week #5

Week 5 of ADED 1P32 has definitely been a shift in the way we are learning throughout our online journey. Learning from respectable and credible sources such as accredited websites is a really great way to gather facts. However, the interesting and also unique factor is that we sometimes miss out on others opinions. Not only can we learn the factual information that is important to us, we can delve into individual opinions that help us gain a new perspective. The most interesting factor that I noticed in my exploration of Twitter is the use and meanings of hashtags. Although tweets on twitter are limited to 140 characters, hashtags provide a wealth of information and add to the usefulness of Twitter. Onceateacher.com stated “Basically, anyone that you interact with is apart of your PLN, whether they are social contacts, professional peers, or experts in their field.   Most of the ‘learning’ takes place on-line now, because it is simple to find and connect with others with similar interests from around the world.” (Klingensmith, 2009). Twitter, which is now an essential part of my PLN, can contribute significantly in my quest to build knowledge. Twitter can let me see others opinions and build a customized and streamlined network that I can access anywhere such as my laptop or mobile device. I can also use hashtags to see other Tweeters who are talking about similar topics. Gaining digital literacy is a really essential part of developing your PLE and PLN. It is important to consider other digital citizens opinions because this is how we learn. It is extremely important to develop our own opinions, however the only way that we can really shape a complete and educated opinion is to consider all angles. Using curation tools that we have explored in previous weeks, we have been able to gain a thorough understanding of how others interpret and learn information. The greatest advantage that students have in the digital age is the ability to work and collaborate with others all over the globe!

Week #4

This week, we explored various curation tools throughout the Internet.  What a curator is, why curators are just as important as creators, and how not everyone can be a creator or a curator.   We also investigated on-line bookmarking tools and what the limitations of browser bookmarking are, such as limited access. Everyone uses their web browser for bookmarks, saving their most visited webpages for later, as well as important resources that you may need to refer to at a later date.  For the most part, as there are exceptions, when you bookmark something in your browser, that bookmark is saved on the computer you are using and you are unable to access this bookmark anywhere else. Most browsers now seem to be moving towards a cloud based bookmarking system where when you log into another computer or device, your bookmarks are automatically synced. However, there are still limitations to this.  What if you are on a public computer at the library and don't want everyone to access your synced bookmarks? Your not going to log your account into a public computers browser as the browser is going to save your information and always log into it.  This is where on-line bookmarking tools such as Diigo come in handy.

Diigo is an online bookmarking tool that has many more capabilities than your standard browser bookmarks.  With Diigo, you will create an account that will allow you to access your account anywhere, be it your own computer, smartphone, or a public computer. When you create a bookmark with Diigo, it asks you to assign tags to your bookmark.  This can be an extremely useful feature if you have an extensive list of bookmarks and can't quite remember what bookmark you are looking for. Say, for example, you bookmarked your favourite social network, but for some reason you couldn't remember what it was called, you could simply assign it a tag, such as "social", and search that tag. You will then come up with all of the bookmarks that have this tag assigned, making easier to track that item down. This could be extremely useful for a school project or any other educational activity since you could set a specific tag for any project, search that tag and track down all of your saved resources related to that project in seconds, saving valuable time.

With the use of Diigo, as well as the other tools that we have explored, I am beginning to find it a lot easier to access information and sort through what is relevant to me, and what can be discarded, allowing me to become much more digitally literate.  I had considered myself quite proficient with various digital tools, but with the introduction of these new tools, I find myself spending much less time sorting through all the information.  Diigo would fit into the organize category of my PLE, as it is a tool that helps me to organize information for my in an easy to access way.  Any curation tool, such as Scoop.it, would be in the aggregating and connecting categories of my PLE, since it presents information to me and allows me to share it with my friends.

Weekly Report & Reflection Post #3

I used CollegeBender.com as an example to share upon my blog. I chose 5 steps of saving money in university because it relates to me and now i am more informed on how to save money! (If only i knew about this earlier). Anyway i summarized it up and learnt that its very simple to understand little things that accumulate to larger things later on. I guess people rely heavily on the "do it now" concept instead of waiting and seeing the larger picture. (Human nature). I found an article in one of the websites that I subscribed to through my Feedly. It was on the "Driver recklessness". Uber is a company that is basically just a newer form of Taxis. The article presented talked about a driving accident where a family was hurt, by the reckless driving of the Uber driver. It’s interesting to hear about this, because it’s said to be caused by the driver looking at his cellphone, looking for his next customer. I think this just goes to show the power, and the negative effect that these kinds of technology can also have. This website is a good resource to use, as it presents new articles about world news. It informed my learning as this blog post showed me a story which I had not heard or read about at all. The RSS Feed readers contribute to work and building knowledge in the digital context. These feed readers allow individuals to be able to bookmark certain websites, and to have all content of interest put together in one convenient place. Also, this RSS Feed reader enables the reader to not only be limited to one computer, but able to sync all content, so it can be used on different computers, ipads, phones etc. These tools are organizational tools, to be able to organize different resources of websites. These tools allow an individual to subscribe to all blogs, news sites etc. which one may be interested in. In my PLE diagram, this tool would be categorized under the organizational media category. 

"My Experience with RSS Feeds"

I will be briefly writing about the 5 ways a student can save money. Firstly sharing accommodation, this is perfect for saving money as you would be only spending half or even less of the cost of the place. Even if you lack privacy! Secondly taking turns at cooking with your room mates, now this may seem hard to begin with but ultimately it saves alot, eg: you have 5 room mates so thats 1 for each day of the week. (forward thinking). Thirdly ordering online, even though online takes time its more efficient in terms of travel and cost, you order food in bulk and you save on travel and effort! (giving you more time to study). Fourthly, now this might get some debate but instead of going out to clubs and bars, you can just invite freinds over and party at home. (this is very cheap but might not be for everyone). Lastly, the most obvious one is buy used text books, pretty much self explanatory.