A reflective moment...

It feels like only a couple of weeks ago I was just creating my introductory post and already I am reflecting on the term coming to a close. And even though right now I am stressing about finals and last minute papers, it is an interesting exercise to reflect over what I have really learned in this course and what I am taking away from it.

 2012. SEO service group, San Fransisco, CA. http://www.seoservicesgroup.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/socail.jpg. April 11 2012

In the start of this course, I was completely new to most social media, only ever using facebook and even then to the bare minimum. In all honesty, I had no interest in twitter, believing that it was only a way to help one's self be vain, announcing to the world every thought and emotion one could possibly have. This course has aided me in seeing that twitter could be a more useful tool then I originally thought. I have seen that it can be used as a signifigant tool in the science community and it provides the ability to quickly share new information with others who are concerned in the same field. When I was reading a fellow ALES students blog, Rima also disscussed how ALES 204 has helped her see that twitter can be effective for connecting with other individuals in her field. Furthermore, I have learned that general news can be passed to people through twitter about world  events. The other day I was reading how twitter can dispatch storm warnings to communities. This news post discussed how it is being examined by federal government agencies in the USA if twitter can be an effective tool for informing the public quickly about certain situations. I think that without this course, I would have not been as aware of the possibilities twitter and social media have.

With that being said though, I do not think I will keep my twitter account. Although I agree with the perspective this course has shown me and how twitter can be a great tool, it is the responsibility of each tweeter to utilize twitter as this tool and I still think that it is used by the majority just to talk about random topics. It just personally is not my thing and I know I will use it rarely after this course either way. In other social media topics such as Delicious and LinkedIn, I learned what they were about in this course, which otherwise I would have probably never had learned about. I think I have learned how each of these sites can benefit me further down the road in my professional career.Finally I would say this course has helped me learn about others perspective on the subject matter and gave me the opportunity to comment on others blogs about their experiences in these topics. Some other student blogs that I engaged in were:
Brittany's blog
Curtis"s blog
Karen's blog
Chau Chin Yo"s blog
Deanna's Bog

In the conclusion to this course, I would sum up that I have opened my eyes to many different forms of social media and how they can POSSIBLY be used to aid one in their future career/education. The only thing that still has me a little sceptical about social media is its resemblance to Wikipedia. We learned that people have the ability to say what ever they want so there still is a possibility of faulty information being passed on through social media. In addition, it is the individuals responsibility to utilize social media as a tool for progressing themselves to their career. With this being said, I do believe it was a great term and a refreshing change from typical university course style.