Final Week: Course Review

   

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/having-fun/201602/thinking-the-fun-it

Coming into this class I wasn’t too sure what to expect and I had no idea what I would be learning. The only thing that was concrete was the name “Collaborating in Online Communities.” I thought we were most likely going to focus solely on social media but I quickly realized that collaboration happens everywhere. Collaboration has been incorporated into our lives from the beginning of evolution and has only evolved with the time becoming its recent form of digital collaboration. Throughout my time in this course I have seen improvements of my collaboration efforts but more importantly I have become aware that it’s honestly everywhere. 

     Reflecting on my own personal terms of growth, I have seen that I have become extremely interested in the topic. I have always been politically driven and in a sort an activist and I noticed how much more there is to it. For example when I wrote #BlackLivesMatter I was astonished by how the internet played such a large role in the development of the movement. Many of us use social media for fun but for others it's the only way to voice their opinion. How crazy is that? To me Black Twitter has become a phenomena due to the fact that a group of strangers can make sure an impact together through a screen alone. This topic is definitely not an easy one to discuss but I will never agree with my classmate's blog about the matter. Sure it happens to many but this community is hurting because their people are being shot without remorse. This class allowed me to educate myself even further into the movement and allowed me to grow to understand the real issues facing us today. 

     On a more lighter I have also realized that it has a lot to do with my future career plans of becoming a social media strategist. To be successful in this field I must learn to understand different groups and what unities them.With the readings that were assigned I saw the importance of groups and collaboration in the media, therefore being able to incorporate my own learning into my future profession. My blog Collaborating in Online Communities will always serve as a reminder of the true meaning behind collaborating and the different types. Though to many it may be useless information, I believe it tells me a lot about what my future will want and need.

     Though I want to be a social media strategist, I too am a social media user, which also makes me a collaborator in this huge web. I never realized how much we were affected by our own filter bubble and algorithms, as one of my classmates explains in her blog. As a learner I learned the negative consequences from these tools. (Check out my classmate's blog on how social media made the 2016 presidential election a nightmare or my blog on how it suffered from this!) And as a collaborator I realized the impact I was making and the impact I could make in the future.

     In the past couple of years social media has dominated the industry and with its continuous growth will continue to grow. Before this course, I solely saw social media and the web in one perspective  but now I see all the endless possibilities it provides to the world of collaboration. Whether you realize your friends aren't truly your friends (check out my blog discussing the matter: Are Online Friends Real Friends) or that you can use this knowledge to your advantage, online communities have changed the entire game and only open the doors to new ideas in a faster and easier way.

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-friends.html