Tweeting for school?

Hello!
I am Andrea Aponte and I am a Sophomore at beautiful Stockton University. I am pursuing a degree in Communications and I hope to work in the music or health & beauty industries. I am not 100 percent certain on what I want to do in my profession but I am interested in a lot of different industries. In my free time I like to go adventuring with friends, volunteering at animal shelters, and doing creative things like photography, painting, and graphic design. I have two adorable dogs that mean the world to me, Max and Cleo (pictured on the right). Animals mean a lot to me and one of my plans after graduating is working with a non-profit organization that rescues animals.   
      

After reading chapter one of lol...OMG! by Matt Ivester I gained a better understanding of how the internet can impact my life socially and professionally. "The mistakes that students make today, now easily searchable and immediately accessible, might actually haunt them forever" (Ivester, p.2). This quote helped explain that everything that you post of the internet is archived and can be dug up in the future. Chapter one, College in the Digital Age, is about how the internet is only 20 years old and it is still growing and evolving just like college students. Ivester talks about how college is the time to make mistakes and learn but at the same time those mistakes could have a drastic impact on your future if you aren't careful on the internet. This chapter is an introduction in how the book will help students think before posting. While reading chapter one,  it made me think about how long I have been using social media and if I had regrets about any posts. I never thought about having my worked archived after deleting it and since I started using the internet at a young age, of course I have made childish mistakes. Hopefully after reading more of the book I will learn how to avoid making mistakes that could harm my career. 

On another note, I found an educational blog about Twitter and building a PLN (Personal/Professional Learning Network), it is called Build a powerful PLN. The author is Steve Wheeler an Associate Professor of learning technology in the Plymouth Institute of Education at Plymouth University. Wheeler explains that developing a PLN helps you grow and learn in your profession. The people you follow can be incredibly helpful in developing your network "These are people I have selected to follow because they are saying things, or sharing content that interests me, and from which I can learn, contributing to my personal and professional development" (Wheeler, para.2). Wheeler also lists off other apps that can help grow your PLN like, Diigo and  Slideshare. PLN is important for young adults starting their careers because it can lead to opportunities like interviews.  I really enjoyed this blog because it was very insightful and gave me tips that I never would have thought of. 

Student Blogs: Learning to Write in Digital Spaces is another blog I found that helps with writing blogs. The post provides a guide on what to think of while writing and how to execute it. The writer of Student Blogs shared a checklist for the writers they teach.  The author is very engaging in their writing, making sure to point out key points and it's absolutely perfect for newbie bloggers. The tips to "translate" and "transform" your writing are useful from converting essay writing into easy digital text. Translating takes your traditional writing and puts it through a process to fit it into a multimedia platform. Transforming means making your writing available to a global audience and adding multimedia like images, video, and audio. "There has to be an understanding that the goal is to keeping moving, tweaking, growing, amplifying" (Tolisano, para.10). I loved this quote because it doesn't just apply to writing blogs, it can also be applied to daily life. This blog was incredibly helpful because I have never written a blog before this one, so as I read the article I looked back at my work to improve it. 

Twitter-It's Not Just What's For Breakfast...  is a blog that explains Twitter and how it's beneficial in an educational setting. The blogger started off providing videos that broke down Twitter in a simpler way. Then they link to other blogs and articles about Twitter misconceptions, how Twitter can make you a better writer, how it can save you time, and other tools that can help you with Twitter. The best link this blog provided, in my opinion, was the "How Twitter makes you a better writer". Twitter forces you to exercise your vocabulary, your editing skills, and forces you to be concise. The misconceptions link is a good read for newbies because it can help comfort those who feel like they can't tweet over small things. I have never tweeted that much before because I feel like I don't have much to say but this blog helped me feel comfortable in what I would tweet. The other links were giving me difficulties and wouldn't load or there was a 404 error. But the blog provided good information for beginners on social media.