This week we touched on PLN in education. This topic excites me since I aim to develop a professional career in education. Mr. Brad Baker talks about how his local and international PLN encourage him to speak up his voice. Leading positive figures such as Mrs. Walker (15:08) and Learning Forward Institution (16:17) provide him with examples and encouragement to take a stand for his community. A crucial question that professor Miller post is whether exploring indigenous and racial struggles in the classroom could leave Mr. Baker vulnerable. This question raises my awareness because I have the same concern. As an international student who may hold different understandings of culture, history, and values compared to my students, I worried about my words could leave me embarrassed and vulnerable, and thus I often tend to skip or go easy on controversial topics such as racism. However, Baker’s claim, regarding “vulnerable as growth.” (13:05), really altered my opinion. It’s apparent that individual struggle is challenging, and thus support from one’s PLN becomes necessary. Baker argues that his PLN provided him true stories in fixing the misunderstanding about indigenous people being unadvanced people. Another unneglectable function of PLN is to connect learners with society.
In the article 21st Century Skills – Learning for Life In Our Times, Trilling indicates the lack of social interaction is the most common and severe consequence of distance learning. (63) In my experience, my passion for learning has declined since Uvic shifted classes online as COVID-19 took place. I contribute the declination of my grade and interests in learning to the lack of interaction with my professors and classmates. To be honest, sometimes I would even question whether I am still attending university. Students’ learning patterns could easily fall into the category of passive learning as interaction diminishes. As Trilling argues, untimely feedback from the instructors is another problem (63), and it could also result in passive learning. In this case, Mattermost plays as an essential social media platform to eliminate these problems. Mattermost allows students to communicate with each other and create active engagement; it also makes communication with the professor less formal and more personal and accessible; although I would argue that it couldn’t replace social interaction in reality. Professor Miller indicates that fewer students are active this semester in this course which I regard as inevitable. At the moment, social media indeed improves students’ engagement in courses, but it couldn’t reverse the momentum of student’s inclination toward passive learning as time proceeds.
Reference
Media Literacy – Facts Matter – Course YouTube Channel https://youtu.be/Z_T9RghwJlI
21st Century Skills – Learning for Life In Our Times Trilling, B & Fadel, C – Digital Literacy Skills – Media Literacy Chapter 4 pp.66 https://learning-oreilly-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/library/view/21st-century-skills/9780470475386/fade_9780470475386_oeb_c04_r1.html