Professional Skills for ICT: Portfolio 2 Reflection at University Name

This portfolio presents a reflective analysis of a student's experience in preparing a presentation on social networking technology and its impact on professional ICT skills. The reflection critically examines the role of social media in communication, highlighting the widespread usage of platforms like Facebook. It explores both the positive aspects, such as enhanced communication opportunities, and negative aspects, including security vulnerabilities and data privacy concerns. The analysis delves into unethical practices, such as fake accounts, and proposes solutions like improved security frameworks, account reviews, and user registration reforms. The reflection also emphasizes the importance of this experience for the student's future research and development in ICT, particularly regarding the design of secure and reliable systems. The assignment includes references to relevant academic literature.

Professional skills for Information and Communication Technology
<Student ID>
<Student Name>
<University Name>

Portfolio 2
I prepared a presentation on the use of social networking technology as a potential
improvement of professional ICT skills. Based on the experience of preparing the
presentation, my reflective writing would emphasize on my learning outcomes from the
experience based on the principles of reflective writing. The potential outcomes that can be
derived from the reflective writing refer to the perception of positive and negative outcomes
from the activity as well as the possible opportunities for executing similar activity
differently (Jespersen et al., 2014).
During the course of preparing the presentation, I was able to reflect critically on the
role of social media sites as a common channel of communication as can be observed from
the statistics of 45% of the world population engaged in internet usage and communication
through social media websites (Button, Harrington & Belan, 2014).
While majority of users perceive the social media sites on the basis of security and
safety as promising means of communication. However, critical gaps have been identified in
the case of security of Facebook especially observed in the examples of public viewing of
personal content as well as commenting options for the public. Therefore, it can be aptly
perceived that despite the capabilities of Facebook as a high advanced technology based
platform for managing social communication, it is still plagued with the concerns of
managing the security of users and their personal identities (Holtgrewe, 2014).
The work on my presentation on social networking technology also enabled me to
obtain insights into other unethical practices that are responsible for reducing the credibility
of social networking as ICT resources. Examples of scenarios in which fake accounts are
created by individuals for malicious purposes could be accounted as a major critical gap in
the implementation of social networking sites as credible ICT entities.
The positive outcomes that can be perceived from my reflection are inclined towards
the vast opportunities facilitated by the social networking sites to individuals for ensuring
effective communication. On the contrary, the negative outcomes that can be derived from
the lack of competent security frameworks in the social networking sites such as Facebook
could be observed in the unprecedented leaks of personal details of users and potential threats
of data theft (Hudson et al., 2016).

The possible solutions that can be implemented in such scenarios would be largely
inclined towards identifying the sources of bugs in the design of the website as well as
frequent review of user accounts and activity details. Furthermore, the introduction of
promising and relevant reforms in the precedents for registration of new users as well as
scrutinizing customer feedbacks related to breaches in account security could also be
accounted as reasonable solutions for addressing the issues of user security. The reflection on
the presentation activity also allows flexible opportunities for my development especially in
terms of acquiring beneficial information pertaining to security risks associated with social
networking sites. This could contribute to my future research initiatives in context of the
pitfalls associated with design of contemporary ICT systems.
References
Button, D., Harrington, A., & Belan, I. (2014). E-learning & information communication
technology (ICT) in nursing education: A review of the literature. Nurse Education
Today, 34(10), 1311-1323.
Jespersen, L. M., Hansen, J. P., Brunori, G., Jensen, A. L., Holst, K., Mathiesen, C., &
Rasmussen, I. A. (2014). ICT and social media as drivers of multi-actor innovation in
agriculture–barriers, recommendations and potentials. European Commission,
Directorate-General for Research.
Holtgrewe, U. (2014). New new technologies: the future and the present of work in
information and communication technology. New technology, work and employment,
29(1), 9-24.
Hudson, S., Huang, L., Roth, M. S., & Madden, T. J. (2016). The influence of social media
interactions on consumer–brand relationships: A three-country study of brand

perceptions and marketing behaviors. International Journal of Research in Marketing,
33(1), 27-41.