Throughout this term, I have learnt PLNs from both professional and personal perspectives to improve my personal learning. I still remembered in my first blog, I cited that “PLN is a life-long learning process.” This is so true to think that we will always learn something with other people as long as we share and interact with them online and maintain our connections. Before I took this course, I mostly used my social media as personal use/entertainment. I was not aware of its education function and professional use. I also posted randomly online and not aware of the importance internet security. After actively engaging in this course, I learnt that social media can also be my “online profolio”, and can be used for future career. Right now I followed more professionals in different areas and using hashtag to spread my thoughts. Previouslly I was a “quite” people online who rarely shared opinions, but now in order to be more engaging in and attract more people in my PLNs, I started to post online as well. For example, I actively reached out to other people who is going to keep studying in education area. They shared tons of great advice for my future academic career, now I have a clearer outline for my future steps.
By learning about digital identity and media literacy, I set myself a higher standard when I post and comment. First, I will check the validity of the information source. Next, I will see if the content of the information applies to my digital identity, whether it is a positive message or not, and will someone find this message offensive to read. And lastly, I will check whether this content will harm my “career identity” since I want to keep my digital identity professional for formal use. I will also double check when I leave a comment to someone else, whether the comment is critical, kind and positive to post. For the negative comments that left to me, as Qualman mentioned in the article, sometimes criticism is good, it leads you to improvements and be a better person. However, we should not always focus on these negative comments. If we only focus on the negative side, it will not only lead us to a depressed mood, and will reduce our posting motivation. This is so important to think about because I was afraid to post something because I was afraid that my post might be superficial or biased and get criticized by other people, and I rarely post my thoughts. Now I changed my mindset and view the criticism more openly and bravely.
In the future, I wish I can keep expanding my PLNs in both my personal and professional life. I want to keep this “lifelong learning” and be able to talk to more people who share similar interests with me online and see a bigger world.
Reference
Qualman, E. (2012). Digital leader: 5 simple keys to success and influence (1st ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Chapter Retrieved from: https://learning-oreilly-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/library/view/digital-leader-5/9780071792424/ch16.html
japaneseteacher April 4, 2021
Hi Alison,
Just like you, I learned a lot in this course and I cannot agree more that PLN is an ongoing, life-long learning environment that will keep on evolving as well as evolving YOU as long as you sat active and committed to it.
I remember talking with you and the rest of our group members about how our social media can now be our online portfolio, and how amazing that is because by utilizing the different features each social media have, for example – stories, polls, and question boxes on instagram, up votes and down votes on reddit, and favouriting and retweeting on twitter – it allows you to show more of you through these activities other than through your posts and comments. I personally like the highlight features on instagram because it adds on to the showcase, showing the more REAL self.
Now, with these great features, sometimes we could get too excited, and as you mentioned, we really do need to be careful what we post and how we leave our footprints because that can really get us if we give it a chance to be negatively perceived.
I can keep on going, but I would like to end here for now saying thank you for helping me learn through this course and giving me new insights and perspectives through your blogs and interactions in mattermost! 🙂
– Anna
jasminepathak April 8, 2021
Hi Alison,
Your point about lifelong learning really resonated with me. As we get older, who knows what types of social media/PLNs will be popular! Therefore, it is important to keep an open mind and be flexible.
yiwei April 8, 2021
Hi Alison, great blog.
I find myself a quiet person online as well, and just like you, I got to be more active to engage with more professionals to learn and expand my PLN. I believe this change may be uncomfortable at first, but we will eventually benefit from it. Media literacy could help both our personal and professional networking, it is an essential skill to master.