With everything surrounding the residential schools in Canada, I feel angry and disturbed with how our education system as well as our country has failed us in this regard. These past 2 weeks especially social media has been a key factor in facilitating my incoming information and knowledge surrounding this horrendous discovery. In times like these social media gives power to the people, and allows us to speak up and share our voices (Baker, 2021). The Indigenous communities are taking a stand and sharing their voices, which is emotionally moving the world. This is very powerful and has incredible potential for changing the future and moving towards reconciliation. This form of messaging and communicating gives the Indigenous communities the ability to speak up honestly about their history and their version of the story, not the version of the textbooks. As Brad Baker quotes, “your professional learning community is your support system” (2021). I myself am grateful for social media as it is sharing information with me that I would have not learned about clearly without the instant access and sharing capabilities. With the recent news, I divided to expand my PLN and follow more Indigenous communities on Instagram and Twitter to expand my understanding and grow towards reconciliation.
The power of education that social media brings (with media literacy) is incredible, however, it leaves me disappointed as a prospective teacher. Why was I not taught this in school, and why would I open a textbook and have it reveal misinformed historical information. I found most of my relevant knowledge regarding the recent residential school news from social media, and my PLN’s. This way of learning also allows individuals to share their own voice and personal experiences, to give viewers and readers a more personal understanding of these events. Jesse discussed how he has understood and learned more about the Indigenous community from his PLN’s than from his education, and I could not agree more (Miller, 2021). Personally, to ensure society is more well conversed and educated I believe that PLN’s are essential to bringing truth and emotional understanding forward.
Overall, the recent news regarding the Indigenous residential schools has been heartbreaking to read, and through social media, we are able to learn and grow from personal communications with the Indigenous communities. I believe if we all expand our PLN and share our voices (respectfully) to educatate society on truthful historical events, we as a society can reach truth and reconciliation.
Miller, J. (2021). June 13th-19th. EDCI 338, edtechuvic.ca/edci338/a01-schedule-with-jesse/.
Baker, B. (2021). Brad Baker Edci 338. Youtube,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5z8iHxW2n4.
weiblog
June 20, 2021 — 7:11 am
Hi, you did a nice work on your blog. it is true that sometimes textbooks show wrong historical information. This can be misleading to students who are studying, and also sometimes misunderstandings between peoples are created in this way. So, if we can create PLN from the professional community, it will give us a richer source of information.
oliviaanacleto
June 20, 2021 — 12:18 pm
Hi Molly,
I really enjoyed reading your post this week. I agree with your sadness and disappointment regarding the school system. To work towards growing our knowledge on this topic, using PLNs and social media is an incredible source to become more educated and make steps towards reconciliation. As you mentioned, I am also hoping to expand my social media followings to include more Indigenous voices to grow my understanding.
Thank you for the great read!