Week 15 – My Writing Portfolio Website

An article about my new writing portfolio. Exciting!

Dean Brooks' Blog

A few weeks ago I mentioned how I was working on creating a writing portfolio. Well, today I’m excited to finally share it with you.

Welcome to The Dean Brooks Blog.

It’s been over ten years since I’ve kept a personal blog, though since then I experimented with a number of different online projects. But this site is different than anything I’ve ever done before, and it of course incorporates some of the things we’ve learned in 457.

Firstly, it’s my intention to eventually purchase my first and last name as the .com domain name for my website, just as any author or freelance writer should. I looked it up on GoDaddy and discovered it would cost almost a thousand dollars to do that. I guess that’s the curse of having a commonish type name (Dr. Brooks might be able to relate). But it’s important for me, and for any…

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Reflecting On My Social Media for Social Good Journey

Blog post #(lost track of what number this one is)

Ashley McCoy

When I first started writing this blog, creating my about me page and reflecting on my social media experiences, I had already started making prediction on what the outcomes of this venture would be. I figured I would write a blog post each week with little feedback and my social media experience would continue to be a forced and unkept relationship. I was very skeptical about using Twitter, I had previously had to use this platform in other classes and quickly deleted it after the course ended. I was optimistic about using these different social media platforms for self-improvement and community involvement but I wasn’t sure if I would expand this learning farther than the required four months of this semester. I am happy to report that I was pleasantly surprised by my journey through social media use for social good.

The Stories I Told

In my first blog post I…

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What Jim and Pam Taught Us About Love

I decided to switch things up a bit and talk about some of my favorite tv show characters! (And we all need a little love!)

Natalia, But Online

“When you’re a kid, you assume your parents are soulmates. My kids are gonna be right about that.”

Jim Halpert and Pam Beesley are America’s dream team, there’s no doubt about it. From the very beginning, viewers of the beloved NBC TV show “The Office”, were rooting for the young receptionist and mild mannered paper salesman in Scranton, Pennsylvania to finally come together into the romantic limelight. But what about this duo made us root so hard for them? Was it simply that Jim was such a wonderfully made character that audiences would have been ecstatic to see him paired up with anyone? Or was there something more there, something realistic and hopeful about this pairing that had viewers cheering them on? The Office did a fantastic job of pulling these two characters together, starting with tiny details and moving towards the bigger picture, making this work couple adorable, hilarious…

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A Wedding Story — Mae’s Garage

Hey guys! Sorry I’ve been silent! Hope you enjoy! 🙂 

Brendon could hardly sleep. Within the next 24 hours he would be married to the love of his life. He finally became fed up with being unable to fall asleep, so he swung his legs over the side of the hotel bed and sat up with an exaggerated exhale. He fumbled to find the switch […]

via A Wedding Story — Mae’s Garage

Social Media in Times of Disaster

New Ways to Think about Social Change

Social media has garnered a bad reputation for being distracting, vapid, and harmful to young people. There’s even an entire trend in memes where older generations blame everything on technology and social media, even things way outside the control of Twitter or Facebook.

The reality is that social media does have some negative side effects, especially for young people, but our new(ish) ability to connect and communicate on a massive, global scale is unparalleled in human history. I’ve previously talked about this side of social media in reference to Wendy Davis’s historic filibuster in Texas and the March for Our Lives movement following the Parkland shooting, but I kept finding more and more examples after writing that blog, and I wanted to explore the issue more.

Social media is the greatest tool ever invented to mobilize resources in times of need and as a catalyst to galvanize seemingly…

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Continually Testing My Content Strategy Abilities: Collaborative Project With Creative Plains Foundation

Blog #11

Ashley McCoy

As summer quickly approaches and the torments of a harsh winter slips into the backs of North Dakotans minds, I realize that my journey with social media has shifted drastically. I have talked about this a little bit in previous posts (hint hint, go take a look) but the true test of my transformation has been in my application of social media content strategies. While I continue to learn the in’s and out’s of social media and building online communities, I realize that this information is applicable in many aspects of my working through college (and perhaps just life in general). In the last month I have been working on a collaborative project for my small group communication class with the Creative Plains Foundation. If you have been following my blog I am sure you have heard me talk about this organization before.

The following is my journey through this…

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Week 14 – A Reflection on English 457 and My Own Social Media Use

Dean Brooks' Blog

(Source)

As this point in the semester, focus has shifted directly to working with nonprofits, assessing their web content, and constructing strategies for helping them improve their social media presence and overall impact on the local community. This is not an easy task, especially when some nonprofits are less willing or able (due to time or interest) to communicate about working together.

At first I found this frustrating, but then I reflected on how long it took me to come around to the idea of changing my own social media presence. Even though I’ve had significant experience writing online, and maintaining multiple blogs, I retired from that activity long ago, never thinking I’d ever be doing it all again. When I started this course, I didn’t have a LinkedIn, barely used my Twitter account, and aside from an English 467 Capstone portfolio website I created for an assignment…

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Networking and Connecting Like Never Before Thanks To #Hashtags: A Dive Into Twitter

Newest blog is up!

Ashley McCoy

As noted early in my blog, my previous experience with social media has been that of passively scrolling without intention to engage with content. I used Facebook to stay up-to-date with family and friends, but rarely (about once a year) made my own contribution to this online community. While my relationship with Facebook was a rather unmaintained one, my relationship with Twitter was non-existent. I didn’t have a desire to be active on a social media platform that seemed to demand constant monitoring in order to stay current. However (as I now have a Twitter account), I have learned that Twitter is about much more than that.

When I initially started engaging with Twitter I was completely lost with what information I should share, how to retweet, and how to interact with others while using this channel. For a few weeks I would observe what others were posting, sometimes retweet…

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Baccalaureate II

Baccalaureate Part 2! 5-7 at the Memorial Union Gallery with artist talks at 5:30. If you have the time come check it out!

Michaela Smith

Not even a week later and I’m talking about baccalaureate again? Well you’ve got that right! It’s once again time for a baccalaureate reception! If you find yourself with some free time this week, please head on down to the Memorial Union Gallery. We’ve got some great student artists exhibiting (including myself).

We have:

Jon Bell-Clement with his video Cut the Carbon. Jon talks about how to save the environment in this entertaining, but informative video. He did the writing, filming, audio, animation, and editing all himself, making this a true piece of art.

Ben Neyers with his photo series Lucid. Lucid relies on surreal composition and content to make the viewer question just exactly what is going on. It features intense lighting meant to mimic some cinema, drawing on that feeling of narrative.

Tanner Lind with his installation known as Bathos. Bathos draws on the art of a comedian…

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Blog 8: A Critique of my Own Work

Julia Sattler

Throughout the semester I’ve been focusing on various nonprofit organizations’ in the Fargo-Moorhead area and their online presences. Based on the suggestions made by Heather Mansfield in Social Media for Social Good and Mahoney in Strategic Social Media. All of this analyzing, assessing and learning got me thinking about my own social media presence. As I read all of these lessons and chapters, I’m starting to think that perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to apply these suggestions to my own social media profiles, despite the fact that I am not a nonprofit organization. I think that a lot of these suggestions can be applied to pretty much any group or person who is trying to enhance their online presence.

I decided to focus mostly on my own LinkedIn profile and apply the various suggestions made in both texts. In chapter 6 of Social Media for Social…

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