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