Here’s how:

How to Participate in Distance Learning Discussion Chat room

In an online class chat room discussion, students are expected to participate by asking and answering questions. Online interaction with instructors and peers is necessary for distance learning programs. It gives students the opportunity to collaborate with online instructors and other students and get help with online assignments, projects, and other class-related materials.

Here’s how to be an effective participant in an online class chat room discussion:

• Preparation is the key to online class chat room discussions. Try to always prepare ahead of time for online classroom discussions. Be sure to review your notes and be ready to ask and answer questions.
• Choose a topic to discuss. Have something to talk about by choosing a topic that you would like to discuss. Have your notes pre-typed in Microsoft Word so that you don’t take up too much time typing. It will be much easier to simply cut and paste your questions.
• Respond with the most appropriate answers to questions. Only respond to questions that you can clearly answer with facts and proofs. Don’t give your opinions unless the discussion requires an opinion.
• Always stay on topic. Don’t change the subject or give answers that are not relevant to the online chat room discussion. Stay focused and on the topic, and always follow the format that your online instructor establishes.
• Don’t ask unrelated questions. If the discussion is about careers or online classes, only ask questions that are related to the topic. Don’t ask unrelated questions.
• Show interest when participating in online classroom discussions. Showing a lack of interest or neglecting to participate can affect your grades. It can also alienate you from the rest of the students.
• Don’t forget to ask questions. Show interest by asking questions and interacting with other classmates. This way you can make friends and even build a network.
• Don’t dominate the online class discussion. Be an active participant, but don’t be too pushy or controlling during the discussion. Give others an opportunity to voice their opinions and a chance to ask questions also.

That’s all there is to being an effective participant to online class chat room discussion. Don’t forget to relax, and most of all have fun!

Online Education in Social Media

Social media is an interaction of people with the help of technology and telecommunications. They can share text, pictures, audio and video content from any location across the world. Due to this, social media has developed into the main source of contact between people. Several online universities are offering social media degree online. Apart from this, many major media broadcasting houses have developed TV programs focusing on social media which includes usage of social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook MySpace pages effectively to report an event. This has enables them to get many job opportunities especially for amateur journalists who are interested in covering latest events.

Why Choose Social Media Degree Online?

Social media degree online can enable you to get an understanding about fast-growing, evolving social media platforms from a marketing and public relations perspective which includes prominent social networking sites. An online bachelor degree in social media covers the various aspects of social media, like building marketing strategies and evaluating their effectiveness. It covers case studies of online social networking and content sharing websites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Friendster. You can participate in team assignments to develop and implement social media marketing strategies for real world clients.

You should however, opt for online school which offer this degree program and are accredited by an agency approved by the United States Department of Education or the Council for Higher Education. The online bachelor degree in social media also focuses on enhancing the skill sets in business, computing and communication through various mediums such as text messaging, internet, mobile phones, email and chat rooms.

Likewise, an online master degree in social media can train you in the usage, effectiveness and opportunities that social media offers to the greater community. It also gives details on the usage of social media through social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo in the marketing and communication sectors.

Therefore, choosing an online degree in this field would be beneficial if you want to be a successful internet marketer and want to gain knowledge and expertise from trained experts in the field. It would also help you to get suitable job opportunities if you have a formal training by acquiring a college level degree or certificate. Moreover, you can get the chosen online degree program without discontinuing your existing job and can pursue the course at your own pace and schedule.

Consequently, we thought it would be great to come up with 5 simple steps to help online students take advantage of online resume data banks by tuning up their resumes. We came up with some steps that could help their resume gain maximum visibility and get an elevated chance at being seen by Human Resource managers in job search portals and employment networking sites. These 5 steps will help them to successfully make an online resume to increase visibility.

1. Choose the Right Stage

Standing out on the internet can be difficult. You can stand out by choosing the right stage. Lure employer into checking out your resume by participating on social networks, professional forums, websites, and blogs. Even an e-mail sent to the right place can end up getting your resume noticed.

2. Develop a Mission Declaration

Once your resume has been noticed it must have mission declaration that is coherent and comprehensible. This will also assist you in developing a vehicle to display your distinctive persona to possible employers. It is a one of its kind way of trade marking yourself. This makes a recruiters job of selling you that much easier.

3. Augment Your Resume with Eye Catchers

Fresh tech driven eye catchers give online students resumes an improvement on the average resume. They amplify the capability to improve your online charisma with hiring managers and recruiters. They let possible employers distinguish you from other resumes. They also allow you to bond with them on a personal level making your resume look more engaging. Links to filmed or recorded tributes from earlier customers and associates are incredibly inventive. They can consist of YouTube or LinkedIn links that drive home the idea you are trying to get across with your resume.

4. Combine Your Resume with Top Social Networking Sites

When your resume is completed connect it with one of your social networking profiles. Be certain you continue to update your resume with professionally relevant information continually.

5. Begin Advancing Your Current Resume

Now you may begin assertively promoting your resume using various successful techniques or you can create one of your own. For example, you can reduce it and use it as a business card, attach it to multimedia documents or even incorporate it into your e-mail signature.

The potential for your resume is infinite. Do not be limited by existing standards. The internet has opened a completely new horizon of possibilities.

Avoiding the Top 5 Mistakes Job Seekers Make Online

Many job hunters that are ex-online students are familiar with using the internet for educational purposes and taking advantage of it for job seeking is a natural step. Just try to avoid the top 5 mistakes job seekers make online.

1. Avatar or Picture Is Not Appropriate Your avatar or picture speaks volumes about your personality. People with pictures that are inappropriate or unprofessional will not become the future employees, so be creative in order to get noticed land a career.

2. Not Using Industry Buzzword and Jargon on Their Profile These days you must include industry buzzwords and jargon on your profile. Recruiters and hiring managers use these phrases and keywords to search for profiles online. Therefore, your profile must be search engine optimized for your industry or it will not be seen.

3. Not Being Involved In Industry Related Forums, User Group, Blogs, and Social NetworksTo be noticed involve yourself in industry related online networks. Leave comments on blogs that people in your industry visit. Ask questions. Participation insures job seekers will be noticed online. Sitting back and observing will not make you the employee of the future!

4. Unprofessional Profile Invites Profile invites that are unprofessional and spammish are automatically declined by hiring managers and recruiters do not consider such applications seriously.

5. Not Reviewing and Updating Your Profile Your profile should be routinely updated with new qualifications and certifications. It must also be reviewed for mistakes and miscues. An unblemished profile is a must have to land a career and projects a professional image to potential employers.

A former online student’s internet profile is an extremely significant means of drawing attention to their accomplishments, strong points and main areas of vocational skills. A profile is systematically arranged in a format that is easy for hiring managers that in turns will lead to interviews. Self-promotion and the internet just seem to go together so make online job searches work for you just as many employees have. Online social networking sites are a natural extension for an online student. Using online networking to your advantage to get the career you desire. Just make an effort to keep yourself away from the top 5 mistakes job seekers make online.

Women Empowerment in Social Media

Social media develops a forum for women all over the world to share their knowledge with others in a different corner of the globe. This generates a sense of oneness; as more women are inclined to be in touch and correspond without restraint, knowing that it is universal fight that intersects local or geographic boundaries.

Social community provides women a way of impacting others with ‘empowerment ideologies’ as well as strategies. This makes it not merely a forum for sharing experiences, but also for enlightening other women in general who perhaps going through the same circumstances, but do not know the way to deal with it nor have the guts to speak their mind.

The experience of a social media can transform to an instantaneous ‘action forum’. It is encouraging to share individual experiences; it is better when these narratives teach those who are unaware of the trends that affecting them or how to act in response; but it is best when women going through any type of difficulty are helped by this sort of contact. Social media can guide women to gather together and make a start, either by means of inter-personal social networking or as a group.

Social Media Indicates Opportunities for Women

Companies are trying to reach women, whether as customers, entrepreneurs, workers or campaigners. They have an extraordinary opportunity by means of social media to connect them. For women, social media brings rich opportunities to move ahead, cause transformation, innovate, and build associations across sectors, locally, nationwide, as well as worldwide.

Women have securely established their presence on the social media, and make up the mainstream of users on a lot of popular social media websites. The question is what does this indicate for the future of women in social media? There is a one word answer to this question, and that is ‘Opportunity’.

1. Twitter

Twitter is a social networking and micro blogging service which lets you send and get messages known as tweets. Tweets are text posts that can be only 140 characters and are sent to subscribers also known as followers. Tweets can be sent or received from Twitter website, SMS (short message service), or apps (applications) for smart phones. It currently has over 100 million users.

2. Delicious

Delicious is a social book marking online service for keeping, sending, and finding webpage bookmarks. The free service has over 5 million users and more than 100 bookmarked URLs.

3. YouTube

YouTube is for online video file sharing that lets people upload, share, and watch videos. You can watch movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur videos. Most of the videos on YouTube are uploaded by regular people but some big media corporations post material also.

4. Google Reader

Google Reader is an online aggregator, that can read Atom and RSS feed on the web or offline.

5. Google Docs

Google Docs is a free, Online Office suite made available by Google. It lets people to make and edit documents online and collaborate in real-time with other people.

6. WordPress

WordPress is a free CMS (control management system) source; used mostly for blogging it has a lot of features that use plug-in architecture and templating systems. It is the most popular blog software around nowadays.

7. Slideshare

Slideshare is a slide hosting services that is web-based and lets users to upload, look at, comment on, and share slideshows made with presentation software. It is the most popular slide hosting services on the web.

8. Google Search

Google Web Search is an online search engine and is the most popular search engine on the internet passing Yahoo the previous number 1 some year back. Google get hundreds of millions of search everyday through its many services. The main purpose is to find text online in website around the world.

Friends, do share more such resources which you feel are missing from the list above.

A recent study commissioned among human resource professionals and recruiters revealed that 32% of them actually search the internet and social networking sites such as Facebook for potential employees. The study also showed that of the remaining 68%, another 48% showed an indication they would take that route of Facebook search in the future.

Facebook offers efficient job search

With over 200 million active users, Facebook has become a serious contender for the most popular social networking site in the world. With this knowledge, recruiters target Facebook to find employable individuals based on their posted profile. The profile of Facebook users gives an immediate insight into the personality of individuals and their interest. As a result, recruiters can do targeted search by entering certain keywords that brings up only individuals of a particular area of interest. By using Facebook, they can increase their efficiency by eliminating the practice of wild searching to find that perfect employee.

Brand You-How to Capitalize of Facebook

Your profile is the pathway between you and the recruiter. Pump up your profile that recruiters can automatically attracted to you. Treat yourself as a company and you are marketing a product, which is you of course, to the public. Include all professional information such as contact details, qualification, capabilities, extra-curricular activity and work experience if any.

One of the main forces of attraction for recruiters is the use of keywords. Do a Google search for keywords related to your profession and ensure that these words are included into your Facebook profile. This will enable your profile to be at the top of the heap when the recruiter does their Facebook search.

Another job-seeking tool available on Facebook is the opportunity to setup your own group. Jobseekers can easily establish a group that targets individuals with similar interest. Numbers bring power, so by knowing that a large group of individuals exists in a particular group, they can easily go there instead of open searching in order find potential employees.

Job seekers can also make their own websites or blogs where they can display their talents. They can then create a link on Facebook. When any one visits their Facebook page, they can easily click on this link to visit their personal site.

Facebook Video Upload

The video upload tool available on Facebook is a powerful tool that can tilt the employment scale in your favor. Facebook allows you to upload a video resume that will be a face-to-face introduction of yourself to your potential employer. This video resume must be professionally done, as recruiters will use this introduction to conduct their preliminary assessment. One thing for sure, a video resume shows a concerted effort to present yourself in a professional manner.

Many individuals are turning to social networking to find new jobs as they create a more interactive atmosphere in which employers can get an idea of applicants even before they decide to call them for submission of personal information.

How to use Social Networking to get Jobs

To be successful at using social networking to land jobs, one has to be smart and proactive. It takes diligent planning and patience. Not all methods will work in any one case, but by combining strategies, I am sure you can get the brand “you” out there in the public domain.

Be active on Twitter: With the availability of unlimited twitter tools more and more jobseekers are using twitter as a means of reaching out to recruiters and potential employers. This phenomenon is due to several factors. For starters, twitter is free and reaches millions of individuals worldwide. Then, when registering on Twitter, you must first fill out a profile that is a short bio on your location and interest. Recruiters can easily go to this link and read this bio and determine right there if they are interested. By growing your number of followers, by just clicking “need a job” you will get many responses of job opportunities in your fields.

Video Resume: Making a video resume and placing it on YouTube is another way of reaching millions for free. Be professional, concise and confident, as you will be speaking directly to your potential employers.

Using LinkedIn: LinkedIn is one of the most popular search engines where individuals can go to seek out employment opportunities. LinkedIn is 100% free and is utilized by many top professionals. Individuals simply complete the membership application by supplying the requisite information. Then the import all their contact from other social networking sites to build their contact list. Paying for a premium account brings you even closer with recruiters who are in direct contact with employers.

Google has finally broken into the world of social networking. Not to say they did not have social networking sites before. Their social networking sites such as Orkut or OpenSocial were not such a hit within the online social networking community. With these sites, they were following the same mold of Facebook and Twitter who fan base started from scratch and then grew with popularity.

What Google have now done is simply a stroke of genius. They have embedded Google buzz into their Gmail service. As a result, the fan base is already existent and studies show is growing at an average 176 million visitors each month. Although Google buzz is new, its impact is huge as users of the service gave access to all the gadgets of the Gmail service including streaming of status updates, links, videos and buzzes. To fathom the impact of Google Buzz, one would have to imagine cramming Twitter, Yammer, Yelp, Facebook and Foursquare into one social network.

Uses of Google Buzz in Education

The open source approach that Google has adopted in the development of Google Buzz has increased the excitement level in the secondary application development market. The flexibility of Google Buzz has brought with it many useful applications outside of the direct social networking world. After close examination, we have seen where Google Buzz has many ways in which it can be incorporated into the educational system. Some of these methods include:

• Users of Google Buzz are able to conduct Facebook and twitter like conversations. Students can use this forum to communicate easily with their peers without having to sign into another social networking site while checking their Google mail. They can even throw open questions much like a Facebook status message but with a more interactive flavor.

• Being embedded into Google Gmail service, teachers can easily conduct research on any topic without losing sight of the happenings of fellow teachers and linked students.
• With Google Buzz, teachers are now able to maintain a closer relationship with their online students.Teachers can now easily with one application use their Gmail embedded Google Buzz to disseminate and collect assignments and then make immediate comments either generally or to specific students. This will certainly reduce the hard copy paper work at school, as all messages can be easily stored on request.
• Unlike Twitter, with Google teachers are able to select who can see particular buzz they upload. Therefore, if they want to address only a part of the class you can do so using Google buzz without fear of general exposure.
• Google buzz has brought with it an easier method of promoting ideas or items to the public. This is a great opportunity for research doctors at universities to promote their ideas. What Google has done is to give users of the Google buzz the ability to make public posts that are included into their general Google search engine. As a result, professors only have to include keywords that will attract traffic and direct this traffic to your post.

Do you know about social networking sites? Well, if you don’t, you shouldn’t feel bad because not so many people are even aware of the concept of social networking sites. Social networking sites are online platforms where you contact your friends online through the site. Online information about your availability and sharing of photos makes your virtual life closer to reality. In addition to regular social networking websites, professional networking websites are also available and allow for the interaction of professionals and sharing of professional opportunities.

Employers and Your Social Networking Profile – Is there even a need?

While social networking had previously been used only for casual reasons, it has becomes a source for prospective employers to know more about candidates who have applied for positions with their company. In fact it is being said that many companies are keeping track of their employees through these social networking websites.

There are cities where candidates applying for city jobs are required to give their usernames and passwords for any of their social networking websites including their chat room passwords. The concern among job seekers is whether such requirements are legal and how far it should be complied with as it amounts to invasion of privacy.

While it is true that employers object certain activities of their prospective candidates like illegal behavior, offensive statements and instances of bad mouthing, it is most unlikely that such a behavior can be traced through social networking websites.

Social Networking Profiles in Working Environment…

While some find referring to social networking websites offensive, some like Jon Yarbrough, partner at Constangy, Brooks & Smith law firm are of the view that there nothing wrong about it. In some states, it has even become a law that it is no employers’ business to check out what an employee is up to after office hours.

While the general law is that you can do anything and everything lawful during your non-office hours, the question is whether the law covers even applicants to jobs and what really matters to employers about what an employee is engaged in non-office hours where there is nothing unlawful.

You may never know what is in store, so it is best to clean up your profiles, just to ensure nothing will cost you a dream job. It is also possible to create two profiles, one for personal use and the other for employers to see as a public face.

Do you think sharing personal information with your prospective employers is a good idea? Should we be more open about it? Or this is just another way to breach into someone’s privacy? ]]> http://www.onlineedublog.com/social-networking-profiles-employers-privacy/feed/ 0