Author: pqy54485699 (Page 2 of 3)

How would you create a PLN prior to engaging in a social media campaign on a topic of your choice?

The article Building Your Own PLN (Woods, 2013) presents great ways to build a PLN:

• Know that all PLNs are different
• Ask and Listen
• Leverage Technology
• Try out Twitter
• Look outside of L&D

Since the P in PLN stands for “personal”, it is expected that the PLN should be different and show a personal feature with academic patterns, preferences, diversity and personality. It is similar as “A personal’s success cannot be copied.” that a person’s PLN cannot be copied either. Having this in mind can be helpful when developing a PLN or when stuck in the process.

Reaching out to people is always a good strategy, and use the help of technology is also an option which could save a lot of time and energy. However, either asking people for help or using technology has drawbacks and one should always be cautious.

Twitter is the platform that is brought up in many occasions when it comes to PLN and academical communications. The platform is big and diverse, and has so many functions that supports learning and debating.

Look for people beyond one’s circle is good for inspirations and potential collaborations. Be inclusive and diverse, allow new ideas and different opinions can be good for developing a PLN.

When building my own PLN, I would look into every tip of Woods’ Building Your Own PLN and make use of them. I would look up for people in the field of my interests, check their social media posts or activities, reach out to them and seek for advice. I would certainly use technology to aid my developing the PLN and use Twitter as a tool to engage with people, conversations and make myself heard. Keeping the mind open and being ready for diverse thoughts and opinions are what I would always implement in the process.

My comment to peer post:

I like your concise summary of Woods’ five strategies in building a PLN. I think by asking questions related to the five tips such as what you did in the first one, we could get a clearer image on what kind of PLN we could create of our own. I also really agree your idea of “The best social media campaigns engage users with content that is meaningful to them.” I think that it is the same idea when designing contents for users, which is to have the users as the center when designing. When it comes to building a PLN, having the target audience as the center to design your own PLN could potentially attract more people.

You mentioned authenticity and I think it is great because being authentic is one of the most important factor in building a PLN. It shows that one is worth engaging with and is valuable for the original contents one create. Do you think authenticity could be shown and made obvious in one’s PLN?

Comment to H’s Week 7 Post

Reference

Woods, B. (2013, November). Building Your Own PLN: seeking new insights and ideas? Expand your personal learning network. American Society for Training and Development.

“None of us were really taught about our history, what Indigenous knowledge looks like.”

Brad Baker

Dr. Brad Baker, Associate Superintendant of Indigenous Education, BC Ministry of Education, is a proud member of the Squamish Nation and carries the ancestral name Tsnomot, which he shares with his late grandfather and father. As SD44’s director of Indigenous education, Baker has spent much of the past decade working to bring an Indigenous perspective into the school system. That’s involved creating an environment where Indigenous students can be supported, as well as providing resources to educate teachers and the wider community (Seyd, 2021).

Themes of a PLN in a Professional Capacity

PLN could be a resource base for professional educators or researchers to obtain information, or communicate and contribute learning resources to the community they are in. Just like the Typical Teacher Network that was mentioned in the book Emerging Technologies in Distance Education, in a professional capacity, PLN could serve as a “package” or base of a teacher that performs these functions.

However, a “networked” teacher could use the PLN for so much more. Reaching out and connecting to academics internationally, reading and posting personal views, expending networks in different fields of study and research, as well as using the multimedia to further the impacts of one’s study are all a networked teacher could do with PLN. Here, the capacity of PLN is more than a package or base for storing but a tool that could actively extend one’s learning, research and networking.

Which Social Media Platforms are Beneficial in Education

Social media platforms that are beneficial in education have these features:

Adding Social Media Teaching to an Industry of Interest

I’m personally interested in science subjects such as chemistry, and I would use video-featured social media platforms such as YouTube or TikTok to present interesting phenomenons we could observe in life, or interesting experiments that have to do with chemistry. I would also post videos of chemistry used in practical areas such as food and drink.

How Social Media Fit into Professionalism and Regulations (Education, Healthcare, and Messaging to Minor Children Via Social Media/Gaming)

Social media could be used to advocate for professionalism and regulations, as well as to provide space for discussions and deeper understanding on such matters. In education, just as what Dr. Baker is doing, people from minority groups are given more voices to engage in conversations, debates and decision-making processes to represent their unique views and advocate for their values. This may not happen in other methods but social media could provide a great platform for such voices and values to be discovered and viewed by more people.

For healthcare or messaging to minor children, social media could play similar role in making the voices heard. Certain views could be presented and certain cases could be viewed by a greater amount of people and with the connecting ability of the internet and the power of the platform, small and rare cases could gather and make bigger voices to be heard.

Reference

Seyd, J. (2021) North Van District Principal to take on provincial role in Indigenous Education, North Shore News. Available at: https://www.nsnews.com/local-news/north-van-district-principal-to-take-on-provincial-role-in-indigenous-education-4800556 (Accessed: October 16, 2022).

Veletsianos, G. (2010) Emerging technologies in distance education. Edmonton, Edmonton: Au Press.

How diverse is your PLN?

The diversity of a PLN could be evaluated in many aspects. The types of social media platforms, the tags I want my digital identity to have, the people I follow or add friends with, the topics or groups I am in, the questions I search for, as well as the posts I create that shows who I am and what I am potentially interested in. I think all of these aspects could be captured and interpreted into a general idea of the diversity of our digital identity.

Having a diverse PLN can be good for personal learning and inquiring knowledge and information as you could get them from more resources and fields. Diverse ways of thinking could sometimes create beautiful results or even products. Therefore I try to make my PLN as diversity as possible.

Are you learning from a variety of diverse voices and are you expanding your understanding of the views of others?

I think I am learning from diverse voices by searching for, listening to and reading about one same topic from different resources. I also tend to discuss and make comments on other people’s posts or ideas while trying to include reading more people’s thoughts. I have not been actively trying to expand my understanding of the views of other but I do think that it is difficult to prevent because we tend to accept the views that we already believe in and find it hard to take in new ideas that we do not like or understand by default.

Although it is hard to not put our own views on other people’s opinions, I do try and break the habit by training myself to think more in the other people’s perspectives. Always ask why they would do, say or think in certain ways and reflect what I would do in that situation. I think it helps me to respect others views rather than making my views the only view I’d believe in.

What is a learning outcome of your PLN and how are you ensuring your exposure to diversity and inclusion?

One thing that I am in control of as to make my PLN more diverse, is that I try to use different social media platforms that have different features. For example, Twitter is really good to share and capture instant ideas and thoughts, as well as reaching out to strangers of the same interests. While blogs are more of a place for organized thoughts or even conclusions. TikTok on the other hand, presents ideas in a totally different way and all these platforms include different kinds of people of various backgrounds, interests and ways of thinking. The people I follow, be friends with or communicate to are also good in making my PLN diverse because I could active include people from different cultural, regional, educational backgrounds.

Another thing that I cannot quite control in terms of making my PLN diverse, is the digital identity that social media optimization engine recognize me as. We may all have had the experience that when we search for a keyword by accident on a platform, we start seeing similar things on that platform for the following days and like Shelley Moore mentioned in the Talk, the platforms seem to know better about what we like than ourselves do. These tags that the platforms put on us for our digital identity could make it difficult for us to see more diverse opinions, posts or discussions we would like to see.

“Always try something new” would be one thing I would like to start doing. Keep myself open-minded either when I see a new flavor of ice cream or a new type of phone application. Giving myself the tags so that either people or the search engine would recognize me as someone who would is open to new experience is my strategy to being more diverse and inclusive.

Digital Platforms for Professional Network Developing

Digital platforms that are used for developing professional network have various features. The ones that are used most includes Twitter, LinkedIn, and WordPress as we are using to create our blog posts. Twitter is great for reaching out for professional opinions and discussions. The openness of this platform has given us he opportunities to find any topic, any fields of study to find people of same interests. WordPress on the other hand, is great for building a personal page and recording one’s own ideas, resources and research results. These different features of the platforms allowed students to develop their network professionally.

Expanding Professional Learning Network (PLN)

By using these platforms properly, students could expand their PLN more efficiently. Students need to consider how to use the features of each type of platform to maximize the effort. For instance, when using Twitter as a platform, they could take into account the wide arrange of users as well as the hashtag function, the twitter chats function and the mentioning function so that they could get attention from people who may have similar interests in one topic. When using WordPress however, students should consider how to build their personal pages so that people would find it professional and want to reach out. They should also consider how to combine the use of both platforms to create better outcomes.

Data Privacy and PLN

Data privacy could limit a PLN in the way that the researchers’ access is limited. We may not be able to access to some personal studies or research results, or cannot add people we want to get in touch with as friends because of the privacy or security issues. This limitation could get in the way of some professional network developing. However, data privacy promotes a PLN by making sure that certain topics, studies, discussions are not disturbed by unrelated people or conversations. It also protects some research results and valuable contents and thus encourages original work.

Create a Digital Identity/ Reputation

Creating a digital identity is relatively simpler than creating a digital reputation. In my network, I would first create accounts on several popular media platforms such as Twitter, WordPress, facebook, LinkedIn etc, and having each account connected to the other so that they become a network itself. Then I would use the platforms where I could potentially reach out to more people, and use features such as mentioning, hashtags to comment on posts in my field of study to get attention from people who share my interests. Then I would build my own home page so that when people want to know more about me, they have a place to go to. This way I could build a digital identity and hopefully it develops into a reputation.

Social Media Connectivity, Professional Balance and Tendency to Work from Home

Working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic has changed a lot of how we see about work and communication. We used to take for granted that taking a good chunk of time commuting is necessary and having a physical office for all employees to work in and communicate face-to-face are important elements to most companies. For students and teachers, offline classes are also considered necessary for authentic learning to take place. However, after staying at home to work or study, a lot of people have realized that in some cases, we do not need physical contacts to work in certain fields, and in fact, this kind of working style sometimes is even more efficient and more convenient which saves commuting time and money for renting work places.

This has made us to reconsider the role social media plays in our lives and the importance of its connectivity. The powerful features of social media have provided us with strong and effective communication methods that can be used not only for leisure chatting but also professional communications of teaching, learning or work meetings. Rethinking what social media could do to our communication for work and study could potentially make these activities more efficient and economical.

Digital Identity

Digital identity is who a person presents to other netizens on the Internet. A person’s digital identity could show what they like, how they present themselves and their life online, who they see and talk to or any activities they could conduct online.

As the Internet becoming a necessary part of our life, digital identity is more important than ever. The video below explains what a digital identity is and why it is important. It also briefly explores the idea on how we could actively shape our digital identity.

Personal Versus Professional Digital Identity

Same as the different sides people have in our life, there are different aspects of digital identities one could show based on the scenarios of online interactions. We want to present our professional and capable sides when dealing with work related stuff, and kind and considerate towards friends and families. When it comes to the use of social media, the sides or identities we identify ourselves decides the functions of the social media we use.

When we want to present our professional and efficient sides, we use social media that focuses on efficiency and avoids personal information. While with our personal sides, we want to show the details of our life or share personal thoughts, feelings and connections.

The different kinds of use of social media are usually separate from one another and represent the different tags one person has.

Digital Identities Convergence and the Impacts/Benefits

Digital identities converge through personal networks such as personal learning network. Personal networks act like webs that reach out to other people while receiving the connections from others. It connects people from various fields, backgrounds, and break the barriers of location limits. It makes ideas wide-spread more easily and gives regular individuals more opportunities to express their voices.

It makes all voices heard, but at the same time, gives more chances for false ideas to be heard, shared and sometimes valued. As individuals, we should make use of our digital identity and expand our network for learning and creating good things. At the same time, we need to be aware of the negative impacts and be careful not to fall into the traps of false ideas or beliefs.

Reply to Kiera’s Post #2