Week 7 Reflection

This week, I’ve found myself reflecting on the balance between open and closed digital spaces for learning. I want to foster authentic student participation and protect their privacy. After writing about how teachers often use informal group Instagram chats as their own version of a Professional Learning Community (PLC), I started thinking about how these social media habits compare to more formal, closed educational tools we explored this week, like LMS discussion boards or platforms like Padlet and Cluster.

While students are constantly engaging in content creation in their personal digital lives, school-based learning spaces often fall short of fueling this participatory culture. Tools like Padlet and Hypothesis give us a glimpse of how structured platforms can still encourage produsage within a controlled, safer environment. For example, I’m considering how Padlet could serve as a digital “graffiti wall” for science students to post experiment reflections or for culinary students to crowdsource recipe hacks. But I’m also aware of the ethical concerns regarding data ownership and student privacy. We must be transparent with students about how their contributions might be stored or used.

The biggest takeaway for me is that designing networked knowledge activities isn’t only about the tool. It’s about the social contract that comes with it. Whether it's a private Padlet board or a classroom-wide group chat, we’re responsible for creating guidelines that protect their intellectual property while encouraging authentic engagement. I’m realizing that the right platform will always depend on the learner group, the context, and the learning goal, which must be assessed beforehand as part of the design process.