Week 7 – Blog Post #7 – Weekly Report & Reflection

Hello Everyone,

This week’s session allowed us to experience working in a collaborative group to complete a presentation cooperatively online.  The presentation gave us the opportunity to gain a more in depth knowledge on a topic related to building digital citizenship.  In order to do so, we were introduced to Google Docs, as well as TodaysMeet. Upon exploration into these tools, I was pleasantly surprised with just how easy and resourceful these collaborative instruments were.

Google Docs, which I am sure many of you are most likely familiar with, is an online word processor that lets you create and format text documents and collaborate with other people in real time. For the purposes of this presentation, I found this to be the perfect tool. Not only did it make my groups lives easier, but it aloud for some fun along the way.

I have worked with Google Docs before in the past, however, never to create a presentation. In the past, I have used it to create reports with a group, or work together on a spreadsheet. What I found great about creating a presentation in the drive is that it allows you to maximize the efficiency of your time. For this presentation, my partner and I would simultaneously be working in the presentation on two different slides. Once we were both complete our slide, were would then take a look at what the other person had created and make any changes we saw fit. This easily reduced the amount of time spent working on the presentation as it resulted in half the work, plus additional editing time!

Copied From: http://www.autourduweb.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/google-docs.jpg

In order for my partner and I to get in touch and coordinate a timeframe as to when we were going to work on our presentation, we communicated through the tool introduced this week called TodaysMeet. TodaysMeet website describes their platform as such:

“TodaysMeet is the premier backchannel chat platform for classroom teachers and learners. TodaysMeet takes great care to respect the needs and privacy of students while giving educators the tools for success.”

I found this tool, just like Google Docs, to be very easy and straightforward to use. Just like Twitter, it allows you to type messages back and forth in a chat room, with a maximum of 140 characters. I found this to be a benefit of the tool as it made sure you got right to the point in the messages you were trying to convey, rather then providing lengthy responses. 

Copied From: http://www.edinazephyrus.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/TodaysMeet.png

Relating back to my PLE, if I were to categorize these tools I would place them under 2 different categories; those being “Collaborating and Socializing” and “Creating”. TodaysMeet is a tool in which its sole purpose is to communicate with others; therefore, I would place it under my “Collaborating and Socializing” category. Google Docs however seems to fit under both categories. Not only was I creating new content when working in the drive, but I was also collaborating with my group. Therefore I would have to place this tool in a separate section where it could link to both categories.

My RSS Feed Reader…

For those of you who have read my blog before, you have probably now realized that I like to end off with a reference to a sports article of some kind from my Feedly Reader.  This week, its about the Toronto Maple Leafs and there all-famous, David Clarkson. Clarkson has recently been traded from the Leafs to the Columbus Blue Jackets for player, Nathan Horton. The funny thing about this trade is that player Nathan Horton is severely injured and may not play hockey again. This means the Leafs may have essentially just made this trade to free up cap space and get rid of Clarkson…

For those of you who would like to read more about this story, visit the article,  “Toronto Maple Leads shed David Clarkson and Contract in ColumbusTrade".

Copied From: http://storage.torontosun.com/v1/dynamic_resize/sws_path/suns-prod-images/1297541890172_ORIGINAL.jpg?quality=80&size=650x

I hope you enjoyed this weeks post!

Take care,

Chris

Week 6 – Blog Post #6 – Weekly Report & Reflection

Hello Everyone,

This week’s session was all about building best practices around using information management tools in the cloud. In particular, the tool we looked at this week was Evernote. I have heard of Evernote in the past, however, I have never actually understood what it does until exploring it this week. Upon exploration, I found the tool to be a very useful resource, as it is very simple to use, as well as contains many features you would want in a collaborative management tool.

When the phrase “working in the cloud” get tossed around, many people, including myself, tend to wonder exactly what this is referring to. Since it was a main topic covered this week, I decided to do a little research of my own. Unfortunately, most of my findings were very comprehensive explanations of the cloud (much more detailed then needed for my understanding), which just confused me even more. However, one article called “The Beginner’s Guide to the Cloud,” gave a great example of using the cloud; “If you use any kind of social media or online data drive, you're already using the cloud; you just may not realize it.” I found this to be a great explanation of what the cloud is, as well as a very simplistic view of the term.

Once I had an understanding of what exactly “working in the cloud” referred to, I started to take a closer look into the information management tool, Evernote.  Since I was unclear as to what Evernotes purpose was, I did a little more of my own fact finding in order to better understand the true potential of this service. A great blog post I found called “You’re Nuts If You’re Not Using This App To Organize Your Stuff” by Ellis Hamburger provided me with a great description of the tool. Simply put, Evernote is a free app for your smartphone or computer that stores everything you could possibly imagine losing track of, while keeping these devices in sync which each other through the process.

My main use of Evernote thus far has been creating notes. To my surprise, Evernote doesn’t just allow you to type in wording, rather, it allows you to drag and drop articles, PDF’s, images, videos, and much more into a simple note. On top of that, it allows you to tag each note individually, allowing for easy retrieval of information that could be related to another resource.  This has already proven to be beneficial for myself with respect to our collaborative presentation assignment. Based off of the information needed for the presentation as outlined in our guide, I was able to create specific tags for each resource I found so that when the time comes, I know exactly where to go to find that piece of information.  

Another huge benefit of Evernote is its cloud sharing capability. Relating back to our collaborative presentation, this will be a major advantage as it allows your group members to see what you have been working on in the assignment, and reduce overlap in the process. Additionally, with this being an online course, many of us do not know our partners we are completing this assignment with. Evernote provides a secure environment where you can communicate and work on your presentation with your partners.

Copied From: https://lh4.ggpht.com/-LFDb4dqb4OuOWf_qHCw4AMLLn6_sEJRxcE8LfiE6RGGoMZDnkVHhOBKLCP2ZR9X3sM=w300

My RSS Feed Reader…

The post that I am sharing from my Feedly reader this week relates back to the Patriots Super Bowl win two weeks ago. Tom Brady, the Patriots quarterback was named MVP of the game. For being named MVP, Chevrolet gave Brady a new truck. However, as I am sure many of you saw/heard, Malcolm Butler of the Patriots made the game changing play.  Because of this, Brady decided to give his MVP car to Butler as a form of saying thank you.

For those of you who would like to read more about this story, visit the article, “Malcolm Butler gets MVP truck.”

Copied From: http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_960w/Boston/2011-2020/2015/02/10/BostonGlobe.com/Sports/Images/a8a50dc307c44c3b8f32837a978444f5-a8a50dc307c44c3b8f32837a978444f5-0.jpg

I hope you enjoyed this weeks post.

Take care,

Chris

Week 5 – Blog Post #5 - Microblogging & Building Your PLN

Hello Everyone,

The focus of this week’s session was microblogging, and building upon our personal learning network (PLN).  I really enjoyed this week’s material as I found it to be an area of interest for myself, and one that is talked about on a regular basis by most people these days. It was interesting to find out just how significant a role microblogging plays in developing your PLN.

As described by dictionary.com, microblogging is when you post very short entries, as a brief update or a photo, on a blog or social-networking website.  To me personally, microblogging really kicked it into gear as soon as social media and text messaging hit the stage. Social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are all microblogging platforms that I use today, that have helped me expand my PLN. By simply posting a brief message to one of these sites, you are creating a microblog post.

Additionally, text messaging and E-mail have played a large role in the microblogging world. Almost everyone sends a text message daily. In my opinion, this is exactly like posting a microblog. Through a text message you are not going into lengthy detail about a topic, rather, you are briefly describing the topic of interest and awaiting a response from another person in your PLN.

Above, I have briefly described a couple of ways that I am currently building upon my PLN through social media, and frequent contact with others.  Looking back at Week 2 for this class, we were provided with a blog post by Clint Lalonde called “Twitter, PLEs and PLNs,” which describes a PLN as the sum of all social capital and connections that result in the development and facilitation of a personal learning environment.  The underlying message of this definition, and why people want to build a PLN, is to interact with and learn from others through a social platform.

My exploration with Twitter…

Copied From: https://g.twimg.com/Twitter_logo_blue.png

My main discovery this week during my exploration of Twitter was just how great of a tool it is for building your PLN. Before taking this class, I had my own Twitter account that I used strictly for following people and keeping up to date.  What I didn’t realize was how much I was hindering my own PLN by not partaking in the tweeting part of Twitter. After I released my first tweet under my student ADED twitter account, I gained immediate new followers and favorites to my tweets just by mentioning something of interest to another user. This instantaneously allowed to me expand my PLN with those Twitter users. I can see this being a great benefit of Twitter as it allows you to connect and interact with those who are interested in the same topics as you.

Another benefit I find Twitter possesses and how it can contribute to building ones knowledge is its follow feature.  With having the ability to follow whomever you want on Twitter, it allows you to stay up to date and current, with topics you find interesting.  For someone like myself who is interested in Finance and the stock market, I can follow accounts relating to these topics and read updates as soon as they are posted to twitter.

My RSS Feed Reader…

A post that I stumbled upon this week through Feedly seemed very fitting for the way this week started…Snow Days! This blog post, written by a Brock University student blogger named Krista, talks about the expectations versus reality of a snow day in University. I found the post to be quite funny and true. With the expectation of a snow day being playing outside in the snow and enjoying it with friends, the reality of it as a University student is playing catch up in those classes you have fallen behind in. Additionally, the post captures a screen shot of when the make up days are for those of you who did miss a class during this day.

Copied From: http://www.brockpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/snowman-wallpaper-305x175.jpg

For those of you who would like to read more, visit the article, “Snow Days: Reality vs Expectation.”

I hope you enjoyed this weeks post.

Take care,

Chris

Week 4 - Blog Post #4 - Weekly Report & Reflection

Hello Everyone!

The main topics covered in this week’s session were content curation, and online bookmarking. My understanding of these two topics was very vague before beginning this session. I knew that I was really going to have to look harder into the materials covered in this session if I was going to come out on top. After reviewing the information provided, I believe I have a lot better of an understanding then I did before hand. However, I would still like to continue this exploration, especially towards content curation tools!

A definition of content curation was provided through one of the blog posts in this weeks session by Gianluca Fiorelli called “Content curation: definition and generation.”  The definition states, “content curation is the capacity of filtering and adding value to the content we receive and are exposed to everyday from all the online sources (Search and Social).” Simple put, content curation allows you to sift through the vast amount of content on the web, and present it in a meaningful and organized way around a specific idea.

The quality curation tool I had a closer look at this week was Google Alerts. This tool is essentially exactly what the name implies; it alerts you when a resource of your interest has been added to Google. As stated in this week’s session about Google Alerts, “it is useful for staying up-to-date on news and happenings in your field or interest area.” A huge benefit that Google Alerts will bring to my learning comes from its ability to streamline processes. This tool will free up more time for my self when conducting research or everyday activities as it provides the alert to me, right when new information is posted about my alert of interest.

The other part if this week’s material was focused on bookmarking, and online bookmarking tools. A simple definition on an online bookmark is, “An Internet browser feature that allows a user to go back to a previously visited website by clicking on the saved link without retyping the site’s address” as stated by the BusinessDictionary. As the definition specified, bookmarking allows for easy access to information you may want to re-read, or want repetitive access to.

The bookmarking tool I looked at this week was Diigo. At first, I found this tool to be very challenging to figure out and was wondering why I would use this tool when I already have a bookmarks tool bar. However, after I got comfortable with the tool, I could clearly see the benefits it possessed. I found Diigo to be a form of Google, based on websites you fine necessary to bookmark. Diigo allows you to place a description on the bookmark allowing you easy access to and from a page, without forgetting why you tagged it in the first place.

A great benefit I could see from Diigo would be during a school project.  In the initial phase of the project when you are doing your research, you could bookmark many pages and websites, tagging them all under a specific tag. After you completed your search, you could refer back to your Diigo library and quickly jump back and forth between the websites you already researched. I think this would reduce redundancies in the research process and make the entire research phase more efficient.

My RSS Feed Reader…

What better way to end off this blog then talk about hockey…? A post that I enjoyed from my Feedly reader this week was called “Inside the matchup: Penguins vs. Capitals.” For those of you who do not follow hockey, the NHL has created a rivalry between these teams based off of their captains, Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin. Since these team play each other this week, what better way to get the fans going then talk about them through a blog!  This posts talks about there matchup, noting that Pittsburg has beaten Washington every time they have played each other this season. If you would like more information on this article, you can read it though the link I provided above!

Copied From: http://www.sikids.com/sites/default/files/multimedia/photo_gallery/1006/memorable.rivalries/images/crosby.ovechkin.jpg

 

I hope you enjoyed my post this week.

Take care,

Chris