Blog 1: About Me

Hello, My name is Matthew Santino. I am from Manalapan New Jersey. I was recently undecided in my major, but I think I will pursue communications. I hope to use this to help me work in advertising, journalism, or the TV/movie industry one day, however I haven’t decided quite yet. I am new to the blogging community, and hope to learn more useful technological tools as well in my future. I took exploring my digital portfolio to do so.

     After reading our first assignment Chapter 6, Building Your Connected Learning Community I learned many helpful tools to help me start my digital image. Networking is very beneficial and helps us bring ideas together. Collaborating improves our ideas by building stronger communities and reaches out to other with similar interests, which may be beneficiary to whatever line of work you are in. Also, going along with reaching out to new individuals, it is important to know the key question: can they be trusted? For example, it may be helpful doing a small background check on them by seeing if their tweets are of value, or if they are using a real name or not. Once you start building your community, your members might have various roles such as a community leader, organizer, greeter, or just a regular participant. The members should figure out what role suits them, which then helps with the task of finding new members who share similar interests.  One quote I chose that was very interesting was, “Technology is a great tool for connecting folks and providing powerful spaces for meaningful global collaboration. However, learning transforms us and our students not the tools.” (Pg. 107) I selected this quote because it truly relates to the general theme of this chapter. Overall, we must continuously nurture the network we plan to build, and evolve from our ideas.

     Finally, The first article I chose from LiveBinder was titled “How to get followers: building a foundation”, by: Steven Hughes under the Twitter section. Steven gave many helpful piece of advice when first starting out on Twitter. For example, having an appropriate picture so people know who we are, as well as a short bio giving a little bit of information about ourselves. This makes us more searchable. It is also crucial to be active and consistent at least tweeting 8-10 timed a day, and if in conversation with someone on the website don’t wait too long to respond. Another helpful tip is that you want to follow people who follow people, because its more likely for a follow back. The best piece of advice I took from this was following 100 people a day in the beginning, and from that unfollow users not interested in following you back. People with similar interests tend to be a better source to stick with, because you can share things you have in common. Next, also under the Twitter selection I read the blog “100 perfect Twitter accounts for teachers”. The list was made for educators to expand their knowledge, and get tons of useful information regarding whatever subject they wanted to follow. The creators of this blog add twitter accounts to their list continuously. I checked out some of these accounts and was amazed to see such a vase amount of different information of various topics. For example, I checked out Lillie Marshal or @WorldLillie on twitter. She is a 6-foot tall teacher, traveler, and blogger. Her Twitter is art from all over the world, along with plans to make teaching more fun. She seems very adventurous and well educated, and her 19 thousand followers probably think so as well. Lastly, The final article I chose was titled “10 blogging blunders to avoid” by Emily Hill. She gives many useful tis on how to develop and maintain a well-designed blog. Spelling and grammar must be always looked over.  Well-written content will have readers coming back. The more mistakes a blog has, the less understandable it will be. Visual content is also a hug bonus, and gives the blog another dimension. It is better to have a visual representation so the reader has a better concept on what point is being made. Always keep your blog interesting and appealing. Clear fonts and color is a must, and it shouldn’t be difficult to the reader to see what you have to say. Keep the blog appealing to the eye. When all this is followed, promote the blog you put so much effort into! Having a social media, as well as engaging with comments who might be potential clients one day is a huge deal. Promote the blog on Twitter and Facebook and reach out to those with similar ideas. The hard work is worth it in the long run, and by following these steps your blog will surely succeed.