Weekly Report & Reflection #5: Using technology to our advantage

It seems that in the past decade we, as a global society, have become more engaged, educated, connected, and interested in current events than ever before in human history. From pulling out a quiver, writing in cursive, rolling the letter, stamping it, attaching it to a pigeon, and waiting for it to arrive to simply pulling out our phone, writing a 140-character post, and pressing submit. The advancement of technology to make communicating our ideas is evident, and it is up to us to make use of this. I think the purest way to view Twitter is as a device or tool that works to develop our personal learning network. By simply posting something of interest to us we are sharing an item that describes us. Following and liking posts from another keeps us engaged with our areas of interest and can contribute valuable knowledge that can make our disciplines more well-rounded. For example, my Twitter feed displays posts from one of my best friends, @jordiegee; Tourism Canada, @ctccct; the United Nations, @UN; and Brock University, @BrockUniversity. So what can you gain from this? Well, my friend illustrates the type of person I associate with and what I want to learn from this. She is a interesting soul that is interested in sustainability, her school, rowing, and living life to the full. Tourism Canada shows how I am interested in Canadian landscapes and must be interested in travelling. The UN might mean that I am interested in foreign policy, global issues, human rights, etc. While Brock University concerns my education, where I have gone, and the engagement in news that they deliver. Simply focusing on my online footsteps are very telling of my character, and is very beneficial to my learning and what people can learn from me.
I hesitate considering to add this into my PLE because I find Twitter to be a distraction from my learning. I often find it difficult to sort through the massive amounts of information I receive, and cannot distinguish academic, informative, or entertainment information from each other. For this reason, I cannot bring myself to adding it in, because it might actually take me away from developing my education. Albeit, My personal preference should not deter anyone using this tool. This tool utilizes many strengths from the PLE diagram; not only does it work to connect, but it can help with to aggregate, create, collaborate, and organize. My main purpose for these exercises has been to connect with people and us it to aggregate information. It also works in reciprocity. 

Yee, N. (CC) 2014.

Simply posting something that is significant and interesting to me may help my colleagues with areas that they might struggle with. In the picture above, it illustrates the ease of being a helpful digital citizen. Twitter's use of hashtags can be a filter that my colleagues use to find similar informative posts. In this Brock University Blog post, there is useful information that can contribute to my fellow ADED classmates understanding. In the article, it mentions the need to participate, and in the online context, Twitter is such a powerful way to participate and show important details to classmates and professors, if their technological situation permits. 

I think it is so important to realize how all of us have a digital citizenship, and that we should continue to be accountable when posting. Posting something inappropriate will be attached to our PLE for others to see for all time, so we best be on our best behaviour!

For the following weeks, I look forward to learning more from Twitter, but as of now I cannot say I will keep it for personal use after this class - but who knows, my opinion might change and maybe it will be an important part of my PLE.

Later days,

Nathan