Facebook Learning Blog

“Today, everything is about Social Media. Some industry gurus claim that if you do not participate in Facebook, YouTube, and Second Life, you are not part of cyberspace anymore. Social Media allow firms to engage in timely and direct end-consumer contact at relatively low cost and higher levels of efficiency than can be achieved with more traditional communication tools. This makes Social Media not only relevant for large multinational firms, but also for small and medium sized companies, and even nonprofit and governmental agencies. Using Social Media is not an easy task and may require new ways of thinking, but the potential gains are far from being negligible”( Haenlein, p. 67).

 

Since the learning environment I am creating will also be part of a larger networking and marketing website for my farm, social media outlets will be the most crucial part of my business plan. Linking my Facebook page to my website and blog will cover the primary digital bases of basic modern networking. Creating a discussion forum within my website – also accessible through the Facebook page – will allow users/learners to communicate together as part of a digital network that could prove to be the most educational part of this model. Trial and error – for long time sustainable farmers and newbies alike – can be the most educational experiences that people can share and learn from each other.

As far as Facebook is concerned, I will maintain my farm page myself. Ultimately, my goal is to add as many sustainable agriculture websites, educational resources, and eye-catching humorous farm-related memes that people who have “like” my page are likely to share (thereby promoting my page even more through Facebook). I think it will be important to add new content to my Facebook regularly (if not daily), in order to keep my audience engaged in some way and build my audience/customer base.

M3 Blog Multimedia for Multimodal Learners

This has been a very busy and educational week in both my life and my course assignments. Due to the fact that I am working toward merging the “lateral” J learning taking place on a personal level with the emerging technology tools that we are practicing – it only made sense for me to create a video of the 30’ yurt that my family set up with the help of friends. In creating a farm, and the web-based networking and marketing that needs to be set up along with it, I felt it was important to include my story. The story of what is happening right now in my life, along with the goals that I have for future farm related business ventures and sustainable agriculture community projects.

My audience of self-motivated elearners and fellow farmers can benefit as much as any other group of learners – especially with the accessibility and use of multimedia instructional presentations and videos. Building and farming are two very kinesthetic, hands-on activities (no matter what the specific project or topic). In terms of building a yurt, images, video and personal blogs proved to be more informative than the actual written instruction manual I received from the company that constructed the yurt frame and shell material. Diagrams and photos of actual steps of construction, particularly the finer details, should be made available to their customers. In the very simplistic video I was able to create with Windows Movie Maker, I documented the process of the building project, but do need to add an audio voice over along with text within the still images. In this regard, I am the first to admit that my video was too “cute” and not nearly educational enough – it was more of a documentary than an instructional video.

Using multimedia to engage learners speaks to the multiple intelligences and different learning styles of each individual. I am very impressed with the professionalism and creativity of my classmates’ videos. I am still going through them all, but it is clear that video can be effectively used for any number of topics or subject matter to engage learners and help them understand the material by using a multimodal approach to teaching with multimedia tools.