Starting the Journey!

As I am starting this summer class, one of the first tasks was to create a Twitter account. This for me it is not new, but I am curious to see how we will use it for this class. 

I don't have anything against Twitter, in fact the first time I created a Twitter account it was for a class as well. When I was an undergrad, I completed a Certificate in Emergency Management and I was invited to the Governor's Hurricane Conference to represent the program. Our goal was to showcase to the attendees how Social Media can be use during an emergency.

Help Duckville during the #quackattack

For this purpose, we created a scavenger hunt inside the vendor showcase. Basically, we will send clues through twitter using the hashtag of the conference and the hashtag of the Scavenger hunt, which was #quackattack. Participants needed to follow the clues and find the rubber ducks who were dressed as first responders and bring back to safety to our table. Behind the scenes, we were monitoring the tweets and seeing if our hashtag was trending. It was definitely a fun experience.

We had our military Duck back safe and sound

Can you tell where the S.W.A.T team is?

We also used Twitter when we created a statwide simulation of a hurricane hitting Florida. This is a typical exercise that is done during hurricane season to refresh the team during an emergency. We use Twitter as a tool to keep track of the tweets and determine which ones were real and which ones were fake news. Then, we will identify if help was needed in that area.

Both of these activities were really fun and I enjoyed it! Once I finish my undergrad, I stopped using Twitter and I decided to deactivate my account and never thought about it again, because both Facebook and Instagram were enough for me.

As I had a good experience using Twitter in a class setting, I am curious to see how we will use it for this class and if this time I might decide to keep it. 😀

You may follow me on Twitter: @YoselynPina92