• How does a PLN help and hinder the development of thoughts and ideas in education discourse?

Discourse means either a spoken or written form of communication between 2 or more people. Discourse in education is the act of a person discussing and conveying their thoughts about topics with their peers. Discourse is the main reason behind education as without communicating and sharing of ideas there will be little to no learning.

A PLN helps greatly for this as it is a network of like-minded people who are ready to help and provide resources of their own to help you gain knowledge about the topics you talk about.

However, one drawback is that sometimes you cannot trust everyone on your PLN and be comfortable enough to share all your thoughts which would hinder the development of your thoughts and ideas.

  • How do educators create discourse?

The educator would be able to help students reach out to other educators who may be of particular interest to them and who could share their experiences and knowledge with them. Over time this would help students broaden their PLNs as well.

If it’s a very large class and the educator is unable to give personalised feedback to every single student in the class they can encourage other students in the course to interact or maybe even get people outside this course to interact for example by sharing a student’s blog with their PLN.

  • What is the role of social media in education?

It gives you a social reputation. Developing a PLN through the use of social media helps you make long-term connections with your peers. It also helps us greatly with assignments as it provides us with an endless amount of resources.

  • What are some problems with social media communications in educational settings?

Some people often complain that they don’t get the feedback that they need until they crate a well enough PLN and build their own platform which takes time.

It is sometimes very intimidating to share your thoughts on a public platform and may discourage you from expressing what you actually feel about some topic.

  • Which social media platforms are beneficial in education?

The essential social media tools in our experience are
blogging platforms (WordPress), social bookmarking (Delicious,
Diigo), photo sharing (Flickr, Instagram), video sharing (YouTube), microblogging (Twitter), and other social networking platforms (Google+).

  • When working with the vulnerable sector, how does social media fit into professionalism and regulations?

Social media can be a very scary and dark place for the vulnerable sector. Sexualization of minors and harmful or dangerous acts are some things you might see on these platforms which may be pretty disturbing and might even influence kids to follow the same path.

In order to avoid this, people have taken steps to increase the amount of existing child-friendly content on the Internet and make it a place where the vulnerable sector would feel safe and protected.