Poseidon guide for social media functionality
Social media is all about sharing, contributing and engaging your society.
In Poseidon we have enabled functionality that gives each member of the Poseidon community the possibility to engage, share and contribute to the community.
There are several opportunities for you to contribute and engage in the user community.
- You could start a discussion, or get engaged in a discussion
- You could write a blog post, and have this shared with everyone else, and to open up for a discussion based on your contribution
- You could also create a special group within the Poseidon community where you can share send direct messages that are only readable by the group or the individual you communicate with.
The Poseidon community is a controlled community, meaning that only people who are members of Down associations around Europe are granted access and membership. In contrast to other social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Linkedin, Twitter etc. we do not sell your information, we do not share or sell information about your content and your activities with anyone.
The Posedion social community is safe to use, and its success is depending on everyone’s participation and engagement.
Usage of social media functionality
Log in
Before you start you need to log in. There is a separate menu-item you can click on to do that. When you click on the the “Login” link you get the following screen:
Then you need to enter your Username or the Email address you used to register, and enter your password before clicking the “Log in” blue button. If you mark the “Remember me” option you will automatically be logged in the next time you visit the Poseidon-ecosystem site. If you can’t remember your password, you have to click on the “Lost your password?” link and follow the appropriate instructions.
The personal overview functionality
The Poseidon-ecosystem web are in practice 3 different systems combined.
- A web site for the DOW association to share and communicate information that are relevant and important for their community.
- This information could come from another DOW association in Europe
- Based on topics that are being discussed in the discussion forum it could identified a need for information on a topic, or some of the discussions could be amended into an article.
- Information could also come from international research journals and other sources of information
- A forum for discussions, where you could share your thoughts and ideas on anything you find relevant.
- You can comment on discussions threads created by others
- You can create new threads of discussions within a topic
- You can create new topics that you would like to discuss
- A personal communication site
- Where you can share messages with other members of the Poseidon-ecosystem
- You can create groups with other members to share and discuss more private issues
- You get an overview of your activities, comments and messages.
- You can create groups and send messages to individuals who are member of other countries DOW associations.
The best way to learn this functionality and to understand how it works is by trying, and remember you cannot do anything wrong…
Only a few of the main components of the functionality will be explained in this document. If you know how to use FaceBook – the use of the Poseidon-ecosystem will not be that different.
A web site
The Poseidon ecosystem works as a normal web site, where the DOW association shares information of relevance. As can be seen in the illustration below.
Discussions
In the discussions area you can share and discuss anything of interest.
Different topics of discussions are organized in “domains” and if you would like to discuss a topic that is not within one of the domains available, you have to contact the administrator and ask for a new discussion domain (Forum) to be created. You will also note that discussions domains with no activity could be archived and removed from the active discussions area.
The discussions menu and discussion domains is seen in the illustration below.
When you click on e.g. Education you get the following illustration:
And since no-one has started to discuss anything about Education there is no treads or anything to see.
To create a new Topic, you have to write a new topic in the “Topic Title” text input field.
And below the area of grey “HTML[1]” tags that could be used you can write what you would like. You can also upload images to illustrate your point of topic that you would like to discuss with your peers.
To post your discussion topic you have to press the “Submit” button at the bottom of the page.
Personal communication
To share information with other individuals, or to create groups together with others you find this functionality at top right corner of your browser window, as seen in the illustration below.
The number in blue indicates how much that have happened since you checked it out.
When you click on your name you get a drop-down menu with the different options, we will only explain a few of them here.
As we see in the menu I have 4 unread messages (and 4 Notifications that I have unread messages) When I move my mouse over “Messages” I get a new sub-menu for the choices that are relevant for my messages, as indicated in the illustration below:
All options with an “arrow” to the left have similar sub-menues. If I had clicked on the Messages option without expanding the sub-menues, I would get to my-page with the Messages option chosen. If you click directly on the “Inbox” in the sub-menu you will be taken directly to the Messages page and to your Inbox there.
Your page
When you are on your page you will see that this can be customized, on my page I have chosen a cartoon as my background, you could choose any picture you like.
From your page you will have different menus for different actions you can take. Most of these are self-explanatory.
The more active you are in discussions, and in sharing and communication with others, you will see this activity reflected at your page.
You should explore all options, and try them out – remember you cannot do anything wrong.
What might cause confusion
When exploring “Your page” you will note that the menu has changed from your country site, this is because you have the opportunity to send a message to anyone in any DOW association in Europe that are a member of the Poseidon-ecosystem. To get back to your country site, you just have to click on the “Country sites” menu option and choose your country. You will then be back at your discussions and familiar menues.
Pilot 2 participants
The people participating in the Pilot-2 project of the Poseidon project will also find that they have a special menu item “Pilot-2” where they can discuss and share their views on activities related to the Pilot-2 testing, such as comments on the usability of the tools, the apps, what you would like to see, what is missing or whatever idea you have about the need for people with down syndrome and their carers on how technology could assist and provide a better day.
[1] HTML – Hyper Text Markup Language, codes that provides semantic and controls how information are presented in the web-browser.