ALES 204 and Social Media

It’s so quick that the term is going to end again, and ALES 204 class will be really hard to forget. It has opened an entirely new point of view towards social media for me, and I’m now hoping to use social media more often.

Author Unknown. (2010). Blog World [JPG].
     Retrieved April 13, 2012, from: http://
     langwitches.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/
     2010/06/blog-world.jpg

In the course work, I did a great amount of writing in social media. Even though I did not participate in scientific article assignment like my friend Feiyan did, I learned that it was important to reference properly in social media to keep the writings to be academic. However, the style of writing in social media is very different from a research report, because the audience is the public and the style should not be so serious. For example, the writing in a blog should be like a personal journal that tells the feelings and experiences of the author, or like a conversation that introduces knowledge to a friend. From the dietitians’ blogs I read during the semester, I learned that blogs could be essential on the public health education. Before I knew about these blogs, I thought blogging was only a form of writing diary, and only friends or people who care about me would read the blog posts. But from reading the blogs of Registered Dietitians, I learned that anyone in any field could get great benefits from blogging because it was a form of communication within the field, and health professionals could use them to raise the awareness of healthy facts in public and help eliminate the misunderstanding in health beliefs.

In addition, I gained practical experiences from Community Service Learning component of the class. During our research, we found that not all the resources were well accredited, and we even found two websites that gave exactly the same information, but neither of them had an appropriate reference. Based on these phenomena, it could be seen that the online resources still needed to be regulated for their reliability. Furthermore, from the responses we collected from health care professionals, we learned about their advice for preparing a medical appointment, and those suggestions could also be applied to other types of appointment. For example, the suggestions about writing down the questions before the appointment, researching about the topic before the appointment, and keeping notes during the appointment were all very practical communication skills.

I feel really thankful for ALES 204 class, which has introduced me so much knowledge and technology, and I’m sure that my learning from this class will be used in my future study and career.

Author Unknown. (2011). Communicate [JPG]. Retrieved
     April 13, 2012, from: http://www.studiopinpoint.com/
     wp-content/uploads/2011/03/communicate.jpg

Links to my five comments:

1. Nian Liu’s “Communication…?”

2. Danielle Lu’s “Introductory Post.”

3. Yinglin Huang’s “Introductory Post”

4. Feiyan Zhou’s “Writing a Scientific Article”

5. Xuechan Yang’s “Introductory Post”