ask what happened in this picture why do the girls look so mad at you? The ability to interact together and simaultaneously yet apart and asychronous, hopefully that makes sense.
Another personal benefit to myself, my family, my community, and my city that could be coming are way is in terms of an open city concept, I first heard of this on a Spark podcast. The interview is with a councellor from Vancouver, essentially they are discussing open data applications. This process is already being used in Toronton and Washington, D.C., the idea is to allow access to government data, and thus allow the public to view it and perhaps sign up for an email/text reminder of garbage day, or allow business owners to go in and update any information themselves, again keeping things current instantly one of the main themes of social media in my eyes. David Eaves in the same podcast talks about the power of collaboration and how there is this myth that all the knowledge is in one place, like parliament, but he astutely points out that one of the greatest innovations of our time, 911, is essentially a collaborative effort involving the general public and emergency professionals. This open city concept would allow collaboration to occur in regards to the city of Vancouver, again giving voices to those who experience life in all areas, not just sitting in a government desk signing off on things they may know very little about.
You can use multimedia to promote a home business, to do consultations using skype, to get feedback on home projects, there seems to be unlimited opportunities personally. One of my dearest friends just had his first child yesterday, and I've already recieved an email/video/pictures of his little girl. To me that is the best value personally. When we were in Newfoundland I could send our photos, now I would attach them in my blog, to my Mum daily, she knew what we were up to everyday. Priceless!
This youtube clip I came across really shows where things are going and I'm glad I took this class when I did. There is one slide that stood out to me, "social media is not a fad, its a fundamental shift in the way we communicate."

3.) In terms of multimedia in education, the opportunities here are staggering. I realize that in this week or so that I've only scratched the surface as with many of these 2.0 tools. Using animoto in the basic package was great more so personally, but Voicethread and Slideshare are fantastic education tools. I created that small little voicethread and then added it to the wiki and boom there it is, a quick and simple study tool. Now if they use it is another thing. I think if I had introduced these tools back in September it would be a different story. Now it is a bit late, but a couple of the students are in there and experimenting which is fun to see. One downside that was pointed out in a different article from Tactics is that perhaps the instructors who are trying to introduce these tools do not have the experience to teach them properly, to quote the author, " the problem with technology, expecially in 2009 more than ever, is that it moves faster than a syllabus". Now in my case that is not an issue, Joanne has no worries about me trumping her anytime soon, but it could happen in my case. So far the students in my course have not had much exposure to some of these tools, but each year they will come in with more and more knowledge. This puts the oweness on the instructors to stay up to date. This perhaps may be why there is some fear out there to get into this digital learning world, some instructors may not want to have to keep their knowledge up. The anatomy of the human body doesn't change every six months!!!
My favourite portion of this weeks learning is the group effort, or the gang learning as I call it. Everybody together, working through the problem. I find that this is way more conducive to retention then just a regurgitation of what I said in class. When there is this collaboration and teamwork the learning will have breadth and depth. In Will Richardson's blog there seems to be some progress in the integration of these 2.0 tools in the classroom, of course with anything don't count your chickens before they hatch.
There is some 'big shifts' mentioned in 'Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts...', one which pertains to both the personal and professional benefits of this tool, 'Open Content', and many others which sum up the usefulness of multimedia and social media, collaboration, many teachers-24/7, writing is no longer limited to text, mastery is contribution not completion. Great stuff! This was a fun week, but like I said at the beginning exhausting, so much so fast, wow!

Notes:
Zuk, R. (2009). Grow into your social media strategy:A conversation with mayo clinic's Lee Aase. Tactics, October, 7.
Taylor, A. (2009). The problem with teaching social media: "It moves faster than a syllabus". Tactics, October, 14.
Kaplan, A.M., & Haenlein, M. (2009). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media. ScienceDirect, 53, 59-68.