Weekly Report & Reflection #7

This week, we had the opportunity to explore another useful digital tool called Google Docs (click HERE for link). Google Docs is an online word platform that allows you to create and generate text, spreadsheet, or presentation documents. It also allows documents to be shared and edited by multiple people, making it easier to collaborate. As a first time user, I found it was pretty easy to navigate around this tool due to the fact that it is so similar to Microsoft Office. 

One added benefit of Google Docs compared to Microsoft Office is the availability to access your documents on any computer or laptop with Internet access, rather than only through your own computer. Normally, a document being emailed between computers and edited by multiple people may cause problems, as numerous different copies exist in different places. As seen in the Google Docs in Plain English video (click HERE for video), a Google Docs document can be edited by multiple people, all in one convenient location. This makes it a lot easier to manage and control the editing and privacy of your shared document. It also makes group work a lot simpler because it allows you to collaborate with other group members without physically being with them.

https://docs.google.com/

This type of resource can be used for academic, personal, and professional needs. For example, it can be used to type out assignments and presentations, resumes and cover letters, or any other necessary document. It can also be used for academic or work presentations, or for recording and analyzing data in chart or graph. These documents can also be shared and personalized using different fonts and formats. In this course, Google Docs will be used to communicate and share information with group members for our group project. 

I plan on adding the Google Docs tool to the collaborative category of my PLE (Personal Learning Experience). Throughout this course, I have discovered a lot of new online tools that can be useful to my educational and professional career. I believe it is beneficial to add as many tools as possible in order to expand the array of resources I have available to me.

http://www.brocku.ca/blogs/futurestudents/2016/02/26/experiencebu/

This week I found an article on my Feedly Reader called ExperienceBU (click HERE to view article). It explained that ExperienceBU is “like a giant events page” available to all Brock students that shows all the events hosted by Brock’s numerous clubs and teams. This is a good way to get the student body more involved in the school community. 

Cheers,

Robert DeMelo 

Weekly Report & Reflection #6

Throughout Session 6 of this course, we learned about and explored a useful tool called Evernote. According to Hamilton’s SlideShare Presentation, Evernote is a tool that can be used to organize and share notes containing various forms of information (see more HERE). For example, Evernote can be used to save videos, articles, images, and webpages, among other forms of media. You can even insert an image of handwritten notes into your digital notebook. Furthermore, Evernote can then be used as a collaboration tool by sharing your notes with others. Evernote is a good tool that I plan to add to my PLE (Personal Learning Environment) under the organization and collaboration categories. 

https://www.evernote.com

Through exploring Evernote, I learned that it can be useful in my educational activities because it allows me to keep my notes and resources organized in one convenient place. Throughout university, I have struggled to keep my notes and resources from my various classes organized. In addition to my handwritten notes, many professors also post notes online. Evernote is a good way to combine these online notes with my handwritten notes, while keeping it all organized.  

This week, we also continued working on our group research projects. My group’s topic is Element 8: Digital Health and Wellness, which is defined as the “physical and psychological well-being in a digital technology world” (read more HERE). We were required to find sources relating to the topic, and then share them with our group members. In order to facilitate this, we used Evernote as a key tool to keep track of our resources.  Throughout the research phase, I was able to save videos, images, webpages, and articles to my notebook, and then share it with my group members, all through the use of Evernote.

http://pinkshirtday.ca

An article I found interesting on my Feedly Reader this week is titled “Pink Shirt Day Planned for Feb. 24” (Click HERE for article). This article explains Brock’s anti-bullying campaign taking place on February 24, 2016. Students are encouraged to wear the colour pink on that day to show support for the cause and to fight against bullies. This campaign is meant to spread awareness of bullying in our school community and in today’s society. This article gained my interest because bullying is a big issue in today’s society and it is important to spread awareness. The Pink Shirt Day campaign is such an easy way to spread awareness of such a big issue in society.  More details can be found at http://pinkshirtday.ca/.

Cheers,

Robert DeMelo 

Weekly Report & Reflection #5

This week, we looked at the online social media networking system called Twitter (Click HERE for link). Twitter is a service that lets users write (“Tweet”) messages 140 characters long, and to read others’ Tweets. This form of social media is considered a “micro blog” because posts are a lot smaller in size, a style that suits the world of technology perfectly – short, sweet and to the point. Two particularly unique features of Twitter that may become handy while using the service include lists and hashtags. Lists are groups of Twitter users that are combined together based off a common theme in one convenient place. Users have the option of creating their own personal lists or subscribing to other users’ lists. The second feature is the use of hashtags, which allows users to easily find tweets about a specific topic of interest. The hashtag symbol (#) is put before a word in order to categorize that word or phrase, and make that tweet easier to find in a search.

https://twitter.com/

When creating my PLE back in week #2, I had already added Twitter to my collection of resources in the Connect category. When previously using Twitter, I only used it for personal social purposes but throughout this session, I learned that it can also be considered a learning tool for educational purposes. Through the use of Twitter, users are given the opportunity to interact with other people around the world, and learn from a wide range of educators who are also on the site. Before registering into this online course, I thought I would be an expert regarding computer usage and Internet related resources, especially those that I use so commonly. But to my surprise, I have already learned much more from the course than expected, and it’s only been half the semester. I have already learned and interacted with a large amount of different online resources that have contributed to developing my Personal Learning Environment.

Furthermore, I appreciated the experience we had this week to build our personal learning networks (PLN). A PLN is a network of connections used for sharing ideas and resources, collaboration, and learning (read more HERE). This week we were encouraged to interact with other classmates in order to expand our PLN. I learned in greater detail about the interests of my fellow classmates by exploring their Twitter and Sakai accounts. As directed in the learning activities, we were recommended to comment on students’ blog posts and create discussions based on topic interests. Collaborating with each other will make it a lot easier for us as a class to build connections and partnerships for our group projects and to create a positive learning environment.

http://www.cineplex.com

While going through my Feedly this week, I discovered an article which seemed interesting to me titled ‘Deadpool’ Has Biggest Opening on Record in North America for R-Rated Film, (Click HERE to read article). The article explains how the movie “Deadpool” had the biggest domestic opening on record for a rated R film. This article turned out to be convenient to me because I was planning on going to watch this movie this weekend. After reading this article, I realized that a large amount of people have seen and enjoyed this movie, giving me even more reasoning to get out of the house and go to the movie theatre to watch this film.

Cheers,

Robert DeMelo

Weekly Report & Reflection #4

As daily technology users, we all know how to surf the Internet and find fun and interesting things that appeal to us. One thing we hate the most is when we forget to bookmark a favourite website, or our bookmark area becomes too cluttered. This is when social bookmarking websites, such as Diigo (Click HERE) and Scoop.it (Click HERE), may become useful. These types of bookmarking websites allow you to keep track of your favourite sites, and to keep them organized based on key words with the help of the “tagging” tool. In addition, bookmarked sites can be accessed at any time on any device, as opposed to regular bookmarks, which can only be accessed from one device.

https://www.diigo.com/

Bookmarking websites can be useful in educational activities and to building school-related knowledge. Features like highlight, sticky notes and screenshots allow users to keep track of important information and to be able to easily refer back to it. One benefit of this is that it can reduce the risk of plagiarism by reducing the chances of forgetting where a quote came from. For example, during the research process, students often write down quotes but forget to reference where they came from, increasing the risk of plagiarism. Bookmarking websites reduce this risk by keeping track of these quotes and their sources.

Another useful tool is content curation, which is defined as “the process of sorting through the vast amounts of content on the web and presenting it in a meaningful and organized way around a specific theme” http://www.bethkanter.org/content-curation-101/. This contributes to building knowledge and acts as an aid when completing assignments and studying, by allowing me to find the best and most relevant articles all in one search, thus speeding up the research process. Curation can also be used as a more eco-friendly form of research. Rather than printing out every news article I find interesting, I instead have the opportunity to read them online through my laptop or mobile device. 

This session, I also continued to explore Feed Readers and add to my learning. When logging on to my Feedly this week, I discovered an interesting article relating to the Brock University community called Get the shovels ready for Goodman’s transformation (Click HERE for article). This article explains that Brock University is expanding their Goodman School of Business building beginning this May, a project worth over $22 million. As a part of the Brock community, it is reassuring to know what Brock’s finances are being put towards. Knowing that Brock is putting money towards academics is seen as being a positive for the community.

 

https://www.brocku.ca/brock-news/2016/02/get-the-shovels-ready-for-goodmans-transformation/

In conclusion, after using bookmarking websites and curation tools this session, I can now add them to my collection of tools in my Personal Learning Environment (PLE). I would categorize them both as Research or Organization Tools, as they provide me with more relevant sources and organize my results. As a digital citizen, these tools have also taught me more efficient research methods, and to properly organize my research results.

Cheers,

Robert DeMelo