Created by Prof. Jonathan Acuña as a
social media presence mapping exercise
Mapping
Your Social Media Presence
By
Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.
School
of English
Faculty of Social Sciences
Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Friday,
October 7, 2016
Post
298
The Role of Social Media Today
“Social media is the collective of
online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction,
content-sharing and collaboration” (Wigmore, 2016) . Social media’s role in professional
development has come to be of great importance for any individual intending to
further his/her professional growth. Of course these channels of communication
have also been and continue being used for far more different reasons not
exactly connected to self-improvement in one’s professional field. But in the
search for “community-based input, content-sharing and collaboration,” the core
of mapping your social media presence relies on one’s joining a community of
practice, on being fed on one’s hotspots, and on voicing one’s thoughts and
beliefs regarding one’s professional field and practice.
Joining
Communities of Practice
When you start to map your social
presence, a first step to take is to analyze whether you are or are not a
member of a community of practice. Are you currently a member of a community of
practice in your field of expertise? Being a community of practice a group of
individual with a common interest, you may probably be following a group of
organizations or individuals who share your very same hotspots. In my very
personal case, since I am an English teaching professional, I follow some
organizations that allow us to share content with other language instructors. Many
of us English teachers follow BBC Learning
English due to the amount of material and tips for
teaching the target language, the OUP English Language
Teaching Global Blog because of the many insights about
classroom management ideas or suggestions to go about certain kind of subject
matters in class, and TES Resources, a
place where teachers share with peers their lesson plans, teaching ideas and
materials in various subjects that have to do with the teaching of English. And
of course, there are also professionals who do similar things to the ones done
by these organizations: spreading their insights, materials, and the like. If
you are a follower of any similar organization or individual in Facebook,
Twitter, or any other communication channel, you are part of a community of
practice either as an active member (sharing content) or as a passive affiliate
(consuming input provided by others).
In one’s mapping of one’s media
presence, contributing one’s findings online with peers makes us real active
members. A community of practice is made of individuals willing to feed others
with input. I am myself a twitterino due to my presence on Twitter,
and I have personally found this piece of social media rewarding for my
teaching practice; the usage of hashtags to find or provide data to a community
of practice is really helpful. Presence can be extended to other social media
sites such as Pinterest, which can allow users to
locate and save cool pictures for ones teaching of English and which
automatically helps members to share them on Twitter or
any other social media channels that users set for sharing or collaboration.
Another example of contributing media presence is Scoop.it, a
curation site where users can create a collection of bookmarks linked to an
umbrella topic. And as it happens with Pinterest,
once a bookmark is saved, it is automatically shared with a target community of
practice through the social media channel members decide and set in their
profiles. Content-sharing and collaboration are possible and provides other
peers of one’s communities of practice with professional details regarding
one’s area of expertise and interest.
Constant
Revision of Topics of Interest
Since we all live on community-based
input, it is important to always stay current on latest ideas or trends in our
field of expertise. Thousands of blog posts, infographics, articles in public
storage places, and many more data are there for us teachers to review on a
regular basis. And are you, at this point of your professional life, revising
what colleagues worldwide or ELT authors are writing on their favored
communication channels? Oftentimes writers, way before they get to publish
their research projects or studies, provide us with input connected to several
of our hotspots or interests. Problem is, and will continue to be, that we may
be unaware of these articles since it is difficult to track them down along
with the writers. Feedly is
a great rich site summary (RSS) system to track what is being published
regarding our hotspots. Feedly’s
RSS is not the only one available online, but to stay tune on what is being
published in our area(s) of interest is a great option and very user friendly.
Aside from Feedly,
another interesting RSS system to be used to review topics online is Paper.li.
Once again, at this point of your professional life, do you know what members
of your communities of practice publish on their favorite communication
channels as part of their collaboration and content sharing? Well, the answer
to this question will vary from individual to individual, but one thing is
true: It is impossible to know all that is shared by our professional peers. Paper.li
works
as a tracking system that collects and filters colleagues’ posts on social
media channels and are converted into a newsletter-like archive where
information is displayed on areas that one is really interested in. Through an
RSS system like Paper.li, one can share with one’s
community of practice information that can be beneficial for each member or
beyond.
Self-Promotion
and Reflective Journalism
Another way of reaching members of
your community of practice, or even those who are not yet part of your group,
is by means of social media channels that allow us to voice our thoughts and
beliefs in our field of expertise. Part of mapping our social media presence is
linked to the use of pages that can allow us to reach out towards our peers
such as Blogger, YouTube, and MOOCs. If you are
into writing, Blogger is
one of the many options you have to explore, promote your writing, or simple
help yourself develop your reflective journaling that can be shared with peers.
But if you are more into vodcasting, YouTube is
the place where podcasting skills can be exercised and consolidated to create
material for peers as well as for learners. MOOCs are for those who are more
into becoming part of an online course or community of learning and feel like
sharing ideas with other fellow teachers worldwide. No doubt, depending on what
you preferences are, the usage of any of these social media communication
channels can be used for self-promotion of your professional expertise and to
help yourself exercise your reflective journaling skills to see your ideas in
black and white.
Some
Concluding Remarks
After understanding how you can map
your social media presence, how do you want to be perceived online by people
who may have access the same communication channels you use? There is no real
answer to this question; the only thing that can be stated is that you are the
one who needs to make this decision and rhetorically answer it to yourself. If
asked this question, I would simply answer it by saying that I want to be perceived
as a teaching professional interested in various domains pertaining education;
any other thing is irrelevant since I value my private family life and my
relationships with my friends and dear ones.
Another question to ask yourself is,
as part of your legacy, what kind of online imprint do you want to leave
behind? We need to go back to the answer to the first question; this is a
matter of choice and each individual needs to decide what legacy wants to leave
behind in his online travelogues. As for me, I just want to leave my thoughts
and ideas to be criticized –negatively or positively- to help others understand
educational issues. I do not expect to be a lighthouse or anything similar in
education or language teaching, but a simple contributor who can help
colleagues and students of mine to find an answer to continue searching for their
knowledge.
Reference
Wigmore,
I. (2016, September). Social Media. Retrieved from WhatIs.Com:
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/social-media
Friday, October 07, 2016
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