Hi ! This is Aike:)

Hello everyone, my name is Aike Tian. When I first came to Canada, I didn’t have an English name. But too many people mispronounce my name, so I chose a name that sounds very close to my name -Echo.

I’m a fourth-year psychology student.

• I had a wonderful time attending bilingual private primary schools in China.
• I enrolled in a very strict private secondary school and suffered from anxiety and depression due to extremely fierce competition and evaluation.
• In order to treat my depression, I gave up attending national schools in China and enrolled in a Canadian curriculum at an international school.
• Study psychology at UVic.

My earliest exposure to independent learning was in junior high school when some educational institutions began experimenting with recording instructional videos and Posting them on their paid platforms for students to watch repeatedly. My junior high school was a boarding school. When I discovered that books and television, the sources of knowledge I had been used to, no longer fit the circumstances of my life at the time and could not meet my independent learning needs in the school environment at that time, I began to use various video platforms to watch different types of documentaries.

Over time, I started using social media. Social media allows me to constantly find exciting content creators in my expertise and new fields when seeking information on a particular subject. For example, after following a plant science popularizer, social media would recommend other plant science popularizers, even those covering jellyfish and mushrooms. This recommendation mechanism expanded my knowledge and helped me find more interests in various fields.

Social media’s instant communication also greatly facilitated my learning process. For example, on Weibo, China’s largest social media, I followed a blogger who constantly posted about ancient Egypt, and he would randomly explain and supplement ancient Egyptian relics and murals. When I wanted to learn about ancient Egypt systematically, I sent him a personal message, and he immediately provided me with some books to help me learn about ancient Egypt more systematically.

After entering university, online teaching, reading e-books, and sharing notes with classmates online became essential to my learning process. People have become accustomed to using online search, and the COVID-19 pandemic has made people realize the importance of digital literacy in education. First, using computers, smartphones, and computers has become a fundamental skill for modern people. The personal learning network (PLN) allows people to quickly access, evaluate, and utilize information. Digital media and social media have broken through the restrictions of knowledge dissemination regarding region, class, and time.

Even though I’ve been using PLN, I’ve not fully realized its educational potential, nor have I thought about building a personal platform similar to the existing one. Therefore, I am looking forward to having a try in EDCI 338. Digital literacy is a basic competence in today’s society and an important tool to promote independent learning and lifelong learning. By entirely using these digital resources, I can further improve my learning efficiency and knowledge depth and lay a more solid foundation for future personal capability development.

• Photo from China National Geographic magazine.