The journey that occurred during my ALES204 class was very successful and an eye opener to many different forms of social media that I was not previously aware of. The class began with signing up with Twitter which until the ALES class I was familar with Twitter but was skeptical and thought it was pointless. When looking through my class members blog spots I came across Brenda Le's and her post of being a twitter skeptic too, I thoroughly enjoyed her post and left my first comment there. Once I joined Twitter I was thrilled as to the different options and what could be done with Twitter. From following celebrities, my favorite events, and hash tagging it was a great start to the adventure and become involved. I can see myself later in my career using Twitter more professionally so others can follow my business. The class later visited Facebook and how to make your own professional Facebook page which is again great for people to inform the public of their business and post information, sales and information about themselves and their store or company. The ALES class briefly studied Flickr and the different copyright laws you can place on uploaded pictures. Flickr is great because it allows for your pictures to be shared but not necessarily changed or copied by others. All the pictures I uploaded and shared on Flickr I selected the creative commons option allowing for anyone to use my photo as long as I was given credit in the final work.
One of the neatest networks we looked at was Wordle which took any paragraph you wanted and pulled all the important words out arranging them in a unique cloud shape. I find myself using Wordle quite often to see what words it found to be important and then compared to what I thought was important. The ALES204 class looked at Delicious briefly as well as LinkedIn. LinkedIn was very interesting as it is like an online resume that you can create with all your information on previous jobs, information about yourself and interests etc. LinkedIn also allows you to search for people and jobs that may be of interest to you. You can then contact the person and they can look at your profile and maybe decide whether they are interested in meeting with you. 
Screenshot of the word cloud constructed by Wordle of the important components of my final ALES204 blog post. Screenshot taken by Christie Badach on April 11th 2012. Can be seen online at: http://www.wordle.net/delete?index=5132983&d=WBTB
An assignment the class was presented with was editing a stub on Wikipedia which until recently I had no idea that was possible. It was a fun experience as I feel the information I was able to add to my selected stub Gestation Crates for swine will be valuable information for the next reader. I left my second comment on a student’s blogspot that discusses their feelings and difficulty on choosing and adding to a stub to which I agreed to as there were many stubs to choose from but the searchable information was limited. The class also completed practice in writing appropriate e-mails and practicing interviews. Both are very important social aspects to the real world as everyone will go for multiple interviews in their life and the way you speak and present yourself can be the difference between a job-offering and no job. Well written e-mails are also important in order to remain professional and the way you write and convey your ideas need to be in a way that you are in no means inadequate. Social media is a big part of the world’s life, an example of this was the Kony 2012 that recently exploded all over the web. I had never heard of Kony until it was all over Facebook and my friends were sending links to me to join Kony 2012 groups. My third comment was left on Steph Nash's blog spot where she disgusted how quickly the Kony 2012 campaign spread. The spread of Kony 2012 shows exactly how quickly the internet and social media can spread current information in seconds.
My of my favorite posts I found and where I left my fourth comment was on Alyssa Coulombe's blogspot where she discusses social media in the equine world. Being a horse lover and in the equine industry it was very interesting to read the different social medias she is now aware of in the equine industry that she had never noticed before. I found myself in a similar situation and began searching my favorite equine stores, hot spots and businesses on the different social media sites discussed in class and was amazed how many were availble. I made my final comment on Becky Bohlender's post. As she was, I was very uncertain to what the ALES204 class would bring. Being a Communication and Theory class I too thought we would have to make lots of presentations to the class. It turned out to be a great learning experience and was not only about communicating with each other in class but with the world. The few practice presentations we did take part in were in our lab groups meaning a smaller audience and less intimidating. After the ALES class I actually feel more comfortable presenting in front of others. We were given great pointers on how to present yourself and speak during a presentation, as well as making useful and helpful PowerPoint’s to help yourself and your audience. I have learned and enormous amount of new social media information throughout the semester that I know I will surely use in the future!!
