The past few months in EDCI 338 have truly been a phenomenal learning experience. Living in a digital era, it is extremely important to know about all the benefits and challenges one can face using the internet. This course summarized a large range of advantages and disadvantages in using social media platforms, creating a PLN, managing it, and being aware of the risks involved. For example, privacy has always been of utmost importance for me when using social media. Besides LinkedIn, my content on all other social media platforms are limited to my friends on that platform. And I’m quite sure that I will keep it this way for the rest of my life. I was actually shocked when I googled my name and a deleted picture from LinkedIn showed up. Gasp!

One of the most important things I have learned in this course is the significance of having a professional learning network and the life-long learning that you gain from it. I have always been hesitant about adding people to my network that I have not personally met or talked to yet. However, this perspective has definitely changed during this course after considering all the benefits that come along with communicating with other people outside of your personal bubble. Having a PLN gives everyone a chance to share their passion, thoughts, knowledge, ideas, and insights. More so, it allows everyone to become their own leader.

I found Chapter 16 – 5 Simple Keys to Success and Influence, written by Qualman, extremely informative and engaging. One part that really stood out to me was making sure you provide your audience with enough information about a topic without causing a lot of confusion while keeping in mind that the content is not bombarded or overwhelming. I personally love to read what other people post however; it can be super exhausting when their content gets extremely long. So, I really like the suggestion given in this chapter about keeping the length of a post about half a page maximum. People will be more willing to read, and the content will be more engaging if it is concise and to the point.

The knowledge I have gained from this course will definitely stay with me and allow me to build a more impactful PLN. I am currently focused on LinkedIn because I am very career driven and I think it is currently a good platform for me. I would however, like to make a Twitter account some time in the future because of all the great things I’ve heard about in this course. It seems that Twitter has a greater ability to reach a wider and more diverse audience in a short amount of time than any other social media platform which is very beneficial for anyone trying to expand their PLN.

 

References:

Qualman, E. (2012). Digital Leader: 5 Simple Keys to Success and Influence. Empower Others. https://learning-oreilly-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/library/view/digital-leader-5/9780071792424/ch16.html