This is the final week of the course EDCI 339, we are asked to participate in a twitterchat with instructors and learners, I have discussed some thoughts on having discussions and observing on Twitter in my previous post. I remember when I first entered the class, I was worried about not having any knowledge regarding open and distributed learning. Due to covid-19, a lot of schools have shifted face-to-face classes to online learning in order to minimize the impact. It is my first time learning in an open platform, through experiencing and exploring in this course, I started to understand how social media can be used as an open source for education. Despite the fact that there are problems such as, security and privacy issues, being too distracting, time-consuming and addictive etc, I believe that advantages outweigh the disadvantages. On one hand, delivering through online classes gives students opportunities to learn in a more complex and rich environment, on the other, also requires student to have a good self-discipline and time management. When discussing about the benefits of e-learning, there are voices like helping students to save money for transportation and textbooks, aspects of flexibility and accessibility etc. It is interesting to explore different viewpoints so we can have a better understanding of open and distributed learning and protect ourselves on the internet. I also remember when we worked on the pod project as a team, it worked out surprisingly well. It was a great chance to share thoughts and opinions with people from around the world. 

 

As an international student in a foreign country, unlike native speaker, sometimes it is hard to express without thinking when communicating with others in a classroom-based environment. People like us need platform like Twitter to express our thoughts. While coping with covid-19, it also proves that educators shouldn’t rely too much on physical classroom as we should always find a way to learn. It may a challenge for a lot of us to get used to a new learning environment, as a learner, I take it as an opportunity to explore in a new platform.