Reviewing my progress through UOSM2008, it’s been an interesting journey through a series of online related questions and challenges.
For me, the best way to reflect on my time is to consider how much I’m going to maintain once the course has finished. I’d like to preface this with the following point: I am not currently looking for a job.
Firstly Twitter: My Twitter has undergone a process of cleaning and censorship to the point where now it is wholly appropriate for review by potential employers. I also made the display picture and banner picture the same for both Twitter and Facebook to improve the degree to which I am identifiable between each profile.
That being said, I will not be maintaining Twitter in such a way. Although I won’t be suddenly offensive etc, the discipline I’ve approached Twitter with over the last couple of months has meant that interactions with friends and fellow fans has been limited. This kind of tweeting which is generally only relevant between the two parties is not something I’d engage in while in the pursuit of a job, but at current it seems absolutely fine to use Twitter for this function.
As for Facebook, my behaviour here didn’t change all that much over the course of the, erm, course and hence I’ll maintain the same odd status of interest routine I’ve kept up.
The biggest disappointment I have with the course has been my failure to properly engage with LinkedIn. Partially fuelled by my lack of desire to receive job offers, I just didn’t pay attention to the platform until late into the process which, following quite severe illness, made it impossible to create a credible profile with lots of connections. Although I’m not looking for a job now, I fully understand that when I eventually do need employment having a strong LinkedIn page will make that process all the easier. Hence over Summer I’ll try and grow the page and my connections.
The biggest success of the whole thing has been the creation and maintaining of the blog. I will certainly be keeping up the blog for both personal and academic purposes, especially with the dissertation writing process being something I’d like to document. There have been a number of occasions where if I hadn’t got so much work to I would have blogged on the news from that day or a sporting event and this feels like something I will engage in actively over summer.
In closing I think that through this course I gained a great appreciation into how I should go about creating an online professional profile and although I may not have instigated all of these measures in full, I certainly possess a profile which would aid my employment rather than hinder it. That, as the main aim of the course, must equal success.
georgechiverton 