This blog will be a journal of my exploration of social media applications and their use in the distance learning environment. This is all new to me and somewhat uncomfortable as I am not a social media user beyond the ubiquitous Facebook. My concerns going into this are mostly dealing with privacy or security issue, mainly because most of my professional work involves either restricted information or privacy issues.
I have had some experience recently conducting some work on Zoom recently, and found it easy to work in small groups where the discussion pattern is controlled or follow a routine. If less controlled, the audio of one person overrides other users and the communication get garbled. Also, the user interface is difficult for some users, usually the ones trying to use a smart phone vice a tablet or computer, because the control functions (buttons) are harder to find. It did allow over 40 of us to meet at the end, but it had to be controlled by our host so that all but a few people were muted most of the time. Once there is more users than my screen can display, I found it best to shift to the mode that displays the person speaking rather than shifting windows if the speaker is in the second window.
Your concerns about privacy are echoed by the IT staff at my school. I teach high school and teachers are always finding cool Web 2.0 tools they want to use. Sometimes (probably often) they are irritated when their requests are denied. When this happens, I try to remind myself of their burden-- protecting the online presence of over 1,000 minors.
ReplyDeleteThe use of social media is new to me as well and for the same reasons you voiced, privacy and security issues.
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