Can your PLN be used to help professional development post-course?

Absolutely. Your PLN is a tool and community that you will be able to utilize for all aspects of life. Your PLN is something that will grow and strengthen with time as you develop it. However, if you do not understand the uses and benefits of a PLN, you could negatively affect your professional development. For instance, if someone is following 3000 meme accounts on Instagram and is not participating on LinkedIn, this may decrease the usefulness of their overall PLN. By keeping in mind the proper uses of a PLN and understanding what to avoid while building your PLN, you can create something that will be invaluable to you in any avenue of life.

Can your PLN be relied on to open professional opportunities and on which platform does your emerging expertise get good exposure?

Personally, I haven’t used my PLN as a professional tool as of yet, but with the information I am gathering in this class I will continue to move in the right direction. I believe that LinkedIn would be the best place to showcase your emerging professional expertise as it is a solely business based social media platform. Twitter would also be a good place to showcase expertise, but I believe that there are far too many distractions on that platform that could take away from the professionalism quite significantly. Instagram would fall into the same category as Twitter because it is also an extremely distracting platform that is not designed for professionalism.

Although Instagram and Twitter may not be places that exemplify professionalism, I believe that it is still very important for you to showcase yourself in a professional manner because you have no idea who is looking at what you’re posting. These platforms are still areas that are an important indicator of someone’s character and personality.

Can you leverage your PLN in future endeavours?

Once again, yes you can leverage your PLN in many aspects of life and your PLN will only continue to be more powerful for you as time goes on. One thing I’ve noticed personally is that the more people I am connected to on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., life becomes much easier. For example, the other day I texted my friend in a panic who works at Kirby’s Source for Sports to see if I could get my skates sharpened in an emergency before my hockey practice. He answered and happily sharpened my skates for me. Or the times when you need help on a school assignment and the professor isn’t answering your emails, it is important to have made those connections with students in class to be able to reach out to for help. It is simple things like this that add up every day that make my life so much easier.

How do you ensure that you expand your PLN via social media platforms into spaces that may be outside of your comfort zone?

One way to do this is to not remove someone from your PLN if they challenge your way of thinking. Most people create PLN’s that are extremely constrained and do not delve outside of their comfort zone which can cause someone to build a completely bias way of thinking. By hearing the stories and sides from others who didn’t grow up with the same experiences as you will help you grow and expand as a human being.

 

References

Del Giudice, M. Social media and emerging economies (p. Ch. 5).

A Global PLN – Supporting One Another – Course YouTube Channel https://youtu.be/RiWaXNfnHAg