Maryannes SSSC23 Journey

To understand the benefits of Linkedin I began by reading the article at  https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-linkedin-3486382 and then I signed up for my own account. My account can be found here at  https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryanne-neil-4412b319b/ I enjoy Facebook and Linkedin is explained as Facebook for professionals so I thought I would enjoy it. After easily setting up my account I asked my husband how to get in contact with people that I may work with so he showed me how to search for colleagues and I was surprised to see very little people in my work actually use this social platform. I looked at the 5 people that work or had previously worked at the centre to see what information they had added. All of the staff had actually only added places that they had worked and less than half of them had added a profile picture. I connected with two people at work and read a sample of random other Early Years Practitioners profiles to see what they had added. There really was not

An app is a term for a software application, and it is most often used in reference to a mobile app or a small piece of software that runs on a website. Having apps to support your practice are great but when using these tools they are only as good as the user. From the list I was to choose from I picked  https://www.talkingmats.com/product/talking-mats-taster/ . The only other relevant one to my practice was the  Medication Administration– SafeMed but when clicking on the URL the app was not there for me to look at. We use a range of devices and strategies to help the children communicate so this is an ideal choice for me to explore.  I have previously been giving a little training on talking mats where I work and the training was interesting and was easy to understand and follow instructions from. It was delivered in- house by our speech and language staff member who had undergone the training online. I have not used it for a while so I used this app for some refresher

To complete Thing 11 on using Twitter I chose to work my way through the Intermediate level as I have been accessing this platform using my personal account for a few years. I have had a twitter account for many years although I don't access it on a regular basis. I follow actors, music and local events on it. I didn't use it for any work related matters. I was however aware that it can be used for this and I knew that lots of schools and establishments have accounts to promote what they are about.  My workplace have their own account that can be found here : https://twitter.com/Craighalbert this is a relatively new account and it is being used to promote the fundraising for the centre and to let others see what happens within the centre. So as I have previously said I didn't use it for any work related matters however since exploring the features that twitter offer such as creating a list (something I didn't know about till starting this badge)I have explore