Social Media in China

 

In this age of information, social media is becoming more and more important for our life.  Different countries have different social media. I have learned a lot of social media tools that are popular with Canadian people. Since I am an international student from china, I would like to introduce you some social media that are very popular in China, but people who outside of China may don’t know.

Tencent QQ
First of all, I want to introduce Tencent QQ to you, which is the most famous and popular free instant messaging computer program in the mainland of China. According to Wikipedia, by July 11, 2011, there are 812.3 million people were using QQ. I have my QQ account for about ten years. In the past 10 years, I all mostly used QQ every day. It the most important tool that I use to contact to my friends and families.  It allows me to search for other users and Chat with them through QQ on internet. After I come to Canada, I rely on QQ even more because it  not only saves me a lots of phone cost to contact to my families and friends in China, it also allows me to talk with them face to face through camera.

RenRen

Second of all, I would like to introduce you a Chinese “face book” which is called RenRen. It is a very popular social media recently. People can "tweet" and post photos on RenRen  just like what people do on Face Book. The main difference between RenRen and face book is that the majority of users of RenRen are students who may have more connection with each other than users of Face Book. When you are registering an account in RenRen, it requires you to provide the name of your high school and university, and the time when you study there into you profile.  Then according to this information RenRen will help you to find many alumni on RenRen. It is so amazing that after I applied a RenRen account, I have  found a lot of high school classmates who I haven’t see them for many years. Having RenRen we get connected with each other again.

Weixin                                          

The last social medium I want to introduce to you is Weixin. It is a very new social medium that is designed for smart phone. People can send free voice massage, text message, video, picture to friend through the smart phone network. Based on the user’s location, Weixin can help you to find other people who are nearby. The most exciting thing Weixin provides to users is that when you are shaking your smart phone, Weixin can help you to find the people who are also shaking their phone at the same time. It will show you the location of that person and how far away is he or she from you, and you can get connected. When I was writing this post I checked one of my classmates, Phantastic's blog, she is talking about some interesting things about Twitter and Face book, please check Here to see what's her opion about Twitter and Face Book.

Reflective Post

Time goes really fast! The first class of ALES204 is just like at yesterday!  Believe or not we are already at the end of the semester! Everyone seems very busy. This term I feel so luck to take ALES204. I have learned a lot of things from this class. As an international student, I was very upset about the difficulty of communication with Canadian students before this class. I don’t know how to start a conversation with my classmates that they are interested in because I don’t know what are they thinking and what they are interested in. Communication is not only the skills of language but also the tool of communication. Fortunately, I take ALES204, which has taught me a lot of social media that are very popular in Canada and I did't know before.

The first social medium I have learned from ALES204 is Twitter. Many Canadian people are using twitter now. We can tweet anything we want only in 140 letters. Using twitter we can share our life to friends who are close to us or far away from us without the restriction of space and time. Even the people who don’t know each other also can share their experience with each other.

The second social medium that ALES204 taught me is face book. Before this class I already had a face book account but just used it to share information and photos with my friends. I never though one day I would have my professional business face book page. As a fourth year student, I will graduate next year. It is the time to prepare for my future career. This professional page promotes me to my potential employers.

The third social medium tool I have learned from ALES204 is Linkedin. I created my profile in Linkedin, which is like a resume that I post online. Linkedin is really cool! It helps job hunters to build up a social net. People who are looking for job can post information about what kind of job they are looking for on Linkedin and on the other hand people who are hiring also can post their ads on Linkedin. In addtion to the three social media tools above, there are many other useful social media I have learn from ALES204 such as Flickr, Blog , Google docs and so on. Thanks to ALES204 for helping to catch up the trend of the time.

Here are five classmates' blogs that I have commented:
Caylee's bolgs
Toni's blog
Amily's blog
Tania's blog
Candi's blog

Wikipedia Writing

It is really a great experience to update a stub on Wikipedia. I got this assignment from my ALES204 class. I use Wikipedia a lot in my studies and daily life. It is a so useful tool that provides free information to everyone, and everyone can write on it as long as you have an account on Wikipedia.


There are numerous stub are waiting to be edited. The stub which I chose to update is Xu Zhimo. The reason why I pick this stub is that I want to write something or someone that relate to my hometown, Haining which is a small city in east China, and Xu Zhimo is a famous poet of my hometown. I am very proud of Him. He is well known in China, but is not known by many people who are outside of China. Moreover, when I searching Xu Zhimo in Wikipedia I found there was only a brief biography for him. People should know more about his story, especially his love stories with three women because Xu Zhimo is a person who pursued freedom and love through his whole short life. His died eighty years ago, however, his live stories are still be remembered by the Chinese people. In order to let more people to know his love stories, I decided to added a new section on Xu Zhimo’s Wikipedia page—The Romance of Xu Zhimo.

Before editing, I created a new account on Wikipedia that gives me the right to edit in Wikipedia. Then I started to edit. It is so interesting to learn some code and learn how to reference. They are not difficult but very useful. When I saw my work showed on Wikipedia I was so exciting. This is my honor to edit in Wikipedia for Xu Zhimo. Please check here to see my work.

 There is another very interesting topic abot China which is Chinese tea.  One of my classmate, Candi, has edited it. You can check here to learn some famous Chinese tea.

My Professional Facebook Page

                                      

Hi my dear friends, I have just created a professional Facebook page. You can check it from here. Your can also check my Flickr to see it. From this Facebook page, you can learn more about me. It includes a short autobiography of mine that tells you some information about my family, my education and some work experiences of mine. In this page you also can find out what I am interested in, what scholarships I have achieved and how you contact with me. I put a photo which was taken last year on U of A campus. I choose it because in this photo I’m very confident and positive. I hope it can help me make a good first impression on you.

Since I am a fourth year student, it is so important for me to make a professional resume to advertise myself. But only sending resume to the companies, which I am interested in is so limited. I have to send it again and again until I am hired. It takes me a lot of time to send my resume to different companies but I still cannot be accepted by them. That makes me very upset. This new professional Facebook page is like e-resume  that can help me not only to promote myself to my potential employers wildely, but also can give some information that the traditional resume can not give you. Thanks to ALES204 class for giving me this idea to create a professional facebook page to promote myself. With this facebook page I can show my professional image to my potential employer more easily. My future career will definitely benefit from it!

When I was designing my professional facebook page, I looked at some of my classmates' pages.  Among these pages, Coleman Brinker's blog is really impressive. It gave me some idea that how design my own page. You can check  here to go to her blog.          
When I was creating my Face book page I learned a lot from Caylee's blog.    

Open Up

It’s is so exciting to start my own blog.I love writing because it is a powerful way of communication. Since English is not my first language, it is harder for me to write in English than in my mother language. I’m so glad that I can get more practice in this blog. I name it open up beacuse I hope it can become a place that I can open my heart up, and can share my thoughts and feeling to you. So now let me introduce myself to you. My name is Xiaojun Gao. I was bron and grew up in a small town in southeast of China.  I have a accounting  degree from the university in my own country. I came to Canada three years ago. Now, I am a fourth year student of Universitiy of Alberta. My major is agricultural bussiness management.

Communication plays a very important  role in my daily life, especially in my studies. It is not only a bridge between professors and me but also  the bridge between my classmates and me. Through communication I come over the cultural shock  and get helps from my professors and classmates. In the future, I hope this blog can help me to communicte with more people.