Posts

Designing With Intention: Why Social Media in Learning Needs More Than a Post

  Designing With Intention: Why Social Media in Learning Needs More Than a Post There is a version of social media integration in education that looks like this: a professor adds a Twitter hashtag to the syllabus, tells students to post their reflections online, and calls it connected learning. The tool is there. The instruction is there. But the design is not. I have been thinking about this all week, partly because of the readings and partly because of the work I do every day designing AI learning experiences for faculty at FSU. The gap between using a social media tool and designing a learning experience around one is wider than most people realize, and closing that gap requires a kind of intentionality that does not happen by accident. The Problem With Bolt-On Social Media Zgheib and Dabbagh (2020) make a distinction that I keep returning to: social media learning activities, which they call SMLAs, are not the same as simply using social media in a course. A social media ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Platform Gap: Why Professors and Students Are Not on the Same Social Media Page

Image
  The Platform Gap: Why Professors and Students Are Not on the Same Social Media Page If you asked a group of college students which social media platform they use most, and then asked their professors the same question, you would almost certainly get two very different answers. That gap is not just a generational curiosity. It has real consequences for how learning happens, how professional identity develops, and whether higher education is actually preparing students for the networked professional world they are about to enter. Where Students Live Online For most students, the default platforms are Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and GroupMe. These are tools built for immediacy, visual communication, and low-stakes peer interaction. They are fast, informal, and deeply social in a way that feels natural rather than performed. The algorithm rewards entertainment and relatability. The community is made up of people you already know or people who share your aesthetic and sense of h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Listening Is Also Participation: A Response to "When Everyone Is Posting, Who's Listening?

  Listening Is Also Participation: A Response to "When Everyone Is Posting, Who's Listening?" Vanessa's blog post stopped me mid-scroll, which felt appropriate given what she was writing about. Her central question, when everyone is posting, who is actually listening, is one I have been sitting with all week. Not because I do not have an answer, but because my answer is more complicated than I expected it to be when I first read it. The honest truth is that I am often the person who is not posting. And I am perfectly okay with that. The Value of Quiet Presence There are weeks when I do not post on Instagram at all. I might open the app every day, watch how people create and share content, notice what resonates and what falls flat, observe the rhythms of a community I belong to without announcing my presence in it. That is not disengagement. That is a different kind of engagement, one that is harder to measure but no less real. What I take from those weeks of q...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Platform Is Never Neutral: How Networked Environments Shape What and How We Write

The Platform Is Never Neutral: How Networked Environments Shape What and How We Write I write every day. But I am rarely writing the same thing twice, even when the topic is identical. A thought that becomes a LinkedIn post looks nothing like the same thought expressed in a WhatsApp message, a collaborative Google Doc, or a Canvas discussion board. For a long time, I chalked that up to audience awareness, the natural instinct to adjust tone and register depending on who is reading. But the readings this week pushed me to interrogate that assumption more carefully. The platform is not just a delivery mechanism for writing that already exists. It is an active participant in shaping what gets written in the first place. Writing Is Always Situational Salomon (2016) makes a point that has stayed with me since I first encountered it: it is not the tool that matters most but the educational rationale behind its use. That framing applies far beyond formal education. Every time I open Link...
Post a Comment
Read more

What Fashion Week Taught Me About Intellectual Property, Inspiration, and the Ethics of Creativity

  What Fashion Week Taught Me About Intellectual Property, Inspiration, and the Ethics of Creativity Last weekend, I attended the Orlando International Fashion Week Summer 2026 at the Winter Park Events Center. Two shows, a runway full of designers from Charisma Upcycle Wear to Betta Novais Designs to Kendra Scott, celebrity-styled models, live performances, and an energy in the room that reminded me why creative spaces are some of the most intellectually alive environments you can walk into. I went because I love fashion. I left thinking about intellectual property law. That was not what I planned. When Creativity Meets Commerce Watching the designers present their collections, I found myself noticing the details. The cut of a silhouette. The way a fabric choice signaled a cultural reference. The branding stitched into the lining of a jacket. Every piece on that runway was someone's original idea, or at least the latest iteration of one. And that is where it gets complicated...
1 comment
Read more

Beyond the Paycheck: Rethinking Intellectual Property in the Age of AI

Beyond the Paycheck: Rethinking Intellectual Property in the Age of AI When I first accepted a role at a major edtech company, the "Intellectual Property" (IP) clause in my offer letter felt like boilerplate legal jargon. It wasn't until I was deep in the trenches, producing over 2,000 hours of K-12 academic content for learners across 12 countries, that the reality of that clause hit home. I realized then that my job description was, in essence, a trade: my intellect in exchange for a salary. Every video lesson where I appeared on camera, every slide deck I designed, and every script I wrote belonged entirely to the company. As I transitioned from creator to manager, leading teams to churn out even more content, I became intimately familiar with the concept of ownership in digital production. Now, as a founder navigating founder agreements and investor relations, the stakes have shifted. I’ve learned that IP is more than just a clause; it is the currency of our digital ...
2 comments
Read more

How You Show Up in the DM Says Everything About the Network You Are Building

I have been online long enough to develop an instinct for messages that mean something and messages that do not. It usually takes about ten seconds to tell the difference. Not because I am particularly perceptive, but because the ones that mean something are so rare that they stand out immediately against the noise. This week, I received two of them. And they made me think seriously about something I have felt for a long time but never fully articulated: the way you introduce yourself online is one of the most underrated professional skills nobody is teaching. The Message That Set the Tone A colleague from this course reached out on LinkedIn with a simple note: "Hi! We're both in EME 6414, and I wanted to reach out and connect on LinkedIn. Wishing you continued success in the program." That is it. Two sentences. But those two sentences did something that most connection requests completely fail to do. They gave the connection a reason to exist. She told me who she was, wh...
Post a Comment
Read more