Social Media on research

Hola, I'm back!

This time, let's talk about the impact of social media on education. Social Media has become a very important part of our lives. We probably spend hours watching TikTok, Instagram, or Twitter but, have we ever considered using them to promote our work? 

I´m going to divide this reflection into two parts. First I´m going to talk about the mainstream Social Networks and then I will introduce the ones oriented to creating a working net. 

We might have seen disseminators when you were scrolling on Instagram or TikTok. It's getting a more and more popular way to present our work to the world due to its huge scope and dynamism. Professionals of all fields are becoming influencers, attracting thousands of subscribers. But, if you don't feel comfortable on the screen, don't worry; you have options such as Twitter, Blogger, Pinterest, or Linkedin. All these sites can help make known your profile and work to a wide audience. 

But we can also connect with other researchers and share our thoughts and reflections. Some places where I'd recommend having an account are ResearchGate and Academia.edu (I´ve linked there my profile, so follow and subscribe!). We can post there our work and get peer reviews, discuss with other professionals in the field, and access a great variety of investigations and resources. They also recommend you some content, which can save us time and discover new authors.

We can no longer be analog, we need to spread our knowledge on the web. We need to be connected and take care of our virtual ID. We can find several opportunities, even a job, on those sites. But we need to be aware of the print we leave online. Once we publish something, it will always be there. Even if we have different profiles, for leisure and work, we can be found, so take a minute to have a look at your social media (and delete those embarrassing tweets from ten years ago 😉).

And if now you are wondering "how can I organize so many websites!?!?!?!?!". I hereby present the miraculous tool: Symbaloo. As a teacher, I have been using it for years to organize all the resources and sites I use in the classroom, and now I can also use it to organize my favorite journals and have quick access to any webpage. It's super easy to use and intuitive and you can decorate and personalize it as you like.

During the last few days, I've learned about useful online resources to share and spread our research and connect with other researchers. Some of these sites I already knew and used, either for personal or professional purposes and I have discovered some new ones, like ResearchGate, About.me, Orcid, or Diigo. Personally I can see the interest on these last ones, which give you articles of interest and connect you to researchers of your interest. I am not, however, too fussed about the use of Twitter or some of the Google Apps for professional purposes. Google Drive is a definitely useful tool but, when we belong to an organization, we will probably have an Office account to work with or specific resources for the work required (for example, I would use other platforms to make surveys). And if we want to use mainstream social media, I would definitely recommend having different profiles for your personal and professional life; at the end of the day, we do behave differently with friends and co-workers. 

I will try to keep this blog updated, though, and I am very pleased with the researcher ID I´ve created these days.