Final Project in Review

What a wild ride this Spring semester has been! It has been a lot of hard work but it was also fun. For the English 211 course, the group projects in particular had to have been the most fun. I feel like the first group project assignment really helped to lay the groundwork for what was ultimately expected to be the final project. This was really helpful, and I believe it really allowed everyone to get into the rhythm of communicating and working effectively.

Our final project focuses on the music content sharing site SoundCloud.

For the final project my team decided to explore a different form of social media and marketing than most people realize, which was the SoundCloud music hosting and sharing platform. SoundCloud allows users to create an account, create audio content (such as podcasts or music tracks/albums), and then host and share such content on SoundCloud and with other SoundCloud users.

This premise was very interesting to our group because it is something that we have seen many aspiring artists use but never really considered that it was a form of social media before taking this course.

Our completed SoundCloud module.

There were four overall parts to our module (Starting Materials, Discussion, Quiz, and Assignment) and four of us, so everyone took one part to work on. We followed an auction format to picking what portion of the module each person wanted to do. This was a great way to democratically divide the tasks for the module and something I advice others to do if they can.

The audience we were considering when creating the module was that of aspiring music artists that were needed a free way to distribute their content. This would not only benefit the artists themselves who gain multitudes of fans, but also the music scene as well which gains a refreshed flow of ideas.

When creating the module the introductory material to Canvas was very helpful. Using these materials we were able to create the foundations for each assignment, which would later be fleshed out after some research.

A lot of our content for the assignments were based off of the modules we had gone through over the duration of the course. This not only helped with the brainstorming process, but it also makes the module seem more natural if it were included with the others.

In conclusion, this had to have been one of the funnest final projects I have completed at DACC. It was great being able to collaborate with other students and build a module that we were proud of. And of course, I want to thank my team for being so hard-working and easy to work with. You guys were awesome!

I hope everyone reading this good luck on their finals and has a great summer!

My Time at DACC in Retrospect

After a total of 5 semesters, my time at Dona Ana Community College is coming to an end. Sure it had its ups and downs (missing important deadlines) but in retrospect it has been one of the most developmental stages of my life.

 

I started at DACC in the Spring of 2014 after taking a semester off of school to decompress and work. Since then, I have joined the Debug Computer Club, was an intern for the computer support staff at the East Mesa campus, and was able to very much network professionally.

What are my Plans for the Future?

Well I’m currently in the middle of the admission process at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). I plan to enter the College of Engineering for a degree in Computer Science. I also hope to get a job or internship from within the engineering department so I can better grow my skills in the field.

After getting my Bachelor’s I plan on staying at UTEP for a Master’s degree in Software Engineering while also working. This would greatly improve the types of jobs I’ll be able to get in the future. Ideally I would want to stay in the El Paso and Las Cruces area, so I’m hoping these degrees will allow me to do that while also having a well paid job.

Would I Recommend Community College?

I would definitely advise anyone reading this to start out at a community college that has easily transferrable credits. Community college is drastically cheaper per class (DACC gives you any classes after 12 credit hours free).

Also, it’s a great way to get back into the school process, especially if you had taken a certain time off of school like me. This way you get somewhat of a breather so you don’t become one of those people that gets overwhelmed and burned out.

Finally, most community college courses have a max of around 24 people. This student-to-teacher ratio allows you to have any questions that you may have answered, which is practically unheard of when you’re in a lecture hall with hundreds of other people.  

In Conclusion

In conclusion, it was quite the pleasure attending DACC for the time I was able to. Each semester I met new and interesting people. Whether it be fellow students or even staff, I really feel like I was able to connect with people that I may not have had the chance to meet otherwise

I honestly believe that attending DACC was one of the best decisions I could have made. Especially coming out of a period of my life where I had just recently graduated high school. I had no real direction. I mean, I was working part time but I was still pretty inconsistent in what I exactly wanted to do with my life.

DACC allowed me to fully realize that I wanted to be in web development and really helped me grow as an individual. I know believe that I have the toolset that I need to not only be a better person but also be an effective university student.

I can’t wait for the future, and I hope each and every one of you can’t either.

Stay safe, have fun, and always learn.

The Exhilarating Stress of Finals

Alright everyone, we’re nearing the end of the Spring semester and I’m sure you know what that means...

FINALS IS ALMOST UPON US!!

I know most of you must be shuddering at the mere idea of finals. For pretty much every class you take in college finals can literally make or break your final grade. It is a culmination of all that you have learned from throughout the semester, so of course it would have a weight of 50% or more in determining your overall grade for the course.

I’m guessing for most people taking multiple classes this semester that this has to be one of the most stressful times of the year. I, on the other hand, think it is one of the most exhilarating.

Say what?!?!

You heard that right! I think that finals week is one of the best weeks of the year for a couple of reasons:

1. You never have any downtime. If you’re doing it right, 100% of your free time will be devoted to your course finals. This means that even if you wanted to be bored you aren’t able to if you want to have a good grade in that class. This completely eliminates that boredom that you might have found yourself throughout your semester and is almost like a time capsule, teleporting your two weeks in the future.
2. Finals bring about a real sense of accomplishment. Even if you’re in that group of people that dreads finals week you have to admit that everything is worth it once you feel that sense of accomplishment that it brings. Being able to complete especially large final exams or projects really makes you feel like you’re doing something right and moving in the right directly not only as a student but as a functional member of society.
3. The knowledge that after finals there is a vacation break. Realistically speaking, finals week is really just the final barrier that you as a student need to cross before reaching the bliss that is either Summer or Winter break.
4. If this is your final semester at DACC, you may be looking forward to transferring to a 4 year university. This has to be one of the most exciting things for me. The Spring 2016 semester will be my final one at DACC. After which, I’m planning on transferring to UTEP for a degree in Computer Science. I believe that being able to handle the stress of school while attending DACC has made me a more well equipped student and individual, which will undoubtedly help me when getting my Bachelor’s degree.

Remember we’re almost done!

Don't let this be you! You can do it!

In conclusion, make sure that you take finals in stride. Keep in front of your mind that the semester is almost over. You have the entire summer break in front of you where you can lounge around doing nothing and not have to feel guilty about it. You would have any school-related deadlines that could ruin your GPA if they were missed. Most importantly, remember that you won’t have to take finals for another 7 months.
 

You can do it!

#Unexpected: How Trying to Gain Followers Ended in a Surprising Twist

Well, it’s been a week since the beginning of what I like to call the #TwitterFollowerChallenge, and the results are in! This week has really pushed the boundaries of what social media is exactly and to what extent it can be utilized.

A Newfound Appreciation for #SocialMediaGurus

I now have a better understanding of the job duties that someone who is a Social Media Specialist for a company has. Not only do they have to constantly be engaging with users and customers, but they also have to create innovative ways to push the brand and brand loyalty. We’ve seen this done with the livestreaming option on Facebook.

Along with this, holding various giveaways that require users to share the status are a great way to increase involvement while also using your consumer base to recruit others that may not have known about your brand in the first place. This type of work ethic is both very admirable and astonishing.

#SocialMediasStrategy101

First, let’s take a look at what my main strategies were and what I learned from trying to gain Twitter followers:

1. Most important: Double-check your #Privacy settings. I was pretty embarrassed to realize that my first couple of tweets were published when my account was still set to private. This meant that all of my hashtags were made in vain as the only people that could read my tweets were existing followers.
2. Always try to incorporate popular hashtags in posts. This included the hashtags #NationalSiblingsDay and #NationalWalkingDay.
3. Try to post during the peak hours of the day. This seems like common sense, but far too often I see people posting updates either late at night or very early in the morning. Most of the time, the peak users in your region will be checking their social media throughout the work day. I know I personally do this.
4. Retweet popular accounts that write about important events. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to important events or hashtags. Instead, spread the message of someone with a larger following. Who knows, maybe their followers will start following you.

#DidThatJustHappen??

My original follower count. Notice the lock icon indicating my account is private.

My Updated Follower Count

Okay, so I actually technically gained two new unique followers from the beginning of the challenge. Unfortunately, I also lost more than gained, actually accruing a -1 follower count, which probably means I won’t win any of those #AwesomePoints.

I’m pretty sure that this must have been an anomaly and nothing directly related to my above strategies. Follower numbers are always going to fluctuate, and this fluctuation gets more noticeable the more followers you have.

The #SilverLining

I have come to the conclusion that losing followers is probably a really good thing for me. It was because of this that I decided to check the amount of followers I had and who exactly I was following.

I realized that a majority of the people that I’m following and even more of my followers I don’t actually know in person. There were mostly random people from around the world that I theorize are just spam account bots that follow anyone and everyone on Twitter. Since that realization I have been periodically blocking these spam accounts in order to make my profile more secure. I suggest that anyone reading this do the same, you can never be too safe when it comes to social media.

Read my previous blog on @Blogger for a discussion of the importance that secure social plays in your professional life and make sure to follow me on Twitter @b700dyr34pr.

#Restart: Why Social Media can Backfire on your Professional Image

Straight up #honesty

Let’s face it. Your social media profiles in recent years have become the biggest windows into how you are as a person. And even if they’re not supposed to, employers will definitely scout your social media pages to find more information. This means that every post you’ve publicly made would be fair game.

It was after thinking about this that I realized all the stupid, naive things I’ve shared ever since creating my social media accounts 7+ years ago.

Realistically speaking, seven years ago I was an entirely different person than I am now. I was:

• A fourteen year old freshmen in high school. Let’s be honest, every fourteen year old freshmen in high school is very immature. They make bad jokes along with having crude senses of humor, and in general are pretty hard to be around if you’re not on the same immaturity scale as they are. I was that kind of freshmen.
• A huge #gamer. Practically all I would do back in those days was game from the moment I got home to the time I went to sleep. I hardly game nowadays. If I do, it’ll only be an hour or two a week at the most.
• Very #sociallyawkward. I didn’t really know how to talk to people. I mean, I could at least convey useful information, but it was in a really blunt way. Far from professional. Over the years and with the help of working in retail and customer service positions I’ve really been able to come out of my shell and be more personable.
• Really big into things like rage comics and #manga. Not to take away from these interesting subcultures, but it kind of isolates the amount of things that you can talk about with other people. I still have the manga books that I used to collect, but I haven’t opened them in years. I’m still trying to find a way that I can sell or even donate them, maybe to a local library perhaps?

These are only a handful of things that I can remember from that time period. I’m sure there are other things that I was interested in that further polarized myself from normal society.

The Need for #professionalism

It wasn’t until I started working in more professional positions that I realized this kind of behavior needed to change. Not only did I need to grow more mature personally, but I also knew that my social networking accounts needed to mature accordingly.

In what I like to call #thegreatpurge of 2015, I set about sanitizing all of my social networks of inappropriate content, whether it be photos or news shared to public conversations with other people.

Tweet Delete is a great tool for getting rid of your old tweets.

I also used great third party tools like #tweetdelete ( http://www.tweetdelete.net/ ), which like the name implies, allows you to mass delete all of your tweets. All of my two thousand or so tweets perished in the purge. I now literally only have the five tweets needed for this class.

#Conclusion

Even if it seems like a big step to sanitize your social networks in the way I did, it’s more than worth it. Your public identity is by far the most important one you have in today’s society, so it only makes sense to go the extra mile to ensure that it’s as good as possible. Even by setting your accounts to private is better than having them out in the open for everyone to see because it doesn’t show all of your posts unless your friends with someone. I hope you take this into consideration, and happy #tweeting!

Facebook: A Refined Social Experience

Throughout the history of the growth of technology there have been many innovations. These innovations disrupt the status quo, often times knocking out the forerunners of the field. We’ve seen this many times with businesses like Microsoft dominating home personal computing and Apple dominating both the MP3 player and smartphone arenas.

Humble Beginnings

Most recently this has been seen in the social networking world. It started with the early online community godfathers like Geocities (which is still surprisingly active in Japan!), which focused more on connecting people together with chatrooms or by linking email addresses.

The Era of Myspace

This style of community didn’t really change until the release of Myspace (www.myspace.com), which in itself disrupted the status quo somewhat. With Myspace you were able to make an extensively personalized profile, and by extensive, I mean extensive. You were able to change the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) of your page, which dictates things like background colors, various images, etc. While this was very fun to do at the time, it simply was too overwhelming for new users of the site. There were people (myself included) that didn’t know how to code and just opted to have a plain-looking profile page.

A Social Networking Powerhouse

While Myspace was a very successful venture into the world of social networking, it was too complex and non-accessible for some people. You could say that it didn’t have a fully polished experience in order to continue growing a user base and retain that user base.

The introduction of Facebook really catapulted social networking into a social phenomena. Instead of being as extensively customizable as Myspace, it allowed just enough customization. Users were able to upload profile pictures, add favorite movies and videos, and follow the pages of people and ideas that were important to them.

Facebook’s ease-of-use also allows anyone and everyone to create a profile and connect with the people that they know. All that is required to create an account is basic information like an email address, phone number, date of birth, etc.

In conclusion, with over 1.59 billion users to date, Facebook’s only trajectory is to get bigger and bigger. Along with this, Facebook is constantly creating new features in order to stay on top of the social networking pile.

A Comparison of Facebook to LinkedIn

For my comparison table I chose to compare Facebook with the professional-oriented social network LinkedIn. I chose to do this mainly because as I’ve started using LinkedIn in order to better network professionally it quickly became apparent that were some very large differences between the two social networks. It was this initial stark contrast of niches between the two services that really intrigues me to find more differences and similarities between them.

Facebook		LinkedIn
Facebook is meant to be a social network for anyone and everyone. User age ranges from 13 to 70+ years old.	Target Audience	LinkedIn is definitely more geared towards industry professionals that are trying to make important networking connections.
Users can add profile and timeline photos, along with a featured photo gallery. Users can also add different interests (favorite movies, music, etc.).	Customization	Users can add profile pictures. Customization is directed more to adding relevant information for job opportunities (skills, past job experience, education, etc.).
1.59 billion registered users.	Number of Users	Over 400 million registered users.
Available through Android Play Store, Apple App Store, Windows Phone Store.	Availability	Available through Android Play Store, Apple App Store, Windows Phone Store.

References

http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/27/facebook-earnings-q4-2015/

http://blog.linkedin.com/2015/10/29/400-million-members/

Spring Break 2016

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone had a great and safe Spring Break. It’s definitely good to be back to the grindstone and being productive. I unfortunately wasn’t able to do any traveling for the duration of the break, mostly in part to having to go to work.

If I were to summarize my Spring break into one word that word would be reconnection. II was able to see and spend time with relatives that I haven’t been able to in the past, either because I was busy with school or work or they weren’t in town.

First of all,  my grandparents who usually come to El Paso around once every couple of years were actually in town!

A big part of why I’m so grateful to be able to see my grandparents this year was that I’ve realized that the older I become the more I wanted to get to know them. Unfortunately I feel that when I was younger I honestly never cared about getting to know any of my family members.

Family gatherings were simply a place to have some food while my parents talked to everyone. The younger I was the more disconnected I felt, especially with the older members of my family (especially my grandparents). There was no middle-ground. They never really understood the things people from my generation liked in just the same way that I didn’t understand things liked by their generation.

Thankfully, the older I became the more I began realizing that they were human too, which definitely made it easier to relate to everyone. This most recent family gathering was by far the easiest. It was awesome to me to be able to actually ask them meaningful questions, like how it was like when they were growing up or when they were working. I also was able to receive hilarious life advice from my grandfather, who is just as rambunctious as he’s ever been.

My Awesome Grandparents

The other person that I was able to see over Spring Break was my dad. He transferred to Arizona about a year and a half ago for work so we haven’t really been able to see him. Luckily he took a week of vacation time which perfectly coincided with our break.

We were able to hang out and catch up, play family board games, and even do mini projects to fix the house, which included painting some rooms. He’s set to retire in August so I can’t wait to be able to spend time like this in the future.

All in all, I’d say that this Spring Break was one of the best. I’ve learned that with major breaks from school like this you don’t necessarily have to go far to find a vacation. All is needed is that you’re with the people that you love and care about.