Blog Post #3 PLN’s and Online Learning Communities
Growing up, I always loved music. It got me through everything, good and bad. Over the years I picked up many different instruments and just loved to make music—especially the guitar. That’s why I decided to research a guitar-learning community. I spent a good amount of time on Reddit’s r/guitarlessons community. It’s not only a great place to learn, share and play with others but other members of the community will post good websites, videos and content to learn outside of the page. Overall Reddit is full of different pages dedicated to specific topics and it’s an awesome platform to learn on.
I plan on using various social media platforms to promote and build my PLN. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok are great for marketing and promotion, as well as Google calendars for scheduling and organization. Sites like Discord and Reddit are also great for instructors and learners to communicate with each other as well as for teaching content.
When it comes down to identifying the right media platforms to use, I will research what platforms my target audience is most active on and go from there. I will also identify any specific features my PLN will require and select the best platforms with these criteria. I will have certain goals in mind such as a certain number of followers, however, what I plan to focus on is expanding my PLN. I also plan on staying engaged with the community, making sure that everyone is happy and everything is going smoothly. This includes sharing content, scheduling events, and communicating with others in the community.
Protecting information and ensuring ethical behaviour in a PLN is crucial for maintaining trust and safety. That’s why I will prioritize safety and security measures such as strong password requirements, 2-factor authentication, and limiting any public personal information. It is very important to provide community education on cybersecurity and how to safely use and maneuver the PLN. When it comes to ensuring ethical behaviour it is important to have a set of guidelines in place, and if anyone in the community breaches these rules then they are to be warned and if repeated then kicked out of the community. Human verification to prevent bots and catfishes is also something of importance, as anonymity can be potentially dangerous.
When it comes to joining online communities and sharing content, I tend to have little to no privacy concerns just because I make sure to share only what I am comfortable with online. Hackers are common nowadays, so that is the majority of my concern just because I have my bank card on my phone, so I tend to stick to very strong passwords when I use these platforms.