Blog Post 3 – PLN and Inclusion

DIVERSIFYING YOUR PLN

This week’s material has made me reflect on my PLN and ways I can diversify it. I would say my existing PLN consists mainly of school, work, and podcasts. I am very active on social media, but I use it almost uniquely for personal/social interaction. I think I need to be more actively searching for new opinions/perspectives to expose myself to, because I genuinely think that the more variety of ideas you are exposed to the more you can form your own educated opinions. Diversity and inclusion in your PLN come from engaging with your network: ask for recommendations on platforms where other people are getting information; ask questions to your community and then actually listen and engage with the answers you hear. But also, I think it’s important to broaden your network – diversify it. Google searches, youtube videos, ‘for you’ pages are great places to start, as long as you are being purposeful like Moore says in the interview. She mentioned algorithms, and I learned a lot about this from a podcast with Tristan Harris. You can’t let the computer do all the thinking for you, because that’s how we get into the loop where “the things that we see are our own perspective” (Moore interview 18:16).  

HOW TO HEAR MORE VOICES

The notion “don’t be the loudest in the room” is a difficult one for me, and I have thought a lot about it this week. I totally agree with the concept, and as I stated I really believe the more perspectives you are exposed to, the better it will serve you. However, I also think (especially in a classroom setting) we must be careful how we are presenting this idea. We are all “an other” as Moore states, and each student comes in with mindsets framed by social constructions and personal experiences (Moore 9).

For example, I am currently in a 400 level French lecture on Monday afternoons that consists of 28 students (22 female and 6 male). After class one day, my friend who I sit next to told me she got bored in class, so she started tallying every time someone spoke in class based on their gender. She showed me her notebook, and the male column had more than double the number of tics compared to the female column. This really got me thinking, and I have started noticing who speaks up in class and when. I totally understand that some people naturally talk more in class than others, and I could write a list of both the men and women in that class that are more likely to speak without being prompted. Yet between the women open to speaking up and the men open to speaking up, often the men will speak first and more often.

I should clarify that I really like this concept regarding listening and inclusion, but perhaps it could be framed in a different way. Maybe we can say “don’t be the loudest in the room, but when you find something that resonates with you, or doesn’t sit well with you, share your opinion on it”.
Because the girls in that class already have reservations about sharing unprompted, and when they do, they try to be aware of when they share and how often so as not to overstep. So, if you tell one of them “don’t be the loudest in the room”, chances are they won’t speak at all.

Works Cited

“EDCI 338 – 20 Minutes Moore.” Youtube, uploaded by MILLER, May 30 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeSV0rUl1bA

Moore, Shelley. One Without the Other : Stories of Unity Through Diversity and Inclusion, Portage & Main Press, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/lib/uvic/detail.action?docID=4832579

Shephard, Dax. “Armchair Expert.” November 19, 2020. https://armchairexpertpod.com/pods/tristan-harris