Category: EDCI 338

Examine the application of social media to support learning

In this day and age, social media has a huge presence in our lives and it is safe to say that a large amount of the information that we learn can be supported through digital technologies. Various platforms allow and encourage learning online through communication and have given people a place to come and share ideas and information. For my group’s major project, we had chosen Discord as the platform that we were going to investigate and analyze. Discord is a communication-based platform where people create groups and servers where people can discuss and share information on certain topics. Discord would be a helpful social media platform that supports learning. The platform even encourages teachers to join to be able to communicate with their classes online and share coursework on a teacher server.  Various other social media technologies also promote positive learning in many different ways. I find myself learning new things every day through social media platforms such as Tiktok, YouTube, Reddit, and so much more. Learning using online platforms can be helpful as you can reach out and connect with a large number of individuals who are from various demographics and have different life experiences. Social media broadens our learning range entirely from what it once was in the last couple of decades. 

Explain personalized learning and its relation to learning theory

The framework in which we learn has been an everchanging construct that we as a society have had to adapt to. From reading George Siemens’ article, Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age, I was able to thoroughly examine the concept of connectivism, which I had found to be quite interesting.  In my showcase post, I had expand on connectivism and the theory of learning. I made note of how important our connections are with gaining knowledge and that we depend on other people to pass down the knowledge from their personal experiences. As individuals, we all have different needs when we are learning and may require alternative approaches to understanding information. My classmate, Ruth Ma, made a point in her week 3 wow & wonder blog post that I imagine many people can relate to, “I find learning from experiences like co-op placements, group projects, social media, personal learning, and collaborating with peers more beneficial and effective than just sitting in a lecture”. The traditional structure of teaching, such as through lectures and showing slides can sometimes be challenging for people to reach their full potential when learning. What I plan to take away from this when moving forward with my university career is to analyze the way I am being taught and see if there are ways that I can adapt and add to make the learning process more fitted to my personal needs.

Apply social media to develop a personal learning network in support of your personal and/or professional development

Social media can have a variety of different purposes depending on the individual and what they want to portray given a certain platform. George Veletsianos’, Emerging Technologies in Distance Education, gave me a strong understanding of how essential all the different social media platforms that I use are in regard to developing my own PLN. Some of the main social media platforms that I would consider to have a major impact in my personal learning network would be Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube, Twitter, and Tiktok. I generally use these for personal reasons, such as to stay connected with friends, family, and to reach people from all over the world. I also have LinkedIn, which would definitely fall into the professional sector of my PLN. After viewing group 8’s major project on Instagram, I feel encouraged and would really like to expand my own instagram as a way to connect with brands and other creators, as I only use mine for personal use.

Identify privacy issues and practice online behaviours that are legal, safe, consensual, and ethical

Online privacy is a major issue and can be a serious concern for the users of any social media platform. While digital platforms aim to keep us safe by tracking the content we consume and share, we allow for our data to be available to these platforms, which we do not have much control over. My classmate, Kayla Krug, made note in her wow & wonder #6 post about the concerns over ads and how you may ‘like’ a post on one platform or even search something on the internet, and there will be ads for it on multiple platforms. This has happened to me countless times and every single time it makes me feel uncomfortable and as if I am being watched. While surveillance is a huge concern for social media users, I sometimes feel as though not many people seem to have much response towards the corporations that authorize  the data collection. In my 6th wow & wonder post I posed the question, do the benefits of social media outweigh the cons? This is something that I still wonder, however in some sense I feel that my personal response would be to say yes. I try my best to use social media in the safest way by not posting anything that is harmful to me or anyone else, but there remains the concernment on how social media tracking and data breaching will impact our society in years to come. 

Recognize data ownership and licensing (Creative Commons, Copyright, Fair Dealing, and Public Domain) as a core practice when creating, sharing, or using resources online

Copyright, data ownership, and licensing has been a rising issue among users of digital media. Providing credit where credit is due is highly important for users of social media in order to be safe for yourself when sharing content, as well as for the audience to whom it reaches to be able to backtrack where certain information or content came from. Mia’s showcase post helped me further understand the how copyrights work and can have an impact on social media, such as Tiktok. She explains that when people make a tiktok that infringes on someones copyrights of a certain audio, the video that you made can be deleted and even go as for as to take legal action. It is crucial to check whether the content that you share not only falls in the boundaries of the community guidelines of a certain platform, but also that the ownership of the content you create is not infringing on anyone’s copyrights.

Practice digital, networked, and open literacies in support of learning about social media and personalized learning

There are so many important aspects to building a PLN and navigating digital media. I believe that one of the key elements to viewing anything that you find online is to be able to confirm if the information is accurate. When I was researching information for my major project, I had to take the time to learn about media literacy and all of the concerns about the spread of misinformation and disinformation. One of the sources that helped me grasp the concept was through a Youtube video by Crash Course. This was very fascinating to me and I feel that I have learned a lot about creating and consuming content. I feel that this translates well into this course as we have used hyperlinks to connect the information we refer to in order to minimize any misinformation. Another point I would like to add is how for our week 6 topic we read, Its not Misinformation. Its amplified Propoganda, by Renée DiResta. My main take away from this article is how social media can sway our perception of news, events, and any other information we come across. You do not have to be a lisenced doctor or a professional in a certain field to be able to share content, which can be quite harmful towards the public if the content being shared is inaccurate. Most digital media platforms have some sort of content tracker that can remove misinformation, but there is still a concerning amount of inaccurate information out there. I think that the saying, “don’t believe everything you see on the internet”, is a good notion to keep in mind while navigating life on social media. 

To conclude, I would like to thank you for reading my blog post. This class has really opened my eyes and broadened my lens on technology and social media.

Wow:

I really enjoyed the content that we analyzed this week. Surveillance capitalism is a very serious issue regarding our society and it is important to recognize how we are being monitored through technology. I thought that the short films that we watched had done a really good job of portraying how concerning and invasive technology will likely be in the near future. I enjoyed watching all of the short films however, my personal favourite is Blaxites. I found it very shocking that the woman’s doctor had access to her social media and was able to deny her any medical prescriptions due to what she posts online. It is certainly scary to consider how social media may have a hold over our rights and can potentially dictate how we live. Obviously, we are not fully there yet, but who’s to say that we are not on that path? With technology advancing at an exponential rate, we should definitely be concerned with our privacy and the information that is collected by corporations.

Wonder:

A few things that I wonder about from overviewing and unpacking this week’s content is, knowing that social media and big corporations are able to access our data and that privacy is somewhat limited, why are we so compliant with giving out information on ourselves? And do the benefits of social media outweigh the cons? (I feel like the second question is more dependent on the individual)

Wow:

I have found this week’s article, It’s Not Misinformation. It’s Amplified Propaganda, by Renée DiResta, to be quite fascinating. She had introduced me to the word, ‘ampliganda’ (though it is not necessarily a real word yet). I thought that this concept was interesting and very relevant to how social media sways our perception of news and events. I particularly found it interesting when she had noted that anyone can have an influence. This to me is very true, as it does not matter how many followers one may have, they still hold an influence and are able to alter the opinions of their audiences. While I do believe this to be very intriguing, there is also plenty of room for concern, anyone is capable of spreading misinformation.

Wonder:

One question that arose while reading the article was: How different would the two world wars have been if there was access to the same technology as there is today? With the unfortunate news of Russia posing war on Ukraine, we get to see firsthand how the advancement of technology and social media will have on such events.

Wow:

I found reading Shelly Moore’s, One without the other: Stories of unity through diversity and inclusion, to be very insightful and fascinating. I really liked when she said that, “We are diverse. All of us”, as it highlights that no specific groups are different or outcasts, but that we all as individuals are unique and have different strengths. I also thought that the use of the bubbles for showing, segregation, integration, exclusion, and inclusion, was a really good way to visualize their meanings.

Wonder:

This week my wonder comes from the Shelly Moore’s video, The Evolution of Inclusion: The past and future of education. Shelly had concluded her youtube video with the question, how can we do better? And, do you think there will be another inclusion evolution? After reading her ebook article and watching the video, I was led to wonder the same. I do believe that society has come very far regarding inclusivity, however there is always room for improvement and there are still many issues concerning diversity. From this I wonder what potential changes are in store for the future and how we can build a more inclusive society.

In this weeks article, Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age, I had found a few points that I had stood out to me. I remember first learning about connectivism through a sociology class I took, so this isn’t my first time gaging the concept. However, I did find the ‘chaos’ concept quite interesting, as it helped me further understand connectivisim, specifically by connecting “everything to everything”. Also, I think that it is really fascinating to undertsand how digital tools have completely changed how we learn, specifically in comparison to the past, where most knowledge was taught through school alone. This has reminded me of conversations I have had with friends where we have discussed how complex learning is today than in the past and that we have learned so much through platforms like Tiktok, Instagram, and Reddit. All this considered, I now wonder where we will be in the future and how learning will be in many years to come. In a society that is so immersed in technology, what is next? How will learning change? Technology has changed so rapidly just over that last decade, so it is probable to think that there will definitely be vast amounts of advancements.

This week, the article that caught my eye, was the Networked society. One of the points made in this article that stood out to me was the mention of 23andMe. I have always been curious to use it to find out more about my ancestry, however I have been skeptical considering that my DNA would be put in a database that could be accessed by unknown people. After reading the article this had made me aware of how this could affect the privacy of not only myself, but my entire family and even future family.

From that same point I wonder what the company’s responsibility is to the client in order to protect their privacy. Also how can they protect the information from potential hackers?