John Schaidler on Unsplash
I think my PLN is still at its early forming and developing stage. I would say that diversity is partially shown from my PLN – I am usually the viewer and receiver of different ideas but there are no obvious “reciprocal” learning activities going on, and my contacts and followers often overlap each other from different platforms that I use. I expanded my followings usually during the course of my sociology (and other) classes where I can often get the rigorous and popular ideas from solid sources on social media. I am aware that I should include and accept multiple ideas from different people, but I am still finding my communities. I get pieces of knowledge and ideas from my friends and their topics of interests as they are all over the world, but I did not share much online – which, after reflecting about the concept of community contribution, I think I should make some change. My (previously) unexpected learning outcomes involve different ideas relating to policy reformations, climate activism, labour justice, practical gender studies, etc.
After listing them out I realized how much I have learned so far simply as a silent viewer. I would say that the main thing about my infant PLN is that I do not try much to find things that I am not interest in, either with people that I know or from public media platforms, since I did not treat them as serious learning pathways – unless I am watching a lecture on YouTube or listening an activists’ interview. I recognize fully that the power of public media in its function in the “formation of publics” (Clark & Aufderheide, 2011, p. 55), and now I think I will start to to relook the potential of my PLN.
One thing that I resonate with Moore is that I have never thought that I can be someone that others can learn from. It is about the ability to “other” myself in the context of learning and educating. In addition, I think how the word “inclusion” is being contaminated by rigid and limited pedagogy and public interpretations, as Moore and Schnellert point out (2016), could be one of the reason that why my awareness of a reciprocal PLN is behind. I remembered that from one of my classes when the professor asked about what students can think of the word “diversity”, and the first answer out from the class was “tokenism”. I think that is a sign of the need of change in understanding inclusion and diversity as from within rather than the other way round, like one being an other in an others’, inclusive world.
References
Clark, J., Aufderheide, P. (2011). A New Vision for Public Media. In: Jansen, S.C., Pooley, J., Taub-Pervizpour, L. (eds) Media and Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119796_5
Moore, S., & Schnellert, L. (2016). One without the other: Stories of unity through diversity and inclusion. Portage & Main Press.
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