My impression on ALES 204, Fall 2011

This whole semester has been very eye opening. I have always heard from people how your online presence counts nowadays, but I never realized it's full potential until I took ALES 204. At the beginning of this class, I was not sure what to expect-I did not have much knowledge of social media, and had never paid much attention to it before. Throughout the class, I realized the importance of so many things, and I am grateful to the ALES faculty for making this class mandatory. I know that, had it not been mandatory, I would not have taken it because I did not have any interest in social media before. Now however, I use the knowledge and skills that I have learnt in this class everywhere! Be it from addressing professors through emails, to maintaining a professional conversation with someone, or just general behavior, I find that I am slowly incorporating the knowledge gained from this class into my daily life.

Just last Friday, in CAPS, I had a consultation to do, and my client wanted to know how to showcase his personal attributes, and his academic achievements without overflowing his resume. My suggestion; create an Eportfolio for yourself! He already blogs, and he has so many valuable academic presentations and online works that he's done over the years, and I told him that if he created his own website-which I found out you can create from the ualberta apps-he will have a much better chance of letting the employer know more about him prior to the interview.

The above picture is a screen shot of my LinkedIn profile. A couple days ago, i was playing around on my LinkedIn profile, and I stumbled upon this woman who works for the PanAmerican World Health Organization (WHO). She is involved with in restoring proper nutrition levels in impoverished villages in a remote area in South America. I was so excited to have seen her profile, as that is exactly what i want to do as a career. So i sent her a message, and we have been in contact since! She does not communicate very often, but knowing that i know someone who's doing what i hope to do one day, is wonderful.

All in all, this class has been very informative. I have learnt so much about stuff that I thought I knew, but now I see that there is so much more that I don't know, that I need to learn. This goes to show that learning to a continuous process. From Facebook, to Twitter, to LinkedIn, to Flickr, to audioboo usage, I can now say for sure that I am quite knowledgeable about each of those and will have no problem in the future in using any of them. I do believe that this class is going to help me move forward in my career as well as personally. My fellow classmate, Laura shares similar feelings about this class, and her blog can be reached through this link: http://laurasharvest.blogspot.com/2011/12/wrapping-it-all-up.html?showComment=1323243268128#c7662947469000330394. So thank you Dr Laccetti, for proposing such an interesting syllabus, and creating one of the coolest classes i have been in so far. Also, thank you Courtney, who has been an awesome CSL TA who was always there to help me and my fellow CSL students throughout this semester..you guys rock!

A last note about my CSL placement.

When I received the email from Shannon about the CSL component, I was curious as to what it was about, which is why I signed up for it. I am so glad I did, for I learned a lot of valuable life lessons from interacting with members of Voices For Choices. One of the best ways of learning and remembering information is when one gets the opportunity of applying that knowledge in real life. Having the opportunity to do just that in ALES 204 stimulated my desire to learn more and more about social media. I was able to apply my knowledge of using Facebook and twitter professionally-which is what I am currently in charge of. The class where we learned about wiki stubs was especially helpful in my case because I had to create a wiki stub as part of my 20hours with Voices for Choices. Instead of internally complaining about how awful it was, I was actually enjoying myself in writing and creating the stub. Unfortunately, the content was not as per the code of wikipedia, therefore it was rejected. That, however, did not deter me as I am still working on improving the information to make it acceptable as a wiki stub.

The EXTERNAL LINK for my CSL placement is http://www.voicesforchoices.info/ where you can find more information about Voices for Choices.

Being a CSL student, I also had to do the pecha kucha presentation, which I will be presenting in Wednesday's class. Unfortunately, slideshare found my presentation to be too big, and it required an upgrade to be able to upload my presentation through slideshare. Therefore, instead of paying for it, I figured I could take a front view picture of my presentation and attach a link to it if anyone is interested in checking it out: http://prezi.com/exr2dpjgvzxh/voices-for-choices/

Another presentation that I found quite interesting was Wagma Rashid's, another CSL student. Her presentation was about Infolink, and I thought it was very helpful, and in depth, without having too much detail on the slides. Her presentation can be found here: http://wagma8.blogspot.com/2011/11/my-pecha-kucha-about-infolink.html?showComment=1323161292857#c5871028314849717183

On another note, I was so happy when we had the class about google docs; the main reason being that I have worked with it before, and that made me feel very "knowledgeable"--even though I realized after the lecture that there were so much more about google docs that I had no idea of before. My fellow classmate, Michelle Letourneau shares the same thoughts too, and you can find her page through this link: http://michellelet.blogspot.com/2011/12/google-documents.html?showComment=1323162050756#c6133275173225246783

How Facebook and Twitter can be used in a professional setting.

Facebook and twitter, in a professional sector, helps give others an idea of who you are, what you like/dislike, just basic stuff that your friends know about you, and what you want any future employer to find out about you. I was unable to add my Facebook badge onto my blog-I kept on getting an error message every time I tried, which is why I figured I could take a screen shot of my profile, and add the link to my profile if anyone is interested in viewing it.


Below is a link to both my Twitter and Facebook profile pages. Because of some glitch about my blog not having layout options, I was unable to add my Facebook badge and twitter widgets onto my blog. Therefore, I have taken screen shots of my twitter page as well, and provided a link to it. If you would like to find out more about me, please do not hesitate to follow me on @areekatz, or add me on Facebook.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/areekatz
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002957257717&sk=info

The role of facebook and twitter in the professional world.

Facebook and twitter, in a professional sector, helps give others an idea of who you are, what you like/dislike, just basic stuff that your friends know about you, and what you want any future employer to find out about you.

Below is a link to my Twitter and Facebook profile page. If you would like to find out more about me, please do not hesitate to follow me on @areekatz, or add me on facebook through my email aseeras05@gmail.com :)

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/areekatz
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002957257717&sk=info

Podcasting at the UofA

I first heard about podcasting in my Biol 108 class, a few years back. I have to admit, it was very handy when i missed classes, all I had to do was log onto eclass and listen to the professor. I think podcasting is a great thing. The only side effect to that would be low attendance, but the idea is very good. I also agree to what Annalise Young mentioned in our class blog about our Monday class, podcasting is much more informative that listening to music.
On another note, we practiced our interview skills in the lab today, and my partner and I had fun coming up with answers pertaining to our CSL placements. Excellent interview skills are an asset to anyone looking for a job, and the only way to achieve that is through lots and lots of practice. I find that practicing infront of the mirror helps me whenever I have to do a presentation. On that note, CAPS also has great workshops that they provide to students who are looking to get ready for interviews. Anyone interested should contact them :)

CSL component-Voices for Choices

I have started working as the communications person with voices for choices for the past two weeks. It has been a pretty nice experience so far-we had the general meeting September 19th, in the Athabasca Hall, which is a beautiful building. I met Kim Ferguson, who will be my go-to person if I have any question if I have any question or issues with Voices for Choices. I will be in charge of maintaining and updating their Facebook page, as well as their twitter account by tweeting twice a week about various events or following people or organizations that relate to Voices for Choices. I will also be helping out with posters for their upcoming dance party when all the information gets finalized. As a side duty, I will be writing a wiki stub about what Voices for Choices is about, as well as creating a Flickr account. All the people I met so far are pretty nice, and Kim has been very helpful. I have enjoyed learning a lot about the organization, and its pretty amazing to be able to contribute to the work they are doing on campus.

Here is a link to my Flickr account, with a picture of the Voices For Choices poster which is shown above:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/70355847@N06/6387801225/in/photostream

Me; who am I?

Very often we find ourselves asking-who am I? Why do people feel the need to identify themselves with their work-related position during an introduction? Other times, you would find yourself asking, what am I doing with my life? Where am I going? That is not an easy question to answer. People have, over the years, been used to identifying themselves based on what they do. It is so much easier to hide behind the facade of one's position, rather than have to delve within oneself to find out who they really are. Anyway, that was just my thought for the night.

My name is Arisha Seeras. I am currently in my last year in the ALES faculty, with a Nutrition and Food major, and physical activity minor. I was born on an island called Mauritius, and have lived there for about 18 years before settling down in Edmonton, Canada with my family. My academic interests are doing researches in the food microbiology field, as well as studying the relationship between culture and food. I do believe that communications plays a major role in my field. I am very much interested in working in a community where I am faced with a culture different from my own-especially in developing countries-and I do believe that when working in such a community,  knowing how to adapt to the way the people communicate is an important part of making sure that I am able to do my job properly.

I am very much excited to be part of the ALES 204 team, as I believe that the skills that I will learn from this class will help me strengthen my e-portfolio for the future.