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” [ CITATION Wig16 \l 1033 ]. 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