Kyle Roark's EME 6414 blog

 For the final article that I read this week for EME6414 I decided to check out Ma and Leung's work on social capital as it relates to LinkedIn usage. Initially I found the summary of the article a little odd in that the article focuses on "perceived" social capital, whereas with someo of the advanced analytics features within LinkedIn it would seem that they could have focused instead of actual interaction by participants. As one would suspect the authors focus specifically on content posting as opposed to mere usage, such as reading or browsing through LinkedIn. But the actual creation of written content is not the only thing of importance to the authors since they also note the importance of liking and/or sharing content from others within their professional network since this also shows professional competence in an area.  An added element to the article's study of the correlation between LinkedIn use and social capital is the examination of how personality types,...

 After spending some time this week reading through Dennen's article on ps eudonymity, I thought it best to focus next on building a web-presence that wasn’t pseudonymous. Thus, I read through Creating an Intentional Web Presence: Strategies for Every Educational Technology Professional by Lowenthal, Dunlap, and Stitson.   Interestingly, the authors start by noting that no longer do most hiring committees look to web-presence to find reasons not to hire someone. Instead they look to web-presence now to validate why they should hire someone. Especially for those in the educational technology space, their web presence is of particular importance in the job search. Currently working in Career Services myself, I found the article to be very thorough and a great checklist of both the items that one should have on the web and also the quality of those items. Often at the Career Center we give presentations to classes on social media use and personal branding and this article took ...

For week 3 of EME6414 we shifted our focus to the way that communities, or Personal Learning Networks are developed through social media use  I began the readings for the week by diving into Vanessa Dennen's work  Constructing academic alter-egos: identity issues in a blog-based community.  In the article Dennen argues that interactions on blogging communities becomes an instance of exploring ones own identity. While individuals may approach these blogs with different goals, as they engage with that community and seek things like status and reputation with the group they are simultaneously constructing their identity. Not only is this a necessary part of interacting in this forum, but it is also an important part of attracting readers to one content. Dennen is particularly interested in pseudonymous blogging among academics, something she refers to as “Blogademe”, by focusing on six key elements of the blogging process, namely “(1) Name and blog title; (2) Profiles; ...

 After spending a couple articles focusing on the arguments regarding whether someone's upbringing as a digital native or immigrant impacts their learning styles, I think I am finding myself agreeing more with those who claim that generation is not the key deciding factor in engagement with technology. This is why I especially enjoyed our last reading in EME6414 this week from White and Cornu. Instead of focusing on age they emphasize someones motivation and desire to engagement with technology that is the deciding factor in their involvement.  While I noted in my first blog from this week that Prensky seemed to note changes in Brain structure for those born as digital natives but did not go into detail to prove these claims, White and Cornu do a little better job of explaining how technology has influenced everyday life. They focus on the distinction between personal and professional. Technology, they argue, has blurred this distinction and helped to allow individuals to do w...

 After the first reading from this weekt hat argued strongly for a distinction in digital natives it was great to hear the counter opinion to this from Paul Kirschner. I noted in my last past that while I found much of the argument from Prensky convincing, one aspect that really stuck out to me was the claim that there were different "brain structures' structures that developed in digital natives, and that these structures were so strong that they led to different political and ethical assumptions. I found this claim to be a little outrageous, but what was frustrating is that Prensky just states this without really backing it up with anything. However, in the second article from this week from Kirschner there is an overall critique of the view that being a digital native leads to different thought patterns, but Kirschner really focuses in on the aspect of multi-tasking. Thus, when I first started to read Kirschner I was really excited for a challenge to Prensky, hopefully on t...

 At the start of week 2 in EME 6414 we began by reading an important article by Marc Prensky,  Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants . Pensky argues that generational differences are greater than they use to be due to the rapid increase in technology during the last few decades, especially in regards to social media. He even refers to this as a singularity and notes that modern children spend twice as much time playing video games a reading, and argues that this has resulted in different 'brain structures' among younger generations.  What I found especially interesting about this is the way that Prensky talks about a different political and ethical system that comes with this new type of knowledge and education. However, as soon as he introduces this distinction he passes. I would love to have heard him spend more time on this topic, talking about how we have new ethical and polical realities due to digital natives. At first glance I don't think that I entirely agree, ...

 It makes sense that after focusing on what exactly Web2.0 or social media is in our first several readings that in our third article of the reading for the week focuses on how corporations can use social media as part of their overall marketing strategy. Thus, in the third article for this weeks readings Jan Kietzmann identifies seven ares of importance in this regard, namely identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups.       Not suprisingly Kietzmann's start with a focus on micro-blogging, mostly Twitter, although I have never heard the phrase micro-blog used to describe Twitter it does fit. This form of Web2.0 seems to be much better suited for a corporation to engage with the media than through blog posts, or a site like Wikipedia. For Kietzmann the seven areas of importance form a honeycomb of social media functionality. He emphasizes that with the advent of social media, suddenly corporations lost much of the cont...

 After reading through Axel Brun's article on Web2.0 and "produsage" I read through Dr. Dennen's overview of the web, Web1.0, 2.0 and beyond. I appreciated Dr. Dennen's emphasis on the products of Web2.0 being an ongoing and living document. Thus a key component of Web2.0 documents is the ability to comment on them or to provide feedback through a like button. But of course is it always fun to reflect into the future on what Web3.0, 4.0 or 5.0 might be. In this regard Dr. Dennen's emphasis on search tools interacting with us on the web is different from other definitions I have heard of Web3.0, or I guess in this case we should say guesses at what Web3.0 might look like. When I think about the future of the web I am brought back to the final sections within Brun's article that I first read for the class where he focused on how Web2.0 would eventually be commercialized and used for profit. It is exactly this aspect which I have heard emphasized in other pla...

 As one of my first activities for EME 6414 this semester I read through Axel Brun's  The Future Is User-Led: The Path towards Widespread Produsage. I thought it was a great way to start the course as it touched on some of the thoughts that I had while writing on the discussion board for this week regarding discussion topic #2 on whether social media and web 2.0 should be used for insruction or for the distribution of information. I felt in that discussion post that social media should not be used for instruciton per se but instead to build upon, and perhaps complicate or challenge, discussions and content learned in the classroom. Burns., similarly talks about a 'collaborative and continuous building of knowledge' which he refers to as "produsage". He notes that the knowledge of Web20 is always unfinished and that the producers and consumers of this knowledge are often the same. While I enjoyed Burns article I couldn't help but think about the first part of t...