Month: October 2021

Community engagement in a PLN requires content curation, which is, fining appropriate content and sharing with PLN followers in a style that creates value. I find curated content from companies and professionals who are better informed about their field than the audience. I create Twitter list for those organizations or individuals who post verified content that can add value to my PLN. BuzzoSumo is a too that helps me to find content that produce the highest engagement based on search terms and key words.

Using Curated content is essential for earning a good reputation as a trusted source of information and knowledge to a PLN (Navigating Social Journalism). Sharing content that creates engagement and debate on social media helps me to become a thought leader and grow my network. Whenever I share content, I let the content creators to know that I appreciate their post to make them approve my followership and to appreciate other contents that I share as well.

According to Vance (2021), the crucial questions to ask before sharing content are as follows: Is the content worth sharing or unique? Should the content be shared to the public or to specific individuals? Why would the content help them? Is the source trustworthy? I also share my personal thoughts on the content while sharing it with others, which generates debate and various opinions that can help me grow my thinking.

The social media has various risks especially for popular people like professional journalists, celebrities, companies, and popular lawmakers. This is because public conversations can generate opposing views especially in the international context (Doran et al., 2018). For example, Kamau Bobb, the former head of diversity at Google, was fired in 2021 for a post he had shared on public spaces in 2008. The post described the Jews as people with appetite for war because of their rivalry with the Palestinians. Taking that example that regards a professional in the diversity field, it is always good to think of how a certain post can affect a different group elsewhere.

References

Doran, H., Burdett, H., Butterworth, L., Crawford, T., Cenci, W., Chipampe, N. J., … & Wright, C. (2018). What Works?: Engaging the Public Through Social Media. https://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/sites/default/files/publication/what_works_engaging_the_public_through_social_media_november_2018.pdf

Navigating Social Journalism: A Handbook for Media Literacy and Citizen Journalism by Martin Hirst Chapter 6. Social Journalism and the Gig Economy pp.142. http://ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/login?

Vance, J. (2021). In the Public-Eye – Social Media and Broadcasting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-NnpQJdl0A

The first thing to consider is a PLN that reflects me in terms of my needs, interests, and focuses. According to Woods and Bianca (2013), it should be able to provide content that promotes learning and development by bringing together people with different skills, knowledge, experience, expertise, and ideas that can help me to learn. People on social media have an affluence of information, but the best PNP for me is one that provides information on my professional field and other things of interest. To build the network, I chat with people and ask them about their interests, professions, skills, strengths, weaknesses, and experiences. I also share my interest and my personal beliefs to help them know me. This helps us to establish a healthy relationship that promotes growth in the PLN. Structurally, my PLN is comprised of my contact, Twitter followers, those I have met along with online courses, tech leaders, and those I met in conferences and workshops in my professional field. The tools that I mostly use include Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress blogger, Edmodo, Facebook, and Edmodo. I mostly use Twitter because it has different ways of building a PLN. Contextually, Twitter followers are people seeking experiences beyond their lifestyles, including sharing links, engaging in debates, troubleshooting problems, and conferencing. I only need to follow my favorite experts, view their tweets to see what they do, and follow them to see more of what they do. I also retweet interesting posts to start a conversation about a topic. This helps me to view things from a different perspective. My PLN consists of people with an interest in software coding, graphic design, school teaching, video game development, and leadership. Connectivism theory relates to PLN in that it explains how learning is created through the digital environment (Couros, & Hildebrandt, 2016). Knowledge spreads across various nodes in a nebular network to create a connection between the nodes, as illustrated in Figure 1. Successful PLNs are dominated by connectedness, openness, autonomy, interactivity, and diversity (Downes, 2012).

References

Couros, A., & Hildebrandt, K. (2016). Designing of open and social learning. In Veletsianos, G. (Ed.), Emergence and innovation in digital learning: Foundations and applications (pp. 143-161). DOI: 10.15215/aupress/9781771991490.01

Downes, S. (2012). Connectivism and connective knowledge. Retrieved from http://www.downes.ca/post/58207

Woods, Bianca (2013). “Building your own PLN: seeking new insights and ideas? Expand your personal learning network.” T+D, vol. 67, no. 11, pp. 70+. Gale OneFile: Business, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A348998538/ITBC?u=uvictoria&sid=summon&xid=1010abdf. Accessed 18 Oct. 2021.

My PLN values diversity and inclusivity because we want to make it strong for everyone. Inclusivity in PLN is about supporting and providing opportunities for all members in the network to access and contribute, using their experiences and educational content, to make learning better and effective. The PLN is diverse because it includes people from different background, age, disability status, gender, and race. It doesn’t matter who you are, all that matters is your contribution to the network and the value you bring to it.

For students who struggle to create multimedia designs or blogs, we support them to ensure that they gain new skills that they need in their profession. We discuss different topics while ensuring that everyone feels equally respected, valued, and welcomed in the network. Our PLN uses the social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube to ensure that everyone participates in the learning regardless of their disability status. Inclusivity and diversity in the network happens through attending, understanding, and accepting student differences, which include academic, emotional, physical, cognitive, and social (Moore, 2017). Inclusion does not mean that members cannot spend time outside the regular network setting, because they may need particular interventions outside the learning settings. For example, there are online students who attend therapy because of their cognitive needs. Also, some foreign students attend additional classes to improve their English, both written and spoken, but they are still allowed to participate in the network despite their English proficiency.

The social media is a great tool for building inclusion and diversity in our PLN. For instance, some students learn better using pictures and videos while others learn better through infographics, music, and practice. The social media is helping us to use different tools to help everyone to learn in the way they feel comfortable (EDCI 338 interview video, 2021). This ensures that all members equally benefit within an inclusive environment. We will also look forward to increase diversity and inclusion in the team by involving more diverse students in the network.

References

Moore, S. (2017). One without the other: Stories of unity through diversity and inclusion (Vol. 1). Portage & Main Press. Introduction (Page 6-10) & Part 1 (Page 11-12). https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/lib/uvic/reader.action?docID=4832579&ppg=6.

EDCI 338 (2021, May 21). 20 Minutes Moore. Course Interview with Shelley Moore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeSV0rUl1bA

During week 4, we did a comparisson between personal and a professional digital identity. We also discussed social media privacy, ethic, and data security and performed a personal privacy mapping. We also discussed various contexts of social media use. The mapping includes personal versus institutional continuum on one side and visitor versus resident on the other side. These activities helped me to determine my engagement with the web and technology. In the visitor mode, digital spectrums are used without leaving social traces behind and once the intended task is completed, the tool is discarded. In the resident mode, the goal is to establish social media presence and connect with people, a relationship that leaves many social traces (Regan & Jesse, 2019). Figure 1 is a mapping of my social media engagement.

Another important part is whether social media is used for personal or institutional context. In the personal context, the language and interactions are mainly non-formal (White, 2017). However, formalities are observed in the institutional context. For example, when I use the work email, LinkedIn, and the blackboard, I have to observe all formalities pertaining to that institution. At times, I am a resident as I leave a few social traces behind. I use google, Mi community, and skillshare as a visitor and in personal context. Research sites such as research gate and ibisworld are used in the institutional and visitor context. However, Facebook, wordpress, and youtube are highly interactive and leave many social traces.

The digital identity also matters in any PLN. As part of learning activities, I undertook a privacy quiz that helped me to navigate my behavior on social media that relate to my privacy, security, and ethical code. This will help me to protect my privacy, data, and observe ethics when using social media for interactive learning and other social media use contexts.

References

The Digital Visitor and Resident Continuum White. D. (2017). V and R Mapping. Retrieved from http://daveowhite.com/vandr/vrmapping/

Privacy, Ethics & Security in Digital Spaces Developing Awareness of Privacy. https://digitaltattoo.ubc.ca/quizzes/privacy-and-surveillance/ Regan, P., & Jesse, J. (2019).

Visitor & Resident Maps http://experimental.worldcat.org/vandrmapping/signIn