• What interests you about social media and personalized learning?
  • How do you currently use digital tools in your learning or professional life?
  • What is your understanding of digital literacy and its importance in education?
  • Describe any experiences you have with Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). How do you plan to develop and utilize your PLN through this course?

Question 1 What interests you about social media and personalized learning?

First, we need to understand what social media and personalized learning are, and what the definition of these two is. Secondly, I would like to talk about my cognition and interest in these two things. “intentionally builds, maintains and activates … contacts within her personal network for the purpose of improving her learning — and uses technology to support this activity — is creating a personal learning network（Rajagopal et. al）, social media refers to the software that can post their own news on mobile phones and computers and communicate with friends or strangers. The most typical apps include Facebook, Twitter, WeChat and so on. So what I’m interested in about these programs is that people can use these programs to collect information, to share information, to communicate with each other. Take the most classic edci338 website as an example, everyone publishes their own blog through openETC, leaves comments on classmates’ blogs, and gives likes. These are what social media and personalized learning bring us, and make me very interested.

picture retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/social-media.asp

Question 2 How do you currently use digital tools in your learning or professional life?

In today’s society, the use of digital tools is essential, which has become a fact in the rapid development of the network in the past two decades. Especially in the materials given by the professor, due to environmental factors, such as COVID-19, all schools have implemented online learning, which makes me more convinced of this view. In my daily life, digital tools have changed me, I am a mobile phone inseparable, almost everything is inseparable from it, shopping, socializing with others, playing games, receiving school learning materials and so on. This is the fact that most people use digital tools in today’s social environment.

Question 3 What is your understanding of digital literacy and its importance in education?

I didn’t have a clear idea of what digital literacy was until I read the professor’s paper, but after I read it, I got it. In my opinion, digital education refers to online education, which is also known as the Internet. In the process of surfing the Internet, there will be many events and risks. Now, the most well-known one is free speech, and people can freely comment on others’ works or their own works after they are released. However, if the author is subjected to malicious comments, it can be very traumatic for the author. Therefore, learners need to be able to identify risks, stay safe online, protect their physical and mental health, and practice positive online behaviors. (HAGUE & PAYTON, 2021)

Question 4 Describe any experiences you have with Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). How do you plan to develop and utilize your PLN through this course?

In today’s social environment, I think most people will build their own PLN intentionally or unintentionally. At the beginning, I did not know the word PLN, but after my in-depth study, I came to know what PLN is. PLN refers to the intentional creation of PLN to improve one’s learning ability. And make use of a large number of online and offline resources to complete learning tasks. So, PLN also exists in my daily life. A few years ago, in order to better learn English and improve myself, I created a strange and mutual help learning group on WeChat, and invited all my friends to join my group. They would share their experiences and provide some learning materials in the group chat. Learning English together, I benefited a lot from this learning group and got a lot of help.

Reference

What is a Personal Learning Network (PLN)?https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/learning-network-age/0/steps/24644

Understanding and developing Digital Literacy | World of Better Learning

Development of skills in Digital Literacy is crucial in helping students become lifelong learners. To help you understand what this involves, we have carried out extensive research to produce a Digital Literacy introductory guide for teachers and educational managers.https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2022/04/07/understanding-developing-digital-literacy/