Examine the application of social media to support learning

Throughout the course, my learning pod had chosen RED as our social media platform and supported our learning. To briefly explain a little bit about RED, RED is a Chinese social media and e-commerce platform launched in 2013 with more than 300 million users and monthly active users on RED exceed 200 billion by 2021. RED is also a Personal Learning Network and it simplifies our way of learning, despite educational information users can find on RED, they can also find all kinds of other useful information such as restaurants recommendations, discount information, hotel recommendations, etc. RED is a combination of a lot of social media platforms, users can generate posts, follow and unfollow influencers like Instagram, it also allows users to shop within applications like eBay. RED is one of the successful examples of social media platform that has a lot of functionalities, as I mentioned Metaverse in my Wow and Wonder post, Metaverse also combines a lot of functionalities and it has a strong connection with our real life because you can even sell and buy households within the platform, I cannot wait to explore the Metaverse and learn about it like how I learned RED.

Explain personalized learning and its relation to learning theory

While researching on RED, I think I have a better understanding of personalized learning, at the start of the course, I thought personalized learning is just a learning theory that we use in school, to come up with different learning plans for every single student, and these plans are based on how they learn, what they know, and what their skills and interests are. These plans are indented to make students learn better and it is the opposite of what learning theory we used in school right now which is only having one learning plan for all students. After our major project, I realized that not only educational institutions will apply personalized learning, but so are social media platforms, and social media apply this method even more than educational institutions. Nowadays, all kinds of social media platforms will learn users’ likes and dislikes then depending on each user and generate suitable content for users, RED uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to decide what to put on each user’s Explore section, so users can browse contents that are related to them.

Recognize that the Internet is not a neutral or equal space for everyone

Social media relies on the Internet heavily, and the Internet is definitely not a neutral or equal space for everyone, in my Wow and Wonder post I talked about privacy, when our privacy is being protected, some people seize this opportunity and do a lot of negative actions that they wouldn’t do in real life, they think the Internet is like a port for them to express their negative energy, sometimes they even harm others while expressing their feelings. I have seen a lot of negative and even vicious comments while researching on RED, under some influencers’ posts, there are some strangers who are willing to leave vicious comments which shows that the Internet is no doubt an unneutral and unequal space. However, when privacy is not being protected by the Internet, it will also cause a lot of problems, one of the most worrisome is information leakage; in this digital era, information leakage can lead to serious consequences.

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

To develop a suitable personal learning network for myself on RED, firstly, I will aim for the Nearby function of the app. While researching on RED, I noticed that there are users who will create a group chat for each course, and then post the link to the group chats so that students who go to the same class can share information and discuss within. This is one of the aspects that I look for in supporting my professional development. As for my personal development, I will be mainly focusing on the Explore section on RED, since RED uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to calculate my interests, so most of the contents in this section will be something I enjoy. As mentioned in my teammate’s post, the development of science and technology brings more benefits in this case, and it makes your life on social media more continent.

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

There are some severe privacy issues that existed on RED, I am a user of RED, and the advertisement that I see on RED is really connected with my daily life. For example, if the morning I talked with my friends about shoes I want to buy, and at night when I browse through the Explore section of RED, there is a big chance that I can see advertisements for shoes. It creeps me out because I feel like my privacy is being invaded too much, I heard about some conspiracy theory that your smartphones always spy on you so that social media will know exactly what to advertise to you. It is not legal nor ethical to invade people’s privacy this much, but I feel like it is a certain consequence of Connectivism, it is now a digital era, and it is inevitable to lose some of our privacy.

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

There are some data ownership issues that existed on RED. Some users will simply use others’ posts or work that they see on some other platform and then post on RED to attract audiences. I have seen a lot of cases that which the original author commented below saying that the influencers have copied their idea or worst, use their identity. In Jessie’s post, she lost her credit card and then experienced her identity being stolen, and it is a really bad experience. Thus, the copyright issue is one of the major privacy issues. However, there are also some behaviours that are legal on RED: some users will tag the original influencers in their posts if they have used their idea or face picture, some others will comment below the posts and get the permission of the influencers then they will use their work.

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

I enjoyed a lot doing our major project, because personally, I use a whole bunch of social media platforms, and it is helpful for me to know all the pros and cons while using social media platforms. I can now use all kinds of different platforms using the PLN method we learned in EDCI 338, and I am able to design myself the suitable learning plan. After learning about screen surveillance of social media, I can protect my privacy more carefully by not giving applications a lot of permissions. To conclude, I feel like this course taught me useful knowledge to better protect ourself in this digital era.