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Final Blog Post!

December 11, 2015 in /by

Hey Everyone! I cannot believe that this is our final blog post! Over this semester the idea of Digital Citizenship has drastically changed for me. In our initial Voice Thread assignment I defined Digital Citizenship has how someone carries themselves online. But now I believe that being a Digital Citizenship is way more than that simple definition. Over the semester our various assignments have greatly expanded my knowledge of the online community. To me being a Digital Citizen now is someone who knows how to share and find information regarding things that are important to them. An example of this would be us, the students, that were able to find and share information about our topics. Another way idea that I believe adds on to the Digital Citizen idea is someone who is able to stay connected with what is going on all over the world via social media. An example of this would be when the shootings in Paris occurred the first place to begin showing news about it was social media, through people who were there. One more idea of Digital Citizenship that comes to mind is how to use your online presence to share information that might…

Being a Digital Citizen

November 18, 2015 in /by

Hey Guys! For this week’s blog we needed to connect two works that are associated with digital citizenship. One source was a Tedtalk by Michael Wesch and an article titled Turning Students into Good Digital Citizens by John K. Waters. One things that immediately popped out to me after reading the article and watching the Tedtalk was that both hit on this point of actually ENGAGING in social media outside of normal communication. In the Tedtalk Mr. Wesch talks about how social media is one of the only forms of media that allows for two-way conversations. What he means by that is when TVs first came out the programs were written by the few to be watched by the many; however, with the invention of social media almost everyone can participate online and have a voice to speak their own opinions. In connection with the article it draws a point on how the idea of literacy in the 21st century is going to change from simple reading and writing to having the ability to communicate effectively online. Another aspect of both the article and video that caught my attention was the how sharing information has changed. The article says this interesting point that…

Challenge 5-3 Be Active!

November 10, 2015 in /by

Hey Guys! For our final week of being active I decided to do two things with my twitter account: direct message people that have followed me back and search for more accounts using the recommended section using the accounts that followed me. Quick reminder I have been engaging in accounts that have to do with mental health! So, to get the week started I logged into my account and noticed that some of the people that I followed the week before followed me back. In twitter when someone you follow follows you back it allows you to use this feature called direct messaging. Direct messaging or DMing is useful when people want to reply with something privately instead of a public response, plus you do not have to worry about the 140 character limit in a DM. I also used DMing in the hope that the notification that they had a message was enough to bug them into replying to me. Moreover, The account I decided to DM was Gary Goodridge the fighter that I talked about last week who was suffering from brain injuries due to sports. The message I sent him was regarding the specific injuries he sustained and what…

Challenge 5: Engage PT 2

November 3, 2015 in /by

Hello Everyone! For this weeks challenge we continued in our attempt to engage in social media for our respective topics. My topic as usual has been mental health and instead of just retweeting things I found interesting on my topic I decided to look for people that were doing important work for Mental Health. Here is how that went. For my topic of Mental Health I hopped on the hashtag #mentalhealth and looked at the list of users that would pop up. Here is a picture of the top results. If you look at the picture you can tell that many of the main accounts that are ran for mental health do not have a clear author and are some organization. Since the majority of the accounts on the top list did not have a face to them I was hesitant on sending them a message in fear that I would get something automated. As I continued to search the hashtag however I found a user that was very interesting. When I ran into the account by user @garyhgoodridge, I read his bio and learned that he was an MMA fighter in the UFC and an amateur boxing champion. The…

Challenge 5 – Engage

October 27, 2015 in /by

Hello Everyone! For this weeks challenge in #UNIV349DC we were tasked with instructions to actually engage with other social media users via their respective sites. Since my professors narrowed down the list of sites we could use for this challenge I decided to focus all of my energy on Twitter. For this challenge I also created a new Twitter account @univstudent349 to make sure I keep my school stuff away from my personal stuff. In order to engage in twitter I followed the usual hashtags #mentalhealth and #mentalhealthawareness. During this week I found that #mentalhealth was drawing more congruent results. The following screenshots are of the results that arose with #mentalhealth The first screenshot is of twitter user @Rethink_ which I found was a invaluable resource for those suffering from mental health and specifically thoughts of suicide.I did not really repost anything from them specifically but I did find the resources and links they post to be very helpful when it comes those who need immediate help. The posts that really inspired me as I read the comments because this site really seemed to help those in need. When I say those in need I am referring to those people…

Challenge 4: Lurking PT 2

October 20, 2015 in /by

Hello everybody! For this weeks challenge we continued to lurk on social media that was related to our topic. For this week I continued to lurk on twitter and reddit and remained on the same hashtag and subreddit, checking periodically so see what the sites were up to. This weeks challenge was an extension of last week where we are lurking on various social media sites looking for information on our controversial topics. For the past few weeks I have been able to find valuable insight on my topic of mental health on both twitter and reddit. As I continued to lurk on twitter and reddit I have realized that both kind of have similar helpful communities on them. On both twitter and reddit various users seem to enjoy posting stories of situations of where mental health has affected their lives and how they overcame these situations. Other similarities include users that post their personal stories seeking help from other users. Something that I found wonderful was that on reddit more times than not when a user was posting some sort of cry for help, users would comment on their post words of encouragement or ways that they can overcome their issues. Users…

Challenge 4: Lurking

October 13, 2015 in /by

In terms of social media, the term lurking means to read and look through social media but do not post your own ideas or comments. Lurking is usually looked down upon in most social media communities. But for our assignment this week we were given the task to lurk on various social media sites to discover how the different communities communicate and open up ideas on our topics. For this week again I did my lurking on Twitter. But for my other social media site I decided to explore Reddit a website that I already lurk on. For my lurk through twitter I started with the hashtag #mentalhealth and began exploring the top posters for this hashtag. I would occasionally open up twitter throughout the day on my phone and plug in the hashtag to see which posters would pop up. One of the recurring posters was this twitter account called @MHChat which is an open access community for mental health. On their twitter account they give a link to their actual website mhchat.com which is an open forum that allows people to post their views and experiences. The website also contains links to articles that describe whats going on…

Challenge 3: Social Media Search

October 6, 2015 in /by

One of the most profound inventions created this generation has been the development of social media. Social media allows people to connect on various levels with people all over the world. With these connections the ability to share information is the highest it has ever been. With these week’s assignment we were tasked with searching through social media to find information on our topics. Through the weeks I have narrowed my search from Healthcare to just Mental Health. Lucky for me this week is Mental Health Awareness week and I was able to find many incredible stories and articles about mental health using #mentalhealthweek2015 The first social media site I used was Twitter. On twitter I searched for #mentalhealth with then lead me to the hashtag #mentalhealthweek2015. Using that hashtag it drew me to the most recent posters that were discussing mental health week. Some of the recent posters included celebrities, politicians, athletes, and various doctors. Through the assortment of posters many people were posting personal stories about themselves or others close to them who had suffered mental health problems. Searching through the posts I was able to find a couple dedicated mental health twitter accounts such as @TheWAAMH (The…

Challenge 3: Collect. Healthcare Group

September 29, 2015 in /by

Hey! For this week’s challenge we were prompted to search the internet and databases for peer-reviewed articles. Peer-reviewed articles are published works that have been critiqued and edited by experts in that field. Since these articles have gone through a vigorous publishing period they are more than likely credible. Being a psychology major I have gone through various classes teaching me the proper research methods for psychology. One of the major aspects of these courses was finding legitimate peer-reviewed sources to cite for our research. Using this previous knowledge I was able to quickly find suitable articles for my topic of Mental Healthcare. The first search engine I used was this database called “Proquest”. I used Proquest because they have a useful filter that allows you to narrow your results to only those that have been peer-reviewed. Using this filter and narrowing my search to only articles that contain the phrase “Mental Healthcare”, I was able to reduce my results to a few articles about mental healthcare that had been peer-reviewed. The article I selected was a literature review on how mental practitioners are trained in hospitals in the U.S. The second search engine that I used was google scholar….

Gathering information

September 22, 2015 in /by

As a young member in the academic community it is imperative that students like myself immerse ourselves in the social issues that surround us. At any given time across the U.S their are several social issues that need to be addressed and it is up to my generation and I to educate ourselves in them in order to change them for the better. For this week’s assignment my group and I were tasked with navigating the web in search of credible sources for our topic of HealthCare. As a psychology major I wished to focus more on mental healthcare or the lack there of. While searching for credible sources we needed to make sure the websites passed a “crap test’ in which all of the sources I posted on Google Docs passed. However, as I searched I found that many websites that claim to help you find healthcare information are just bombarded with third party advertisements that make the website look more like a billboard than any respectable medical site. The moment any of these websites opened up to a pop up of some random new pill I knew I needed to leave that site alone. To diversify the kinds of…