Reflecting on ALES 204

As the semester winds down, it is smart to take a second and reflect back on what you have learned and will take away from your classes. ALES 204 was without a doubt one of the most different courses I have ever taken in my three years of post secondary. This was evident from the very first class when we were told to bring our smart phones and laptops to class, and encouraged to tweet during lecture! While this course was definitely different, I felt that it often was just reiterating things that I already knew, and did not overly need to be reminded of (stay professional when e-mailing professors, do not post things on Facebook you would not want your boss to see, etc.). Some of the material was helpful however, and it helped me to understand more outlets of social media.

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Creating a professional Facebook page was one of the positive areas of the class. While I did already have a Facebook profile, I was not aware of how to create a Facebook "page". I feel that in the future more people will begin using this type of e-resume and employers will seek out this information when completing interviews. A second portion of the class that I found useful was learning how to effectively use Twitter. While I did have a twitter account prior to ALES 204, I was not aware of how much information you could gather from this source. It is truly amazing how much can be said in only 140 characters. Since being in ALES, I have been able to find tons of information about Human Ecology, as well as other scientific areas, something I honestly had no idea existed on twitter.


There were a few areas of this class that I did not find overly helpful, or informative. One of these was editing a wikipedia article. While I did not know how to do this previously, I felt that it was not overly relatable to my life. While reading Wikipedia is something I commonly do, I did not feel that editing an article was something that I will ever need to use again, and would only be something I could do in my spare time. A second portion of ALES 204 that I did not really enjoy was the linked in profile. While this is something students may one day find useful when they are in a professional setting, I do not think that it is relative to where most students are in their lives at this point. Considering it is quite easy to join and figure out, I felt this was not an effective use of time for our ALES 204 class.


One of the things that really enjoyed about ALES 204 was reading other student's blogs. Reading about the programs other people were in was interesting, and also helped me to find students that were interested in similar areas, and also were enrolled in similar programs to me. The five blogs that I commented on and also enjoyed reading were:


1. Shannon
2. Rheon
3. Julie 
4. Pauline 
5. Erin


Being in ALES 204 was an experience that has helped me to understand more about social media, and how to use it in a professional setting. While some portions were more useful than others, I think overall the course was informative, and has helped me to think of social media as more than just a way to waste time. It has been a great semester of learning new professional tools, and social media techniques.