Education and PLN’s

As an indigenous person, this week’s interview was an exciting and inspirational one to watch. It is great to see representation of indigenous communities and Baker brings many important points to light. One of the points he mentions that I found connected to last week’s interview is the idea that his PLN supports him. Vance highlighted the importance of having a supporting PLN to weather negative people and their comments and Baker mentions that a supportive PLN is important in a professional setting as well. Baker expands on this notion by adding that his PLN challenges him, which I think is almost, if not just as, important as having a supportive PLN. I think that you need to have balance between the two, in a way that you feel completely supported by your PLN, however, you feel that they challenge you just enough to allow you to adapt to new ways of thinking and acting. For example, my current job has allowed me to meet an array of new people, but I’ve found that I often closely befriend the ones who support me and know how to effectively challenge my ways of thinking. Another great point brought up by Baker is having healthy dialogue. I honestly believe that if more of our society was capable of engaging in a healthy dialogue, there would be significant improvements within our communities. I just recently had discussed with my co-worker last week about the impact that having a conversation with someone about their behaviours, comments, or beliefs can have. It can allow them to have an opportunity to explain themselves, or possibly even change what it is that they’re saying or doing. One of our mutual coworkers will make misogynistic comments from time to time and we finally opened a dialogue with him about his behaviour, which has made him more self-aware about how his words can impact the people around him. Unfortunately, his behaviours did not change overnight, rather it is a process that will take time to evolve.

Education is something that occurs in many environments, such as our schools, workplace, family, and peers. Social media is a crucial aspect of education expansion and associated communications. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the vast majority of us just how crucial social media is for the expansion of education, but also necessary communications. For instance, social media has allowed us as individuals to continue to feel like we are a part of our community by providing a space to engage with others and find answers to questions and concerns. Social media sites, such as Zoom, have allowed for us to communicate “face-to-face” with our professors and classmates. Although this somewhat foreign form of education took some time to adapt to, it has slowly become the new norm for our society. Just like most things, online education has its advantages and disadvantages. Some advantages including the ability to watch lectures repeatedly, increased schedule flexibility, and the opportunity to roll out of bed just before class. However, disadvantages include technical difficulties, time constraints, and lack of in-person interactions.

Although, having the best of both worlds would be ideal. In an ideal world with no pandemic, classes will resume back on campus and students and teachers will be able to actively engage with social media as they please, rather than being forced to adapt to new ways of teaching that are not favoured by all. Social media plays an important role in the realm of teaching because if teachers appropriately engage with social media activities such as blogging and wikis, they can effectively expand their personal learning environment, thus effectively having more knowledge to share with their learners (Veletsianos 128-138).

To wrap this up, our PLN’s should be diverse, supportive networks that allow us to adopt new ways of thinking. They should encourage us to increase our self-awareness and inform us of new ideas. Advancing technologies create opportunities to diversify our learning experiences and with knowledge comes power.

References

Miller, Jesse. “EDCI 338 – BRAD BAKER.” YouTube, uploaded by MILLER, 04 Mar. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy63SmEpvCw.

Emerging Technologies in Distance Education, by George Veletsianos, AU Press, 2010, pp. 128–138.