EDCI 338 JS

Blog#1

January 19, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Hello Everyone!

My name is Justin Scott, I am from Vancouver BC and am currently a 4th year student in the business program at UVIC. Before I came to UVIC, I attended Saint Georges school in Vancouver for my high school education.

After my time in High School I decided to take a gap year to pursue playing hockey. My whole life my passion has always been hockey which has made me move and live in many different places such as Nanaimo, Merritt, Revelstoke, Melville, Humbolt and Parksville which has provided me a very unique experience of getting to live in a plethora of different places.

Personalized Learning: 

Personalized learning has been a big impact for me, growing up I have always had a problem with my working memory making it sometimes hard for me to remember everything a teacher says within a given class. But having media outlets such as Kahn Academy for my math classes that have a wide variety of videos and ways to learn that are not just in the class space.

Digital Literacie:

With Digital Literacy, it has become an essential skill for everyone to have, there is so much fake and un credible news outlets today that I believe it is now essential. Being able to assess credible sources, navigate the internet effectively, and communicate professionally online are skills everyone needs to know whether it be in Academics, in the workplace, or even just in everyday life.

Social Media and Its Role in Education:

Social media has changed how everyone can connect with one another, from News to Funny Clips you can see everything on the internet and social media.

In terms of educational content, Social Media platforms such as X, TikTok, and Instagram are amazing for spreading information such as study tips and career advice from experts in whatever field you are in. Another way social media can enhance education is by giving people a place to collaborate on ideas, create interactive discussions and share resources.

But not all is good when it comes to social media and learning. Misinformation, privacy concerns, and just the sheer distraction of all the apps. All these topics have their own challenges related to them:

Misinformation – Is everywhere, Information whether it be true or not spreads like wildfire on the internet, so you need to be careful of what you hear and not always take it straight for facts

Privacy concerns – Privacy is something you and companies always need to be thinking about when on the internet from people trying to scam or misguide you to people straight up hacking into your information.

Distractions – This is the biggest one for most people, social media is something most of us use every single day, and when you do something every day it becomes a habit the mixes with a big problem in our generation of procrastination.

There are certain aspects of it you need to be wary of but overall, I believe that Social media Can be a great asset and tool to both students and professors in an academic environment when used in the right way.

image showing person walking in pre-painted footprints
Photo by Flickr user jfchenier under CC license: BY-NC 2.0

Welcome and Introduction

May 2, 2020 /

Before proceeding with this first blog post, we expect you to consider your privacy preferences carefully and that you have considered the following options:

  1. Do you want to be online vs. offline?
  2. Do you want to use your name (or part thereof) vs. a pseudonym (e.g., West Coast Teacher)?
  3. Do you want to have your blog public vs. private? (Note, you can set individual blog posts private or password protected or have an entire blog set to private)
  4. Have you considered whether you are posting within or outside of Canada? This blog on opened.ca is hosted within Canada. That said, any public blog posts can have its content aggregated/curated onto social networks outside of Canada.

First tasks you might explore with your new blog:

  • Go into its admin panel found by adding /wp-admin at the end of your blog’s URL
  • Add new category or tags to organize your blog posts – found under “Posts” (but do not remove the pre-existing “edci338” category).
  • See if your blog posts are appearing on the course website (you must have the the edci338 category assigned to a post first and have provided your instructor with your blog URL)
  • Add pages, if you like.
  • Include hyperlinks in your posts (select text and click on the link icon in the post toolbar)
  • Embed images or set featured images and embed video in blog posts and pages (can be your own media or that found on the internet, but consider free or creative commons licensed works). To embed a YouTube video, simply paste the URL on its own line.
  • Under Dashboard/Appearance,
    • Select your preferred website theme and customize to your preferences (New title, new header image, etc.)
    • Customize menus & navigation
    • Use widgets to customize blog content and features
  • Delete this starter post (or switch it to draft status if you want to keep it for reference)

Do consider creating categories for each course that you take should you wish to document your learning (or from professional learning activities outside of formal courses). Keep note, however, that you may wish to rename the label of the course category in menus (e.g., as we did where it shows “Social Media & PL” as the label for the “edci338” category menu.  This will enable readers not familiar with university course numbers to understand what to expect in the contents.

Lastly, as always, be aware of the FIPPA as it relates to privacy and share only those names/images that you have consent to use or are otherwise public figures. When in doubt, ask us.

Please also review the resources from our course website for getting started with blogging:

University of Victoria
Photo by Flickr user serdarkaya under CC license: BY-NC-ND 2.0

Test Social Media Post

May 2, 2020 /

This post  will appear in a few places:

  1. in the blog feed on the front of your website
  2. in the Learning Design menu on your website. This is because we have applied the “edci338” category to this post and the menu item “Social Media & Personalized Learning” has been created from the category “edci338.” For every post you make for this course, please assign the “edci338” category to it. You are welcome to use this blog for your personal hobbies or for other courses, in which case, you could create additional menu items and categories for them.
  3. if you give permission, your posts categorized “edci338” will be aggregated onto the Blog Feed on the EDCI 338 Course Website.

Feel free to delete this post once you understand this. If you have any questions, please reach out to your instructor.

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