Flight Path

Current Coordinates

Going into this course I would say that I have a lot of experience using both social media and technology overall, but very little experience using social media as a tool for professional development. I use 5 platforms in my day to day life, google, twitter, reddit, youtube, and instagram, and they all serve a different purpose. Twitter is used mainly for keeping up with my interests (the Canadiens, Tottenham, some gaming info, etc), Instagram is used for keeping up with friends and people I don’t see as often as I once did, and Youtube is my main source of daily content, whether that’s a tutorial, a new video from someone I watch for pure enjoyment, or background noise.

When I actually want or need to learn something, Google is always my first choice. From there I might go to youtube if I think that a visual explanation would be more useful (ex. building a computer), and if the problem is really niche I go to reddit (ex. why am I experiencing this issue with my graphics card, a reddit user suggested going back to a 2025 driver and posted the link). I enjoy researching and troubleshooting technical problems, which is probably one of the reasons I’m confident and comfortable with technology in general, but I’ve never really considered these as “personalized learning” before (until now…). My previous courses at UVic have touched on topics like online ethics and data/personal info usage, but I’ve never taken a course that is specifically focused on our online behaviour or anything social media related.

Mapping the Route

The course outcome I’m most interested in is understanding how social media can support personalized learning and how it relates to learning theories. I already use the internet constantly to teach myself things, so I’m looking forward to understanding why certain methods work better for me and how they might work differently for someone else.

This kind of relates to one of my personal course goals of becoming better at explaining/teaching ideas to other people. For example, I’d like to be able to explain the things I’ve learned and gotten comfortable with in the HINF program to my grandparents without assuming they have the background knowledge that I do. Being knowledgeable about something doesn’t mean you can teach it, so that’s something I’d like to improve upon in this course.

I also want to get better at using and understanding LinkedIn and professional networking. I’ve barely used my LinkedIn account since creating it for my previous co-op course requirement, but with graduation coming up in the spring, it will likely be really important when I begin looking for work soon.

Anticipating Turbulence

I think my biggest challenge will actually be the asynchronous structure of this course. Having course info outside of Brightspace isn’t necessarily a problem, but it creates another place that I need to remember to go check, and I’ve already learned that it can be REALLY easy for things to slip by.

The first step to fixing/addressing this problem is putting all known assignment dates into my google calendar and setting up reminders well in advance of each respective due date. I also have a whiteboard I want to start using so that I can visually map out upcoming work. I find it a lot easier to understand my workload when I can see everything from a broader monthly or bi weekly perspective. This method helped me a lot in my first 2 years at UVic when the amount of course work was incredibly new to me, I found that a visual board for workloads makes things feel a lot less bigger than they really are. So the overall challenge for me this term is less about time and more about making a system that keeps me prepared but also holds me accountable because it eliminates a lot of easy excuses.