- Feb 2025
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The spaces within a PLN are physical, digital, and hybrid places that support or enableprofessional knowledge building with and from others, such as conferences, workshops, webinars, Twitter chats,unconferences, Reddit forums, and massive open online courses (Trust & Prestridge, 2021). The tools within aPLN are physical resources (e.g., books, curriculum materials) and digital technologies (e.g., Internet searchdatabases, social bookmarking tools, blogs) that are used to access, curate, construct, and disseminateprofessional knowledge
This reminds me of Universal Design for Learning, which I have read about in other education classes. Although this concept applies to providing equal opportunities for all students within the classroom, I think the flexibility and range of technologies available in this system can help to effectuate this. Not only does this support children's different needs with a variety of resources, but educators as well, in improving their assessment, management, and planning of technologies within curriculum.
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Social media platforms can distract educators from focused endeavors (Levy, 2016),contribute to an erosion of boundaries for work that intensifies their labor (Fox & Bird, 2017; Selwyn et al., 2017), andmay point teachers toward content of dubious quality, as online teacherpreneurs frequently use platforms such asInstagram and Pinterest to advertise their products in online education resource marketplaces such asTeachersPayTeachers.com (Shelton et al., 2022). The quantity of content and people on social media can also proveoverwhelming as educators must critically assess what and whom to trust (Staudt Willet, 2019), and self-promotional,commercial, and spam content can make it difficult for educators to find the content and people that would be mosthelpful to them
I think that this demonstrates the depth of social media's detrimental effects, not only within school-based learning but for children's upbringing as well. Although some of these platforms may be appropriate for middle and high school students who have likely already been exposed, social media is very diverse, and can be distracting in terms of spam and external suggestions (ads). Furthermore, misinformation is a critical issue within social media, facing educators with the challenge of verifying the authenticity of their information.
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