Week 1

Individual blog post #1: How can educators effectively build relationships by encouraging safe communication and interactions in online & open learning spaces? What did you already know, what do you know now based on the course readings and activities, what do you hope to learn?

A safe space is important for educators to communicate and have interactions, especially in the online environment. In such a private community, educators and professors can discuss questions regarding course topics with students; students can talk interesting and fun topics in their lives with each other. It is an effective way to encourage students and their professors to establish good relationships like friends; students can also find the one who has the same interests and they do not feel lonely when they are learning facing the screens. I feel great when I was taking some courses in the summer using Discord. All my classmates could discuss course materials there and post anything we feel interesting, what we talked most were how do we effectively learn online and how to stay safe because of the COVID-19. There were many virtual study rooms for students to collaborate with similar functions like Zoom. Overall, because of some websites like Discord supporting an online and open learning space for students and professors, I did not feel really tough or frustrated when we have to stay at home and have distance learning.

For now, I realized that the safety and privacy of these online & open learning spaces could cause some concerns when people are speaking in these spaces. They might worry about the disclosure and abuse of their personal information and public posts. I think that is the reason why our social space is password protected and we are not allowed to share related sites to others who are not in our section.

Currently, I would like to learn what and how can we do if our personal data is disclosed through some websites that will collect our information.