Hey there!
For my project this week I decided to step outside my comfort zone and try out TikTok! Yes TikTok, the app I have been blissfully ignoring these past 6 or however many years it has been around. I have been vaguely aware of how it works, but have never used it myself. I will admit, I have been heavily influenced by traditional forms of media to view TikTok as something bad that is destroying “the youth”, but I like to be an optimist, so I want to see what good I can find on TikTok.
So I signed up for an account and started inputting my interests so they could show me some content, I made about 15 choices and then got into it.
I will say, it was pretty jarring to have videos instantly start playing for me when it took me to the home screen. I started swiping through some of the videos that had popped up for me, and I was like, ok, I guess these somewhat relate to the interests I chose. Maybe it is because I am a new user and the almighty algorithm hasn’t scoped me out yet. I hated that it was just a stream of videos with no real indication of what the content was going to be about. I realized I could swipe to the right and look at the authors page to get more context, so that was helpful.
I decided I had had enough of random swiping and wanted to try out their search feature… and oh boy. The boldly misogynistic pre-generated search results pained me and made me lose hope in this app and humanity at large.
But hey, at least they were willing to listen to feedback! Anywho, after that walk down uncomfortable lane, I went ahead and searched up Tower Gardens to see what they had to offer, and I have to say, there actually was a ton of content on the subject. I found a video by a smaller creator named Jenny.Grows that was about step in the process I am at with setting up my tower (filling the reservoir and transferring seedlings). She demonstrated the filling process, she didn’t speak, just played chilling music, but she had clear written instructions on the screen that I appreciated. For such a simple step in the process, I think this video worked perfectly. Did I love the platform that I found it on? No, but I am willing to keep an open mind about it!
Here is a TikTok video I made of me filling up the reservoir of my Tower Garden!
@jay273101 Edtc300 Learning project
Cheers!
Jerome Schmeiser
I really like this! It’s a wonderful way to get your information across in multiple ways! Visual and Oral!
Hey Jerome, reading your post I felt mirrored a lot of my same feelings about Tik Tok. There can be a mountain of content about the most obscure topics on Tik Tok and that can be helpful and convenient. Of course on the other hand there is a lot of toxic nonsense on there too that can create a nasty echo chamber for young kids. Hopefully you have good experiences with your exploring !