First off, I want to say there is so much I have learned about PLNs in this course. I had no idea what a PLN was when I already had my own PLN. I feel like many people can relate to that.

There are a few topics that really resonated with me throughout the course that I would like to share my thoughts on once again: digital identities, the importance of diversity in a PLN, and media literacy. I want to look at these from multiple standpoints as well, those being professional and personal learning networks.

First off, digital identities are something I was definitely aware of but hadn’t put much thought into. Every account we have on the internet is essentially its own identity, though can be connected with other accounts and identities, both intentionally and unintentionally.

As someone who streams live on YouTube for a public audience, me and my audience built up what my identity is based off of my content and how I behave when I stream. I go by “Catherine” on my YouTube channel, along with most of my other public social media accounts. Additionally, because of what my audience knows and doesn’t know about me, along with the fact that they don’t see me (as I currently don’t use a webcam), there are some interesting perceptions my audience has of me. One of these perceptions that is often brought up is that although none of my audience has seen me, they feel like I am probably 5’1, which is not at all true. Assumptions like these are based off of only the things we already know and see about a person. Sometimes the assumptions can be correct, but there have been many times where people incorrectly guessed my age, height, and even hobbies.

So, there are all sorts of things that can make up one digital identity. Some things you might decide for yourself, like how I go by a different name online, and then other things are assumptions that people have collectively made about your online persona.

Although we can create different identities, it’s also important to note that there are ways these identities could be connect. For instance, security breaches, although uncommon in some situations, can happen. I’ve had this happen before with instagram. Even though these identities can represent different parts of ourselves and there are some things we may not share on some accounts but share on other ones we own, it’s important that we be careful about what we post. We have to consider the possibility that our audience on one account might discover our other accounts. Not being careful about this could result in complete strangers finding personal information about you that you didn’t intend to share with that given audience. Additionally, employers may look for your social media accounts, so it’s important to keep that in mind and refrain from saying anything that could be deemed insensitive or offensive, as this could affect your employment.

 

The second topic I enjoyed hearing about was diversity. Thanks to social media, we are able to connect with people from all around the world, and as a result we can further develop our PLNs. Our online classes at UVic have allowed for more diverse PLNs than what I had experienced previously in my courses in person, since I’ve been able to collaborate with people living in all sorts of different places in the world. Had UVic not switched to online courses (for the most part), there would likely be many people who would choose not to study here because of travel and the fact that we’re in the middle of a pandemic. Many of my peers in my classes this semester currently live in different parts of Canada, but there are also many students from China as well.

Having a diverse PLN means we get to hear insights from the point of view of those who have differing backgrounds from us. Without this diversity, we would only get one part of a big picture. For instance, if we had a class where everyone was of the same gender, race, background, and had the same opinions, we would continue to have the same opinions as there is no differing opinion to change that. This is why the more diverse a group is, the more diverse opinions that may be shared, and therefore we would have more insights into things, thus adding more pieces to this bigger picture.

In the context of this course, I believe although we have quite a diverse group, with differing races, backgrounds, and fields of study, we could have a much more diverse group. However, only so many people are going to take a course like this, as depending on the field of study, some students might not find this course beneficial in their learning.

 

Lastly, my favourite topic we discussed in this class was media literacy. Media literacy is all about delving into what information you’re listening to, seeing, or reading. One common example would be online stores. There are many stores that sell products, but they don’t actually manufacture or have anything to do with the products whatsoever. Once you order something from these websites, they will order the product from elsewhere for a much cheaper price, and then send it to you. This is called drop shipping. Many websites will do this and then buy stuff from websites like AliExpress. In a scenario like this, being media literate would mean you would have to go out of your way to find out where this product is actually from before buying it. That way you can get it for the price that the website you originally looked at was buying it for, which is often significantly cheaper.

Now this is just one example and one of the more obvious times that we can be media literate, but we can be media literate on a daily basis by delving further into information, statements, and claims made by those in our PLNs. One of the difficulties with being media literate is that you might not want to be. Human beings don’t exactly enjoy being incorrect. Because of this, certain media will cater to certain people and opinions. This leads to biased information which might not share all sides of a story or might just be blatantly incorrect. It’s our individual responsibility to figure out if something is true or untrue. In some cases, things might be fact-checked by other parties for us. Twitter has been doing this very frequently with more popular accounts like Donald Trump’s account, where after the election, Donald Trump was still claiming he won. All these false claims were met with a fact-check notice by twitter, that said these statements may be untrue, and then attached links to reliable sources that had the actual election results along with other relevant information. Now it’s not twitter’s job to fact-check things for us, but it was good that they did so. It’s our own job to look into the reliability of a source along with what reasons the source was created, who it was made by, who funded the sources, and other relevant information.

 

Altogether, there is so much I had learned in this course that I never really thought about before. Yes, all three of these topics were topics I was previously aware of, but I had barely scratched the surface of it. All of these things are incredibly important in all contexts in our personal and professional lives. As I plan on teaching in the future, I also continue to learn. If I make sure to be cautious with my use of online resources, look into the legitimacy and fairness of sources, and continue to grow my own learning network, I can take into account what I learned here and better myself and the way I go about my online life.