Scared to be a digital dinosaur, I am stepping out from my comfort zone to join this ONL212 course.

My experience about social media is very limited. I used Facebook, but never upload my personal photos as I prefer to enjoy some privacy. So I am only using it as a platform to message my friends who are overseas.

Since COVID-19, I have gained two years of experience on organizing virtual activities via Zoom. I believe the online tools are convenient and can keep people safe without face to face gathering in the pandemic situation.

Having joined this course, I have put my first Gmail account in use, and even created a blog.

During these two weeks, I have been working with the FISh model. For the problem-based learning method, we have investigated some online social media tools: e.g. Tik Tok, Podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Blog, etc. During the one hour sessions conducted twice a week, I got my inspiration from my group members, listening to them share about interesting subjects on different online sources. We tried to explore the different online teaching tools which were chosen by us and compared their Pros and Cons.

My task was to investigate the suitability of YouTube as a social media tool for online education. After researching online, I realized that YouTube is a popular and powerful learning tool. Availability of free, high-quality, and informative videos online on platforms like YouTube are an intuitive addition to modern learning environments. Educators, students, and parents all agree on the effectiveness of online videos as a teaching-learning tool. The best thing about YouTube videos is that they can easily be integrated into a variety of educational systems appropriate for online education.

There are 2 billion active users on YT and 500 hours of video content uploaded every minute.

It is evident that video content has greater appeal and attracts more users compared to any other type of content. From my experience, YouTube is better than the contents of PPT as a normal teaching tool. Thus, I believe online tools are useful and convenient.  

The topic of digital literacy is important. I find myself intrigued to know more about online platforms and want to get personalize experiences. I was facing challenges and struggling to catch up with my team, as most of them having some experience of using online teaching tools. Even though I felt pressured, I still persist to continue with the learning journey together with the members of my group from different countries.

Hopefully, I will get a fruitful outcome after the ONL212 course.