Tech
How Schools Could Use Social Media
This topic idea is taken from Chris Brogan’s 100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write About (No.12).
When I was in university, social media wasn’t being really used that much. I mean, yes, students use them for personal use, like Friendster, Multiply, YouTube and instant messaging, but for the school itself, they didn’t really utilize it that much. That was in 2002 to 2007.
Right now, social media is everywhere. Businesses, organizations, academic institutions, and just about everyone else uses social media. If you don’t use it, I’d say you are way behind with the times. The community and the world constantly changes. Lots of new things are being developed and it is always good to know what these are so you will be able to know if you could use it as you continuously try to improve yourself and your organization.
Let me talk about how I think schools could use social media. Firstly, I think the most important thing is that a school should have a website. With a website, its students, alumni, faculty will have easy access to general information including student registration, events and important announcements.
However, just having a website is not enough. I have noticed that there are those who are satisfied with having the same content on their website for months, maybe even years. It is important that the school’s website content be regularly updated. Setting a regular schedule weekly or monthly, if not daily, would probably be sufficient. At least one event does happen every month after all, right?
A Wikipedia page would be helpful as well. In addition to a website, I’d say an online forum will be a great addition. This will be a great venue for students to speak out their concerns to the administration, the student government, the student clubs, or any other relevant groups or purpose.
Speaking of a venue for students, faculty, and administration to connect and interact, a Facebook group would be great, too. Many students are already on it; all it needs is a common place in it where they could all gather.
Another idea is the use of video-streaming or even just regular online video. According to Mary O’Malley, executive producer of University of New South Wales’ YouTube channel, “
This is a vehicle for communicating research and selected teaching material and is part of an overall strategy of publishing content where it can be most easily accessed.”
Richard Buckland, a computer science lecturer at UNSW, has used YouTube as his classroom allowing students to earn college credit. This strategy may work for some schools, while some it may not. It all depends on every situation the school faces.
One last thing, email is also important. Sending out newsletters or regular communications through email would also be a good idea for schools to implement. With this, students will be informed directly even if they do not use all the other social media.
I’m definitely not an expert in social media, but I just wanted to share my thoughts on this and I am always open to more ideas.
Tweet Tweet…Are You on Twitter?
Twitter is fast gaining popularity on the internet now. It’s being used by a lot of people ranging from politicians to actors to musicians to business people to IT people to just regular everyday people.
What makes Twitter so popular? I think it’s because it is a very simple application that is easily accessible and easy to use to get and share information.
So what exactly is Twitter? Here is a definition from Wikipedia:
Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 bytes in length. Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them.
“What are you doing?” is the question being asked by Twitter. If you have information you want to share, you can share it in 140 characters or less without needing to elaborate on it so much. If you need to elaborate, you could always use a blog for that.
Users follow other users, usually referred to as tweeple or tweeps, whom they share similar interests. You can follow people without needing them to follow you back. The reason that others may not follow you back may vary from one person to another. For celebrities, I’d probably say their reason is they don’t really need to know updates from thousands of people’s lives every second of the day.
You could still interact with anyone even if they don’t follow you (as long as they don’t block you) by simply sending them a message or what is known as an @ reply. Twitter has made it possible to connect and get to know people in whole new different way.
Personally, I use Twitter to learn information from people in the IT industry. I learn new things everyday through reading their tweets. Usually their tweets would include links to very useful and helpful articles. If I like what they tweet, I retweet them to my followers. And if anyone likes what I tweet or retweet, they would do the same, and it goes on and on.
To make my Twitter experience more productive, I use the Tweet Deck application. It allows me to organize the updates I receive into separate columns so I could easily scan through them to find the information I could use, and retweet or reply to messages easily.
Even if you’re not in front of a computer, you could still use Twitter through your phone by SMS or mobile internet.
There’s a lot more to the Twitter community, or Twitterverse as some would call it. If you’re still not on it, go sign up now. I don’t think you’ll regret it.
Add me up if you like: @AnnaSaldivar.
Stop! Please Don’t Send! Click Undo (Gmail)
There have been times when I wrote an email, pressed send, then suddenly realized that I missed to mention something, or that I wanted to reply to all instead of one or vice versa, or some other likely reason.
During my Wireless Networking school days, I was working on this project with my group mates and we were communicating through email. I’m supposed to reply to all so everyone will be updated of the new developments, but sometimes, I already sent my reply email then realize that I only sent it to one person. That kind of situation is a little bit okay since it only is among my friends, and I could always just send again.
In my job email applications though, that probably has happened to me a couple of times or so. There was this time that I suddenly discovered that I missed an “s” in one word. It was so grammatically wrong and that simply irks me. Or there was this other time that I forgot to attach my resume and then realized it a second too late. No! No! Please don’t send!
Thankfully, Gmail has introduced the Undo Send feature in its Gmail Labs recently last March 19th, 2009. You can now take back the email you just sent as long as it is done within a five second time frame. It also has an option to adjust the time to ten seconds, if you prefer. However, it cannot pull back the email you sent once it’s already gone after five seconds.
In addition, there is also a Forgotten Attachment Detector feature in Gmail Labs that will stop you from sending an email if it detects that you mentioned attach but haven’t included any attachments. This actually has saved me once so far.
Of course, the best way to prevent these bloopers from happening is to be extremely careful in the email content you are sending. Double check, or even triple check. Be alert. Try to avoid sending an email when you’re not completely awake, or when you are feeling sluggish. (This is sometimes the reason why these things happen to me. Haha!)
Happy emailing!
Cisco IOS 10 Basic Commands That Should Be Mastered
David Davis wrote in TechRepublic about the ten commands that a Cisco professional or network administrator should know when using the Cisco IOS in routers, switches, and firewalls. This is a good reminder for me, and I’m glad to know that I have embedded all of it in my brain already.
Below is the list he made plus my comments on what I think about each item.
1. The “?”
This is the most helpful command ever. There are thousands of possible commands in the Cisco IOS and this is definitely useful when you don’t know or can’t remember the command to type, or the parameter that should come next.
2. show running-configuration (sh run)
If you want to check the current configuration of the router, switch, or firewall, this is what is used.
3. copy running-configuration startup-configuration (copy run start)
This command will save your current configuration, which is in the RAM, to the nonvolatile RAM (NVRAM). You can also use the copy command to copy to the TFTP server. If you must turn off your router, do not forget to use this command unless you don’t want to save the configuration changes you made.
4. show interface (sh int)
For troubleshooting, this command is used to check the status of the router’s interfaces.
5. show ip interface (sh ip int)
Much useful information about the configuration and status of the IP protocol and its services, on all interfaces are displayed with this command. Alternatively, you can add brief at the end of the command to get a shorter quick status.
6. config terminal, enable, interface, and router (conf t, en, int, router)
These are used to enter different modes in configuring the router.
7. no shutdown (no shut)
This is used to enable an interface, and also useful for troubleshooting when used with shut (to bring down interface then up).
8. show ip route (sh ip ro)
To check the routing table, use this command.
9. show version (sh ver)
This will display the router’s firmware settings, the last time the router was booted, the version of the IOS, the name of the IOS file, the model of the router, and the router’s amount of RAM and Flash.
10. debug
This is helpful in troubleshooting. The debug command is used with other commands like for example, debug ip route.
Alright. That should be pretty simple to remember. Commands, stay in my brain please, thank you.
Photo Credit: dontthink.feel
Facebook Responds to Users’ Feedback
Facebook has been through several redesigns since it first came out. The old design was very clean and simple, which made me attracted to join the social network when I first found out about it.
When Facebook revamped its website with a new design, many users complained about it. They didn’t like this, they didn’t like that. On the other hand, many users did like it. Then after some time, Twitter, another social networking plus micro-blogging site, became popular. Facebook, again, decided to redesign their homepage resembling their micro-blogging design.
Again, many users disliked it while other users liked it. You simply can never satisfy everyone.
Comments, complaints, requests and suggestions were aired out by users, so Facebook responded with a list of improvements they’re making as written by Chris Cox, Facebook’s Director of Product, on Facebook’s blog today:
Live updating: One of the most common requests is the ability to see your stream update automatically. We will be adding the ability to turn on auto updating in the near future so you no longer need to refresh the page.- Photo tags: In order to surface more photos you might like to see, we’ll be adding photos tagged of your friends to the stream. This will happen in the coming weeks.
- More choices for applications: We’ve heard feedback that there is a lot of application content appearing in the stream. We will be giving you tools to control and reduce application content that your friends share into your stream.
- More Highlights: Highlights will update more frequently and will show you more content throughout the day to mirror more closely the content that the earlier News Feed provided.
- Find things more easily: Friend requests and event invites will be more prominent at the top of right column. Also, from the filters on the left, you will be able to create a new list of friends with which to filter the stream.
I’ve encountered quite a few friends of mine who didn’t like the latest Facebook design. Well, some of them I’ve told about how Facebook seemingly decided to pattern it to Twitter’s layout. Most of those who haven’t used Twitter, of course, cannot relate.
I understand that this makes them upset about the Facebook situation. Why fix what isn’t broken, right? Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on this matter. For me, I’m glad that Facebook listened to my suggestion, that is, to have the automatic stream updating. Thanks and I’ll be looking forward to that, Facebook.
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