Reflection Post

ALES 204 at the University of Alberta has definitely proven to be my most interesting class this semester! No quizzes, midterms, or final exams?! I definitely enjoyed the participation aspect of this class - the guest speakers did amazing jobs, and we got to keep up with the conversation via Twitter! At first, my friend Marney Steadman and I were skeptical about this class, but it has definitely taught me a lot about the power of social media. All of the Generation Y students who are opposed to the professional use of social media should familiarize themselves with some platforms - because social media is taking over the workforce, whether we like it or not. ALES 204 boldly illustrated that the professional use of Facebook and Twitter (to name the two most popular) will be a part of our lives from here on out. This class should be called ALES 204 - Generation Y. I think it would be quite fitting! In ALES 204, I've learned so much about online communication and social media that I didn't realize before. For example, I never realized there was an actual word for tagging - folksonomy. I was curious about who coined the actual term, so that's what I chose to write about for my self-choice blog post.

 Figure 1: Visual depitction of public speaking

From Jonny Goldstein (2009), Location [digital image]

Retrieved April 7, 2012 from http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2443/3959712312_10e0975e0a.jpg

My favorite part of class was definitely the Twitter participation during lectures, but the Wikipedia assignment definitely taught us  the most valuable lesson. Take everything you see online and analyze it yourself! As students preparing to enter the workforce in the industries of the "Agricultural, Life, and Environmental Sciences" we must learn how to be critical about what we read over the internet. I'm majoring in Nutrition and Food Sciences, which is one area where internet quackery is extremely common. Anyone can claim to be a "nutritionist" without any means of previous education. This causes many individuals to believe false health claims over the internet. Seek professional advice before deciding to go on a diet just because some celebrity told you to online! The only nutrition articles that can be deemed trustworthy are peer-reviewed.

Communication is so widespread today, even our Generation X employers are realizing how they can use social media as a tool "investigate" before they decide to hire someone. So many university students don't realize that their Twitter feed is set to public... or maybe they realize, but simply don't care. It's the first thing that pops up when your name is googled! In order to avoid making a bad first impression on potential employers, users should consider taking off their last name, or better yet - choosing the option of "protecting" your tweets! Save yourself, before a silly tweet causes you to lose a job before you even attend the interview! That would be quite unfortunate. In the lab, we learned how to create a professional Facebook page, which basically served as an online resume. This way, employers see our Facebook page first during a google search, instead of a casual Facebook profile littered with not-so-professional photographs.

Also, does anyone find it humorous that the word "googled" is actually considered a verb nowadays?

Here are some of my comments on other students' blog posts:

• Danielle Lu
• Becky Bohlender
• Brenda Le
• Alyssa Coulombe
• Carmen
• Steph Nash

To conclude, I'd like to say a huge thank-you to Jessica Laccetti and all of the TAs for jumping in to help out while Jess was away! Presenting powerpoints for an entire hour to a lecture hall of students with Twitter at their fingertips would honestly be nerve-wracking, however you all did a great job of keeping us focused. It definitely inspired me to improve on my public speaking skills.

Editing Wikipedia Stubs

The Wikipedia topic I chose to edit was from a topic I've always found interesting - the concept of "superfoods" and what the term truly means in terms of health and nutrition. When I found the stub, it had a total of ten sources, however there wasn't much information about the superfoods themselves, and the study of their properties. I added some information about the controversy behind superfoods and how they are added to many supplements - a tool used more as a marketing strategy than anything, especially in weight-loss pills that line the shelves of health food stores such as GNC and many others. I believe people should be aware of the research done on the supplements they're consuming, in order to spend their hard-earned money wisely. They must educate themselves on what they're fuelling their body with, because misconceptions are very common among health-food products.

It took a bit of trial and error in order to get the hang of using the Wiki mark-up codes. It took me twenty minutes just to figure out how to align a photo to the right side of the screen! However, once I got the hang of the Wikipedia mark-up language, this turned out to be a surprisingly fun assignment! It's also beneficial to include links - blue words that are used to reference to key words, which link to other relevant Wikipedia articles. This helps readers out, especially when they come across words such as "anthocyanins," one of the antioxidants present in blueberries.

I added some information about berries under the header "Potential health effects", and the studies which have been done on them. I also created a section called "Dietary supplementation" which refers to the role of flavonals present in green tea, and how green tea extract is often added to weight-loss supplements. I also added two photos, one of wild blueberries - which are rich in antioxidants compared to cultivated blueberries. The other photo I added was the chemical structure of epigallocatechin gallate, also known as EGCG. This is the flavanol present in green tea which has been the focus of many recent studies.

I took several screen shots of my Wikipedia page becase initally, two of my entire paragraphs got deleted and edited over! My caption under blueberries described the anthocyanins present in wild blueberries, and within one day my caption had been edited by someone else to state that blueberries only contain Vitamin C - which is completely false! I was so frustrated. They also altered some of my paragraph about supplementation. This made me realize how unreliable Wikipedia truly is, because anyone can edit your work and write what they want. I noticed that Jessie's blog post described similar feelings towards Wikipedia, especially when she referred to inaccurate editing, which is especially problematic when a student is trying to learn about a new topic!
Here are some screenshots of my article after I finished editing:

Superfood Wikipedia article screenshot #1 (2012). Taken by Lindsay Gervais [digital image], March 22 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfood

Superfood Wikipedia article screenshot #2 (2012). Taken by Lindsay Gervais [digital image], March 22 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfood

Vander Wal's Model of Attraction

Folksonomy is a term coined by Thomas Vander Wal in 2004. Vander Wal worked with the world wide web, and focused mainly on social media and how it can be put to professional use. The term "Model of Attraction" metaphorically depicts how internet users are interconnected through tagging. By searching a simple keyword, we enter what Vander Wal (2001) describes as a "magnetic field" of information . The vast amount of information available online can be quite overwhelming. It's a huge relief to type in a keyword, and find tons of information about a certain topic, whether I'm doing research for a school assignment or a personal cause!

For example, one of Twitter's upgrades over the years has been the implementation of a search bar. I can simply type in "vegetarian recipes" and suddenly I have access to public Twitter accounts focused on providing vegetarian recipes. I'm also shown a feed of the most popular and recent tweets which mention the words "vegetarian" and "recipes" throughout the 140 characters. The concept of tagging brings people and their information together over the internet. I'm instantly connected with a community of vegetarians - people who are like-minded and have values which are similar to mine!

Figure 1. Vander Wal's technical description of folksonomy

Vander Wal, T. (2007). Dual Folksonomy Triad [image], Retrieved March 5 2012, from http://www.preoccupations.org/2007/10/thomas-vander-w.html

The fact that folksonomy was coined so recently goes to show how the world wide web truly has grown in the past decade! Although the word "tag cloud" doesn't sound very professional, this online form of classification has helped businesses thrive on a global basis. When we used Delicious and Wordle in class, I loved learning how to summarize our class blogs, job advertisements, and even online articles into a mass array of words. The concept of using folksonomies is a bold and effective alternative to traditional categorization - it prevents wasted time, which everyone has experienced countless times while surfing the web (I know it's not only me!). The creation of folksonomies over the internet has linked together almost every form of social media, which will allow us to use various techniques in the professional world. On the left hand side of my blog, I've embedded a Delicious tag cloud and a Twitter feed - one example of how multiple forms of social media are interconnected.

Folksonomies will benefit our generation in the future, especially because Generation Y has been so influenced by technology - honestly, I can't even imagine what life would be like without Facebook now. Many focus on the negative aspects of Facebook, such as how it has become so addicting. However, Corvida's blog post on ReadWriteWeb's online technology blog highlights some of the positive effects that social media has had on our generation. Technology has been ingrained into our lifestyles, and the rate of information flow doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon! As described in Shanelle Mullin's post in Spark Boutik's social marketing blog, Generation Y have essentially become chameleons. We rapidly adapt to changes in social media and technology, to the point where social media advertising techniques must be well thought out in order to catch our attention. Danielle Lu's blog post caught my eye, as she described her first experience with Pecha Kucha in our ALES204 lab earlier this semester. Pecha Kucha is another ideal marketing tool for grabbing the attention of an audience - except this audience just so happens to be in person, not over the web!

Here's an interesting video which describes how tagging has influenced marketing strategies:



Storyworldwide (2011). The Future of Advertising [informational video], Retrieved March 5 2012, from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NyXzir2yKg

References

Vander Wal, T. (2001, March). Model of Attraction (or Information Magnetism). Retrieved March 5 2012, from http://vanderwal.net/essays/moa1.html

Facebook as my Social Media Resume

Facebook was created in 2004, originally founded by Mark Zuckerberg. The website isn't even a decade old and has already attained global status with over 800 million users. Time Magazine named Zuckerberg Person of the Year in 2010.

If that fun fact wasn't enough to convince you that Facebook has changed the world, I'll continue: Everybody has a Facebook account - it's rare to meet someone who hasn't created one. Aunts, uncles, grandmothers, and acquaintances all fall into that dreaded (and usually massive) "friends list." A friend of mine went so far as to create a Facebook profile page for her dog. Facebook is an attractive way to re-create ourselves over the internet as we please through profile pictures, photo albums, and status updates. However, Facebook isn't as materialistic as it appears. The website allows us to keep in constant communication with friends and family worldwide. My aunt, uncle, and cousin all live in the Cayman Islands and we use Facebook to share photos and send messages, because we only get to visit with each other once a year, if we're lucky.

The connections that we create with others through social media are substantial and life-long, or as long as Facebook remains on the web. Today in ALES 204, we learned how to use social media as a professional tool - through the creation of a Facebook page, which is essentially a resume for the public to see. Facebook pages show up when people type a person's name in the Facebook search tab, which may become a tactic for future employers to take an online peek at who they may be hiring. In the future, I hope to pursue a job in the health sector. If I chose to create a Facebook page for my business, it would allow me to advertise to potential clientele for services such as nutritional counselling or personal training. When more people "like" a Facebook Page, it improves the odds of that Facebook Page to appear higher up in the search results.

Figure 1: Screenshot of professional Facebook page

From Lindsay Gervais (2012), Location [digital image]

Retrieved January 24 2012 from http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lindsay-Gervais/334939086538086?sk=info

A company that caught my eye for their effective internet marketing is HolisFit. Located in Kelowna, British Columbia, HolisFit is a small business run by two women who strive to inform others of holistic nutrition, while offering nutritional consulting and personal training. The homepage of their website even includes a blog, which is updated daily to inform their clients about new holistic nutrition information! They also created a HolisFit Facebook Page which allows people to connect with them through social media, with links to their daily blog posts on the "Wall" of their Facebook Page. This is an example of how social media is intertwined and connected - the Facebook page connects to their website, which also contains a blog.

Check out Courtney's blog post about her new Facebook Page! She's another student in our ALES204 interested in pursuing a career specializing in Human Nutrition.

Self-Intro

Hi, I'm Lindsay Gervais and this is my first blog post for my ALES204 "Communication Theory and Practise" class, which should be interesting considering how our world revolves around social media! I'm your average nineteen-year-old with a huge obsession with nutrition, enrolled in my second year at the University of Alberta, majoring in Nutrition and Food Sciences with a Phys Ed minor. I moved to Edmonton from Calgary in September of 2010, solely due to the fact that the UofC lacks a Nutrition program. I'm hoping to transfer into the Nutrition major after this semester, aiming to pursue a career related to sports nutrition, leaning more towards a holistic perspective.

I've always believed that life should be full of balance - I know that sounds cliché, but it's true! In order to fully experience all aspects of life, including travel, cooking, recreation (and many more) we must take care of ourselves first and foremost. Taking care of ourselves requires a combination of proper nutrition and physical activity. With those simple aspects under control, I have noticed that I've become more self-confident, less stressed out (Bikram yoga works wonders), and am generally more satisfied with life. My interest in holistic nutrition stems from our society's obvious dependence on prescription medications, which often mask symptoms as opposed to discovering the root cause of the illness.

Outside of school, I'm currently employed part-time at the gym on campus at the UofA. I love my job, because it has considerably helped to improve my communication skills by spending entire shifts talking to other students who also love to exercise. Complete strangers have become new friends that I always run into on campus and around Edmonton. I'm a huge fan of the great outdoors, and love to spend my summers hiking, boating, and camping. In the past few years, I've even developed an appreciation for the freezing Edmonton air, and its ability to wake me up on my way to school (literally don't even need coffee on those days). Last summer, I ran along the river valley almost every day with my friend Julie, who's also taking ALES204 this semester! In my spare time I also love to snowboard - a perk of living so close to the Rockies my whole life. All of my extra spending money in the winter months seems to go straight towards lift tickets, but it's honestly so worth it to stand up and feel as if I'm on top of the world. Some of my favorite memories come from piling a bunch of friends into a vehicle for a day of nothing but powder.

 Here's a photo from a gorgeous day of spring boarding that I took in May 2011:

Figure 1: Sunshine Village Mountain

Taken by Lindsay Gervais (2011), Location [digital image]

Retrieved January 7 2012 from Lindsay's digital camera

Although social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook are mostly used to keep in touch with friends and family, this class has already helped me to realize that social media is a multi-dimensional force, opening doors in all aspects of life. Even ski resorts such as Sunshine Village and Kimberley have their Twitter accounts to update skiiers on the snow conditions. I don't believe our generation realizes the full impact social media has on us, so hopefully this class helps to open our eyes a bit.