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Using social media to connect with a community of learners Previous education is in a frame that has many restrictions on learning academic knowledge. In the past, men can go to school while women cannot in some countries. Also, the upper class can go to school while the lower class cannot. However, nowadays education becomes more popular than before. Most people have the right to learn. Compared to traditional education, open education is flexible. For example, it open to everyone. Also, the resource open to everyone as well. I think online learning is suited to on-campus learning for open education. It is because online learning is more flexible than on-campus learning. I think learning should not be limited by age, area, and economic condition. Open education is a platform that satisfies these kinds of conditions. For example, it does not limit people’s age. It is for everyone willing to learn. Also, it does not limit people’s area. For example, if I am in China, I can still learn by sharing a resource or connected community. Besides, open education is free. This is good for people who want to learn and hard to afford tuition. For example, as an international student, we pay the expensive tuition on the on-campus course. However, we can also learn something outside of school from open education. Open education promotes the development of education. As we can see, in the past education has lots of restrictions. However, it promotes too many people who can enjoy educating. And then, there is an online learning course. Besides, open education appears which is more flexible. Thus, the types of education are appearing. It means more new modalities of education will keep being created in the future. It is a kind of revolution of education.

Social media plays an important role in our daily lives nowadays. Not only social media can entertain us, but also can connect with others. As we all know, learning is not just limited to school. We can also learn lots of knowledge outside of school. Social media is a good way for us to learn knowledge outside of the book. People have freedom of speech on social media. Thus, there are a large number of ideas are posted online. Through reading the news or articles, we can share our ideas by leaving a comment. Expect for leaving comments to communicate with the learner. Besides, there are many kinds of social network which provides a platform for people to discuss, such as YouTube and Facebook. In the article “Social Media and Education: Using Social Media For Better Academic Results”, Fox said that social media has advantages on academic learning. Firstly, communication is one of the advantages of learning. Social media provide a platform that people can create their learning community. For example, Google Doc is a social media that connect with classmates outside of class. When we prepare for a group project, we can start it on Google Doc and people keep adding ideas, so people who are in the same group can see all the updated ideas. Besides, Social media contains all kinds of information. We can find our answer from it. For example, sometimes I do not understand what the teacher explains the course content in class. Thus, I search for the related content on YouTube. From YouTube, there is a much clear and brief explanation. Sometimes, I will leave a comment to YouTubers. And they will reply, so I get to have a kind of conversation with them.

Some people might think education should be processing by traditional formats, such as on-campus study. However, social media as a new format for scholars to study. It encourages them to learn.

With the technology developed, it provides a lot of convenience to people. However, there are some disadvantages. For example, I am going to present one of them which is about privacy in technology. Many free websites are not free. It collects people’s information to run on the website. I think personal information does not be protected well enough in technology.

As technology develops fast these days, personal information is stolen and spread easily. There is commercial value on personal information. Thus, some unethical people steal and sell to others because they can get more benefits from this personal information. For example, sometimes I often receive some phone calls which are phone scams. The reason why this phone scam gets my phone number is that someone gets my number and sell to others without permission. Besides, when people download some apps which sometimes connect with another slush that is unsafe, their information might be stolen. This phenomenon negatively impacts on the internet environment. Besides, sometimes it seems my action is detected. When I search for something frequently, it will show it again even though I do not search it. It just like an advertisement which shows on the side. For example, I want to buy a shoe and go to the Nike website for several times. When I search for another website, it appears some Nike shoes that I searched before. This advertises to me to click on it, so it can attract me to buy it. It is a way to get people’s information and provide the product to them. WordPress is a modality that our course EDCI 339 is using. It is an open course, so all people can read our article. Thus, sometimes people might come and copy some good content. Copyright protects the writers’ rights. For example, we need to pay for Spotify if we want to download the music. Copyright encourages people to create things, such as music, movie or technology. Without copyright, fewer people are willing to put their effort into creating things. What’s more, people should know how to protect their information. Firstly, the password that you create should not be too easy. And then, people should use public WIFI carefully. Sometimes, people should avoid connecting that WIFI which needs your phone number and email address to login in. Also, people should download official software which is safer.

Nowadays, online learning provides chances for people who want to learn, such as different age, nationality, and occupation. There are all kinds of different modalities of online learning, which are closed and opened enrollment course. There are various digital web tools for online instructors and students to assist these two modalities.

Moodle system is one of the digital web tools that suits to the closed course. Students need to pay tuition for learning and getting school credit. In this system, course information provides for people who enrolled in this course. Also, the instructor uses IM (instant message) to communicate with students. It just likes the office hours at school. Compared to the on-campus course, students can also interact with each other and learn some knowledge the same as the on-campus course does. EDCI 339 is my first online course that I take. In this course, we use the WordPress to post our assignment. Even though we pay for tuition, this closed online course uses the digital web tool of opened course. I think it is a good way for us to obtain more comments and communicate with others who are not just from our classmates.

Blogger and WordPress suit to opened enrollment course. People can manage personal sites. They are open-source. Not only student can see the course material and post the site, but also those who do not enroll in this course can do it as well. They offer public platforms for people to make comments and get feedback. It is beneficial for people to learn more from others who are from different aspects. The opened course also provides more opportunities for those who are not full-time student to learn. The more comment and feedback we get, the more knowledge and idea we obtain.

Online courses are mature nowadays. I think students could learn well by online course the same as on-campus does. Sometimes, I can learn something and get some ideas from the online course which cannot get from the on-campus course. Thus, the online course is a good experience in study life.