Facebook Visualized Connections

Mark’s Facebook Visualization Connections

“Community is frequently encountered in the education literature” (Veletsianos, 2016). As you can see in my visualization of Mark’s Facebook Connections, you can get a sense of my three distinct communities. When starting this visualization activity, I assumed that my Facebook was merely an online tool in which networking occurs. This to an extent is true; however, Veletsianos (2016) states “a network may approximate that of a community, but the two are distinct as networks are relatively loose and communities appear to exhibit commitment, coherence, and continuity.” One can see three distinct communities within my visualization: family, friends, and military; all three are arguably communities within my overarching life and not just networks. It should be stated that Facebook can be described as a networking tool to form network connections (see Pempek, Yermolayeva, and Calvert, 2009) as much as it can form communities as well. To take this activity a step further, I wanted to relate my community-based Facebook visual with my goal to be an agent of change within the aerospace control instructor community. Veletsianos (2016) in his latter conclusions elaborates on the significance of learning designers being of a critical mindset. By doing this, Veletsianos (2016) concludes that “developing a critical mindset will allow learning designers to counter simplistic assumptions about design, pedagogy, and the role of technology in education, thus becoming better equipped to create effective and empowering learning opportunities supported by technology.” I agree with Veletsianos (2016) that communities can effect change within both education literature and education in general. By having a critical mindset and using my military community, as seen in my visualization, I believe my goal can be realized. This is why I believe communities, as described by Veletsianos (2016), can be an extremely valuable tool for any instructor or learning designer within a particular digital learning environment.

Reference

Pempek, T.A., Yermolayeva, Y.A. and Calvert, S.L. (2009). College students’ social networking experiences on Facebook. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 30(3), 227-238. doi: 10.1016/j.appdev.2008.12.010

Veletsianos, G. (2016). Digital learning environments. In N. Rushby & D. Surry (Eds), Handbook of Learning Technologies (pp. 242-260). UK: John Wiley & Sons.