It has been two weeks of exploring the topic of online participation and digital literacies with our PBL group members. Seems everybody has their own perspective on this.
For me, the scenario exactly described myself when the pandemic first started. Well selected, ONL course creators. Not to mention the online lessons, I totally had no clue where to start, what tools I would use, whether my students would listen to me online; but I remembered when I first had a meeting online, I could only hear from the speaker, and they could not hear from me, even though I turned the volume to the maximum, I was so frustrated and embarrassed. By the way, it turned out that I was not using the mic properly, the mic turned to the back of my head. 
Only 2 years after that, now you can see so many tools, more and more platforms can be used for online learning, meeting. In some way, this pandemic caused a revolution of online learning. My individual digital age is three years old I guess, still a toddler. I have a long way to go.
The “Visitors and Residents” mode online approach provides a model for engaging users and evaluating digital services to users through an exploration of individual behaviours and preferences1. I am certainly more of a visitor than a resident digitally so far. Whether or how we will become a resident, this ONL course will probably change my view of digital service.
ONL is not a easy course for me. I even thought of giving up when I first knew that I would need to take a 30 seconds video for self-introduction and sharing it with our cluster members. I rarely took video of myself, but eventually I overcame it because I wanted to continue with the course. You’ll never know until you try.After the first trial, I think I may be taking more videos in future and to post in my blog, become more close to a resident than a visitor of digital service.
During the group meeting , we explored platforms such as YouTube and WordPress blogs which may be used in the education purpose . One of our group members D who is an educator in movie producing field shared his YouTube channel, which looked very professional. He not only posted the films he directed, but also collated the teaching products from the top in the field for students’ convenience. This inspires me on the contents of my future channel.
I investigated WordPress blogs for education and found out there are over 409 million people viewing over 70 million new blog posts monthly. This is a big platform for education. Students can learn outside of the classroom and is easy to access within their free time. Kathleen Morris even listed 18 reasons of blog for education2.
References:
- Developing digital literacies (2014) JISC guide.
- www.kathleenamorris.com
