Recommend one tool----Scoop. it?!

In this blog, I will talk about one curation tool: Scoop.it.
When I took this course in 2015 summer, I paid for Scoop.it to curate resources related to MOOCs. I found this tool useful because it is efficient. Every time a new piece of information is shared online, it will notify me. Meantime, Based on my conversations with my friends and classmates, Scoop.it is often used in a company compared with other tools.

In the following link, you can check whether you would like to try this tool. If you work in a company or potentially work in a company, I would recommend you to try out this tool. :)

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/scoop-this-a-comprehensive-guide-to-scoop-it-for-content-curation/38963/

Facebook usage and engagement is on the rise?!

I just came across a study on the usage of social media in U.S.A by Pew Research Center. It shows a surprising finding: Facebook usage is one the rise. That finding seems to be inconsistent with my experiences. Some friends surrounding me do not often use Facebook. 
Now, let's see what they found out. You can check the detailed report via the link: 
http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/social-media-update-2016/

From the above graph, you can see that Facebook usage among online adults is on the rise. The report also suggests that one reason is the growing number of older adults who are joining the site. The Twitter usage is steady from 2014 to 2016. 

What do you think of online adults' usage of social media based on your experiences? Do you think the trend in the above graph is consistent with your observation? 

My Experience with Reddit

In my eyes, the reddit is a large discussion board with many discussion forums related to topics of many areas like music, books. You can just type any topic you are interested, and find the right subreddit. Within one subreddit you subscribe, all posts will be ranked based on every redditor’s votes, which allow you to enjoy all the hot posts which rise to the top.  Within one reddit, you can send a private message to any redditor if want to talk about something further privately. You can also “friend” one another, and then have a quick access to posts and comments of your friend list. Except for online communicate with other redditors, you can socialize at meetups held at local parks and bars around the world, and attend local in-person meetings if you like ("Reddit Worldwide Meetups", 2011). So reddit is a kind of social network site like Facebook and Twitter where reddits can discuss with others, make friends, and maintain friendship with offline meetings. But the unique of it is that it promotes deep discussions among redditors who share the common areas of interests without revealing their real identity.

I have observed a subreddit “GradSchool” for one year due to my personal interest and research purpose since one classmate referred me to this website. The subreddit is active. Each day, around 20 posts are submitted, immediately followed by comments which are even more than 60. While I am writing this blog, 21,866 readers and 42 users are in this subreddit. Here, graduate students share any challenges they have in academic work and life, share their personal experiences and news, ask for advice, etc. Comments for those posts are constructive and helpful because every redditors are honest to each other. But most of posts and comments are text-based with few pictures and videos, which make this subreddit old-fashioned.

 I read others’ posts, and make suggestions to other graduate students once in a while. Personally, I feel safe to engage in this reddit because other redditors do not know who I am. I can engage in deep talks with any reddit about any topic I am interested. However, I find an interesting thing that after several days, the submitter for a post will stop responding to your pots. This makes me feel this website is kind of news websites where something hot and eye-catching every day is becoming hot topics.  Most of posts like news are about negative experiences or feelings. However, one interesting thing I notice is that on this subreddit, a post is always submitted on Friday “Let’s talk about something good” in which graduate students share their good news and feeling. 

This is my experience with reddit. Hope you guys have a nice trip with reddit.

References:

Reddit Worldwide Meetups" (2011, December 4). Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/meetup/

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How Many People Do you Have in your Networks? Reflections on the readings

As Rainie and Wellman (2012) claimed, average Americans now have an estimated six hundred people in their networks. The number sounds so crazy. How can we handle our relationship with so many people?

Reflect on my own experience. I have 4 family members, and around 40 close relatives in my father and mother' line. I have had lots of classmates in my elementary schools, secondary schools, and universities. In addition to my classmates, I also make some friends face-to-face or online who share some common interests with me. Moreover, I am in an interdisciplinary research group, and know students in other programs. I also have lots of friends on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus, and Linkedin. As this number of connected people continue, I think I have six hundred people in my network, too.

Regarding how to handle our relationship with those people, I follow the Golden Rule that help will be there when needed. As Rainie and Wellman (2012) found, we can easily navigate our personal networks to get the aid and comfort we need in a certain situation. We can get information, support, and advice from more— and more diversified— sources. When I need assistance in paper, I turn directly to my advisor or students in my program for help. When I need assistance in assignment, I discuss with my classmates. When I feel sad or frustrates, I chat with my best friends to get emotional support. Another reason for contributing to my capacity in balancing my networks is my media-literacy. Majoring in Educational technology, I have known clearly how to find information, assess it, react to it, and even remix it by using different web 2.0 tools.

However, I rarely think about managing my personal brand. I am always so naive that I do not need to manage my fame since I am nobody now. According to the Pew Internet survey, 57 percent of American internet users had searched for material about themselves online, 33 percent of internet users worried about how much information is available about them, and 8 percent had asked other users to remove information about them  (Rainie & Wellman, 2012). I did search for information about myself at all. I did not worry about what information was available about me. But this survey result reminds me of that I should take care of information about me out there on the search engine. The first step I will take is setting up the email alerts and syndicated news feeds when my name is mentioned on news or other prominent sites.The second step I will take is reviewing and cleaning up my posts on Facebook and WeChat, I will delete some negative stuff that I do not want my family members see because my father will be my WeChat friend.

Rainie, L., &Wellman, B. (2012-04-27). Networked: The New Social Operating System. The MIT Press. Kindle Edition.

Celebrity's Leaked or hacked Photos Violates their Privacy or Not?

The privacy issue is very tricky for celebrities. Does celebrities have a right to privacy?  According to the data, 33% said “No” and claimed “They signed a contract which basically gave the media the right to see their private lives. They make the majority of their money of their money off the public press. They are also paid so people can see their private lives. All in all they don’t deserve privacy at all.” Those who agreed with celebrities’ privacy claimed “Celebrities are also human like us. Like we want our privacy be safe, they want their privacy be safe. It's unfair when their privacy is show in public just because they are living in the pblic spotlight. ” I agree with most of people that they still have a right to privacy.

However, in the digital age, it's so hard for celebrities to protect their privacy.  It's so easy for hackers and the public to search the information about a celebrity.

I think all of you must know about the 2014 celebrity photo hack on August 31, 2014, a collection of almost 500 private pictures of various celebrities, mostly women, and with many containing nudity, were posted on the imageboard 4chan, and later disseminated by other users on websites and social networks such as Imgur, Reddit and Tumblr. 

The photo hack ruined many celebrities’ fame and life. I think those hackers badly violated those celebrities’ privacy. Even though those celebrities should be exposed to flashlight all the time, and reveal their private life in some situations, their privacy need to be protected. For them, exposing to the flashlight is sort of work. They also need to separate their life and work. 

In addition to hacked celebrity photos, their leaked photos also cause them into lots of trouble. Take a movie star in China for example. Since her private photos were leaked to the public, her career was destroyed, and she was criticized by the public. She is not popular any more.  

So I am thinking as a celebrity, what the line between violating their privacy and revealing their profile at an appropriate level? Unlike us, celebrities’ profile is easily searchable. Everyone with the internet can access to them. Then what about the information they want to hide from the public? This makes me think about that another female movie star lied about her age. After her real age was revealed, some of her fans turned back to her, and claimed “she is a liar”. However, I think the age should be privacy, right? It makes sense if they hide their age. 

How much does resume design matter to you? A tool called Vizualize can help you.

I was exploring the tool Vizualize which can be used to design a nice resume. Then I came across an interesting article about how much resume matter to the HR people. Quote from the comments to this article "The formatting on a resume tells me a lot about a person, almost as much as the resume itself." I actually felt surprised at this point.

To be honest, I do not have lots of experiences in editing my resumes to find a job. I still remember when I applied for FSU, I did not make a fancy resume. My resume was a little ugly with lots of words without picture or good structure. About this issue, I am thinking how much it is different between a resume for applying for a graduate program at an institution and applying for a job in a company. According to my knowledge, the resume for applying for a graduate program should look very professional and formal without pictures. The resume for a company can be more attracting by adding visual design.

What citation management software do you often use? Share with me here

Recently, I talked with my advisor about what citation software we should use.

She recommended the Endnote. I have tried it for several days. It is indeed convenient to manage our citations. However, we can only use it for free for 30 free-trial days. Then we will need to pay for it to add more citations.

The RefWorks embedded in FSU libraries is not a free software, either. But if you only want to manage your citation during your graduate study, you can definitely use the RefWorks to manage all your citations to complete your thesis or paper. Here is the link https://www.lib.fsu.edu/eresource/refworks. After you graduate, you can export all your collections of references to other bibliographic software like Zoteto which is free.

Of course, we can use Google Scholar to save citations for all articles we searched on Google scholar. But the problem is that sometimes we do not use it for searching for some articles. So Google Scholar is not convenient for managing our citations.

For me, I am now using Evernote to organize all citations I am interested. I always create a note in which I write down some reflections on articles I am interested and add reference lists at the bottom. But I realize it is not enough to manage a large amount of citations which we are interested. For example, when we read an article, we may find the reference list for it can be useful for us. It will be good to find citation manager tool to export those citations directly for us.

Here is a comparison of different citationmange software, based on which you can decide which software you can choose from to manage your citation. By the way, I will plan to use Zotero more frequently because it's free. I once used Zotero, and then stopped. And I actually do not know about other citation management tools.

What citation management software do you often use? Share with me here.