Reflect on your experience in the course, your development of PLN, your use of social media platforms and networked publics, any changes in your perspective of social media in professional settings and personal use.

Social media used to be entertaining tools for me in most cases. I would use the simple functions of some social media apps such as group chat or file transfer for studying purposes but in most cases, social media is the place where I watch news or get in touch with people. Reflecting on this course, I am surprised that social media platforms are actually an important component of PLN and with different features each platform has, they could work together to expend one’s PLN.

The PLN is also a new concept to me. I used to have the idea of a “knowledge database” that I could store in my laptop but knowing that a PLN is something that is more dynamic and interactive than my “old fashioned” knowledge database, I understood its necessity in having a professional development in my future of study and work.

Whether we realize it or not, I think we are more or less building our PLN with the technology that we use today. We would use different social media platforms when we have different needs from the internet and I think it is a proof that we are unconsciously building a PLN whether professionally or for personal use. Knowing and learning about the PLN in this course made me more aware of it and thus I could purposefully build my PLN towards the way I want it to be like. With the acknowledge and the ways to develop a PLN, I could also make use of the different features of the social media platforms and build my PLN more effectively and avoid potential problems that could occur such as lack of inclusion.