It feels like it's been 1/4 of that time to me, but looking back, I've changed and grown in these past 12 weeks moreso than possibly...ever. My grades have improved, strength gains through the roof and some cool new tools I am now aware of.
After googling myself this week, I was happy to find nothing but my LinkedIn account. This says to me that I did a decent job of staying relatively anonymous throughout my various internet forum accounts. The people who want my information from Google are gonna have to do some pretty deep digging. For now, a casual search of myself only shows me in a positive light, which is a key thing about being a digital citizen.
In order to create quality online interaction, it takes 2 people invested in one another's interests, very much like a conversation in real life. By being digital citizens and showing kindness and genuine interest towards others, you can have a lifelong digital friend.
I think the best way to promote appropriate internet behaviour is to lead by example. Promote your attitude at all times on the internet, respect those that follow your ideology and encourage those that don't. Lately, I feel as if the users of the internet feel more free to air out their controversial opinions. It is now more important than ever to cast yourself in a positive light to avoid extremely touchy subject matter with others that do not share your opinion.
I can help others with digital citizenship via example. By showing someone a role model digital citizen, there is a batter chance it will rub off onto him/her.
A webcast is a distributable presentation via the internet using streaming media technology services. Webcasts can be done either live or pre-recorded. Webcasts are not exactly a new concept in 2014 and have had a chance to flourish and branch out into several genres. From CBC radio programs to that guy in his basement with a collection of tinfoil hats, people have been using webcasts effectively for years to make their voice heard worldwide. Whether anyone truly listens to the latter is another matter.
One popular format of webcasting is called podcasting, which is essentially a streaming audio program, typically of someone's voice. They are commonly used for talk radio shows and blogs when you want to access a previous show or when the typed word simply does not properly convey your thoughts and feelings. Since there is no governing body to censor out content, people are free to say whatever they want. I myself am not a big fan of talk radio, but it gives the person the ability to touch upon issues considered too controversial, politically incorrect or even too boring for public radio.
Screencasting, another popular format, is essentially a podcast with video. This is commonly used in DIY and tutorials. They are definitely the more popular format nowadays with the rise of YouTube where people even make a living off making these videos! I myself would love to do something like this (given there's money involved), but unfortunately I'm not so sure I have anything new or unique to bring to the table.
Another very popular and practical use of screencasting is online lectures. There are tons of videos on YouTube of educators teaching things from learning your times tables to rocket science. Several universities have also started implementing the use of screencasts to upload their lectures either for online only courses or just regular classes so students that could not make it to class have no excuse. This was done in my online only astronomy course I took last semester (ASTR 1P01) and definitely helped when I needed additional knowledge on a certain part of the course. I didn't even need to buy a textbook for it! I definitely would like to see screencasts implemented in my other courses, even the ones that aren't online and especially my more challenging courses. Students can only pay attention for so long and the ability to replay moments where you may have zoned out in class can be extremely helpful. It can also completely eliminate the need for dreaded 8 AM classes and frees up classroom space as lecturers can teach in the comfort of their own home, given a board/projector or sorts is available. One of professors told me Brock is at a 90% classroom capacity rate and investing in cameras to record lectures can save a lot of money versus building new classrooms. Online lectures definitely have boosted my learning and I wish Brock would embrace this learning style more.
I can understand why some lecturers would prefer not to do this however. Sometimes you need a live audience of sorts to gauge whether they are presenting the content in a clear manner or whether additional explanation is needed to cement the concept in the students' heads. Otherwise, they must prepare themselves for a potential lineup of people during his/her office hours.
I have taken an online course where there were no webcasts available. The only materials provided were the textbook, powerpoint slideshows and discussion forums. I feel if webcasts were provided, my learning in the course would've been accelerated and would've saved me time in the process. Sometimes slideshows are simply insufficient in getting the point across and can be described better with visuals and spoken word.
Webcasting differs from many of the other tools we have used so far (save for VoiceThread) in the sense that we can use our voices and body instead of written words. Sarcasm is a great example of a thing that is not translated very well onto paper for example. Using these tools, you can, well, be as sarcastic as you want with far less misunderstanding.
Webcasting is something I definitely support and have supported before this course started. It just did not occur to me at the time to add it to my PLE. It is definitely going in.
This week's Feedly contribution comes from the Huffington Post. It has to do with a certain dictator staring at you on my blog at all times ordering all males to get the same haircut as him. News reports of Kim Jong Un ordering all university males within North Korea to get the same haircut as him went viral this week. (Un)fortunately, it appears the report was nothing more than a hoax as it appears no one has followed through with their new mandatory hairstyle yet when the order was given weeks ago. Here is the article.
Animoto is a(nother) cloud based service that produces slideshows from your uploaded music, videos and images. The interface was simple to use and pleasant on the eyes. Creating a free account enables you to make a 30 second slideshow with either your uploads or it's many templates. Making a last minute slideshow, while perhaps very stressful, is doable with this tool. I honestly believe it can overtake Microsoft Power Point one day as top slideshow creator, but it will take time as the app is still relatively new. It took us years to accept tablets as useful tools and this likely will not be much different. In order to get there, some changes will likely have to be made in terms of subscription fees. 5 dollars a month is far too expensive for something you will seldom use. As a student, I am not really interested in paying these fees for a school project when PowerPoint is readily available and a 30 second slideshow is not nearly sufficient to give a meaningful presentation. Once they introduce a more realistic and affordable payment scheme (ie. free), I may hop on the wagon.
I think the the ability to embed video and gifs into the slideshow is awesome, though others may view it as nothing more than a gimmick.
As a 4th year student, my days of presentations are largely over. I was not even in a presentation heavy program to begin with. While this is a nifty tool, I am uncertain if I will ever need it. If a course decides to surprise me with the task of creating a slideshow or presentation of sorts, I would probably still not use it as a 30 second slideshow is not enough to get the point of a topic across to a classroom of people. I don't exactly make slideshows on a regular basis, so this tool is largely useless to me. If I need to make a slideshow in a pinch, I have Google Docs.
Animoto will not be making it to my PLE. While I am intrigued by it and the concept of the service is neat, there are too many conditions and reasons this tool is simply impractical for a student.
This week's Feedly contribution comes from gaming blog Kotaku. In it, writer Patricia Hernandez (who I am not a very big fan of) posts a video from PBS Idea Channel. As we all know, internet memes have taken the internet (go figure) by storm. These days, no matter where you go, they're damn near inescapable. From Bad Luck Brian to "never doing leg day" gym memes, some of them are funny, some were never funny, some you just got sick of. This video attempts to explain when and why memes stop being funny. I started watching it and after a while, noticed he was going in circles about the same ideas. Then I looked at how long the video was. 10+ minutes...
In Week 9 of my ADED 1P32 journey, I look at VoiceThread.
VoiceThread is somewhat like Google Docs on a much grander scale. It allows you to share slideshows and documents and have people comment on it publicly, very similar to popular music streaming service SoundCloud. People can also get in and collaborate on your work. While Google Docs only allows you to comment on work via text, VoiceThread will allow you to comment on works via voice (hence the "voice" in VoiceThread) and even video. Discussions on the work can be held in a meeting like fashion and not being in attendance is no longer an excuse. You can just upload your say whenever you have the time. If expressing your feelings or opinion with text is insufficient (which I found to be the case at times with Google Docs), your voice, body, or a combination of both can be used to ensure you and the creator are seeing eye to eye.
Voicethread is a useful tool in limited scenarios. While I will add this to my PLE, likely where sharing media is involved, it will be likely be seldom used. I personally cannot see instances where tool will provide much utility, but I think it can aid others greatly. A great way this tool can be utilized is a teacher that requires commentary on a slideshow from her students as an assignment. Unfortunately, teaching is not on my radar for future career at this point. Just in case, VT will be slipped in my back pocket for now.
This week's Feedly contribution comes from the Huffington Post. It is about an elementary school boy that was bullied as a result of his love of My Little Pony and chooses to show his fandom in the form of a knapsack. They are commonly referred to on the internet as "Bronies". The elementary school took action and prohibited him from bringing the bag to school and his mother was upset. I am willing to take on the role of the devil's advocate here and wonder why his parent did not step in when he bought this bag? While the bullies should no doubt in my mind be punished, the entire situation could've been avoided if his parent stepped in when buying that backpack and told him not to get it. A boy displaying fandom for a show clearly aimed at young girls is not exactly an obscure target for people at which to poke fun. Kids are mean, and if the parent is not going to take action, the school should, and appropriately did, in my opinion.
In case you haven't been on the internet for the past 5-10 years, a wiki is a website anyone can edit using a web browser. Generally, it will offer encyclopedic style knowledge on topics that are either non-fictional, on fictional universes and even weird underground cult hits.
The most popular and extensive wiki in the world, without a doubt, belongs to Wikipedia, which I am sure you have all been to at least once in your academic lives. Wikis are a great free database for knowledge. It does give you a excellent summary of the topic at hand but where it really shines is giving users cited sources to use for research purposes. Many academic supervisors discredit the use of Wikipedia, but they cannot deny the sources.
I use Wikipedia to not only look up things for school assignments and group projects, but also on topics that pique my interest and enjoy in my leisure time. Not only does it house academic information, but it also can tell you how tall Conan O'Brien is, who Floyd Mayweather Jr. is fighting next and what it means to be Rick Rolled.
The main difference between a wiki and either a blog, google drive or
evernote is that everyone is open to edit the topic. Truthfully, the
way I use a wiki is very different from the way I would use blogs,
google drive or evernote. It is already in my PLE and there's no
foreseeable date when it will be ever removed. Blogs I generally use
for news, google drive I use for group projects and evernote is for
making notes to myself. I use wikis for thorough knowledge on academic
topics and topics of interest. Nothing will be added, removed, or replaced in my PLE this week.
Wikis can be a great tool to nurture learning. When I was younger and had to do more group projects, our teacher's disapproval of Wikipedia was always something that surprised me. While anyone is able to edit the content of the page, most academic pages were accurate 99% of the time and attempts to present misleading information were usually both obvious and very rare. It wasn't until my friend pointed out it didn't matter anyways, and then I saw the light.
Wikipedia's cited sources section is all you need. Wikipedia simply aggregates the information and presents it in summary format. It gives you an idea of what the topic is about and even provides footnotes as to where they got the information so you are not endlessly looking through its provided sources for relevant information. If anything, I believe teachers should be promoting the use of Wikipedia.
This week's Feedly contribution comes from NPR. It discusses the efforts automobile companies are making to make cars increasingly driverless. With a desire not to be outdone by tech giant Google, several automakers are putting in their efforts to continue their road dominance. We already have cars that parallel park themselves and check blind spots. Before we know it, we won't even realize we will have to do none of the work ourselves. How about we flying cars already instead?
After a well deserved (and short) reading week, I'm back at you with Week 7.
On the docket for discussion this week is a personal favourite tool of mine. It is the hero group projects deserves: Google Docs, or now more commonly known as Google Drive.
Google Drive comes with your Google Account. It is essentially your personal cloud based storage. Initially starting off as Google Docs, it was limited only to storing word documents, spreadsheets, and slideshows. Google has vastly expanded and improved upon the service where you can now store virtually anything, given you do not go over your 15 GB storage limit. Even then, you can pay for more.
Now, Google Drive is commonly used to store not only documents, but also pictures, home videos, games, applications, etc. All photos and videos that you take with an Android phone are automatically backed up in the event of it going haywire and losing all your data and memories. If you have amassed quite a archive, it has a search feature so you can dig up that embarrassing photo of your friend from the Christmas party or your brainstorming session from months ago. Just make sure you name it well.
You are not only able to store documents, but with Drive's built in tools, you are also able to edit and share them publicly. The killer feature of Google Drive, in my opinion, is the fact that others not only view but also edit your work simultaneously, given you have enabled them to do so. Having used Google Drive already for several group projects, it makes assembly and proofreading of the final draft much easier. The user interface is very similar to Microsoft Office making it very easy to use with a very little learning curve, if any. To top it all off, you are able to download the created documents and open them in their respective Microsoft Office applications.
When we were given our collaborative assignment on a digital literacy topic, I intuitively thought of using Google Drive to complete it. My intuition didn't matter as we were required to use it anyways.
The document portion of Google Drive is useful beyond just for group projects. They can also be used for writing songs. Songwriting can be a long process and you will find you must often come back to it and work on it before you are happy with it. It can also be used to store sensitive information like passwords or locker combinations. It can also be used for business proposals and presentations. No more carrying around a USB stick. It's on the cloud. A to-do list for group planning would also be a great use for it as others can put whether they have completed it or not right on the doc.
Google Drive is a great tool that is already on my PLE and for good reason. If my praise of it hasn't made you see its potential, or university group projects haven't made you rip your hair out, I'm not too sure what will.
Working collaboratively with my partner, Guy Jung, has been a good experience. This is the second project I've ever done purely online with no personal interaction, and the inclusion of Google Drive has made it much more pleasant. In my previous group assignment, the stubbornness of my group mates to use and learn new software was rather irritating and between using Facebook and Microsoft Office to get the job done was, quite frankly, a pain in the behind when we could've just used Google Drive to get the job done and not send and resend our work countless times. I commend this course for exposing us to some great tools like this and can only hope more people will adopt it into their repertoire of school tools.
For this week's installment ofFeedly Weekly is an article from NPR. In it is an interview with Julia Angwin, a writer for ProPublica. Running 30+ minutes, she discusses the illusion of privacy and anonymity on the internet and how your internet browsing/searching habits are easily re-traceable. The link to the interview is here.
It's Week 6, halfway through my journey of becoming a role model digital citizen. This week, I will cover and reflect upon my experience using the tool Evernote.
Coming straight from the horse's mouth (or website in this case), "Evernote makes modern life more manageable by letting you easily collect
and find everything that matters. From work notes and to-do lists to
recipe collections and travel plans, add everything to Evernote to help
you get organized without the effort."
In summary (and without sounding like an advertisement), it allows you to keep checklists, notes, bookmarks, photos, ebooks, documents, etc. in one account and allows access to them on your computer, tablet and phone via cloud based storage.
Elephants are known to have an exceptional memory and what an appropriate logo it is for a tool like Evernote.
Upon creating my account, two things immediately struck me. First is its likeness to app Google Keep and sharing capabilities with previously introduced tool Diigo.
Being a big fan of Android and Google services, I find myself using Google Keep very often to make notes and to-do lists. It was actually only today that I noticed I was able to access the notes I created on my phone on my PC. After using and installing Evernote on my phone however, I see how superior it is to Keep. The app has been around for much longer, and as a result, is simply more robust and feature-rich. Keep lacks the Notebook feature of Evernote (essentially the concept of folders), bookmarking and the e-book feature. The only thing I found to be missing in Evernote is Keep's integration with Google Drive, which is something I use relatively frequently. This is not much of a issue however as it is just as accessible on Evernote's site. A more in-depth comparison between the two can be found in this article from the blog Mashable. Unless you are an iOS user, Google Keep is a good alternative tool and its integration with Google Drive is likely something you are only going to get with Keep.
This app gets the seal of approval from me and will integrate it in my ever-growing PLE. I am thinking it will even replace Diigo as it does everything Diigo can and then some. Instead of using several different tools, I can just use one to accomplish many of my learning related tasks or just everyday tasks. I am thinking of using Evernote for more academic purposes while continuing to use Keep more for my everyday life and backing things up to Google Drive. Its lack of integration with the entire Google ecosystem is the only thing stopping me from dropping Google Keep entirely.
The key feature of Evernote, in my opinion, is the ability to manage and embed articles. While my program has very little to do with that kind of work, I can definitely see its usefulness for others.
While I will not likely be using this for topics like cost accounting, taxation or auditing, the introduction of Evernote could not have come at a better time as we were given a group project in this very class to research digital related topics. The topic I chose was Digital Security. Compiling articles, web clippings and handwritten notes will be easier than ever to share with my partner and will be an important tool to ensure the success of the project.
Valid and online bookmark collectors such as Evernote will help contribute to building knowledge on the topic by offering a more streamlined process in collecting them. I can access it anywhere I want, given I have an internet capable device on me. Instead of sending the links to myself via e-mail (the old-fashioned way), I can go above and beyond and annotate and add commentary to the sites or articles I find useful, much like Diigo.
This week's Feedly contribution comes from the popular bodybuilding.com forum section "The Misc". In one user's thread is a neat infographic telling people the health benefits milk provides are not as important as North American media tends to portray. While he has already said the title of his thread is a joke (Got milk? THROW IT AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), he posted it to create discussion amongst whether drinking milk really is beneficial. Describing it to you would just be a waste of time on my (and your) end, so I'll just provide you with the thread and very well done infographic. Until someone proves that drinking milk is detrimental to your health, I'll keep on drinking. I love my dairy products.
Week 5 is all about building your Personal Learning Network, more commonly abbreviated and referred to as a PLN. It was touched upon in my blog earlier but will be further fleshed out this week. To recap, a PLN is a network consisting of people learners interact and learn from in a PLE. With enough technology and social networking at our fingertips to have people take it as seriously as a full time job, building an effective PLN is growing increasingly important.
This week's learning activities call upon the powers of popular social networking site Twitter. I did make a Twitter account about 2 years ago. That said, I didn't stay on it and tweet for very long. I grew bored of it really quickly and following celebrities and their constant self-promotion or some of my friends' extremely mundane statuses every 20 minutes was not really my cup of tea (no offense friends).
I did raise an eyebrow when I found out this would be a tool incorporated in the course to enhance my learning. I was unable to put the two concepts of learning and Twitter together until I actually tried it and pleasantly surprised me. Chris Betcher describes it as, "Tiny Bursts of Learning" in his insightful plea for teachers to utilize Twitter. He goes on to post some very useful articles he acquired off Twitter and it was then I realized that perhaps this site wasn't so useless after all. Like Reddit (which I no longer frequent), it's all about wading through mountains of annoyances and finding the right subreddit/person that piques your interest.
After making a new account with a professional name and choosing who I followed much more carefully, the tweets I got were far less annoying. It was either a neat image, an interesting perspective or article, or great food for thought. Like Betcher said, just skimming your Twitter for ten minutes can fill your head with great ideas and information, much like the RSS feed we explored in Week 3. After my week spent on Twitter, I can say now that it definitely can be just as an effective learning tool as blogs, textbooks or newpapers. Acquiring learning skills from professionals as well as my fellow ADED 1P32 classmates can be a great experience in my journey of self-improvement. I look forward to including it in my PLE, likely where I placed Facebook. Feel free to follow me @MarkAChong as I continue to make sense of being a digital citizen.
This week, it dawned upon me that if I were to use Twitter, I would want to post things that reflect me as someone who is interesting and learns things on a frequent basis. Becoming what I hate on Twitter is the last thing I want to become (ie. the tweets of getting out of bed, how you got a papercut, the tasty water you just had, and other tweets that make you say cool story bro). Becoming a digital citizen, it is important that others see you as someone not only good and polite, but also interesting so you can build your digital network. Things are becoming digital at an alarming rate and eventually it may be our gateway to everything. Becoming digitally literate is becoming more important than ever and using Twitter is a great tool for not only speaking your mind, but educating others around you and keeping a positive reputation.
As for this week's Feedly contribution, it has to do with the 5 senses, particularly hearing and sight. In the article, scientists did a study on adult mice and kept them in darkness for a week. Researchers then monitored activity in their brain while mice listened to different tones with varying pitches and volumes. Mice kept in the dark had more neuron activity to both changes in pitch and volume. The effects persisted for weeks even after the mice were exposed to light again. This was surprising because often when born blind, people have sharpened senses, particularly hearing. If by any instance you become blind after early childhood, your senses generally do not sharpen as neuron activity connecting your brain to your senses has already completed by that time and cannot be rewired, unlike an infant. To summarize, a lack of input in the visual cortex temporarily sharpens the auditory cortex for weeks even after sensory development has completed.
Hello readers. It's Week 4 and you know what that means. More reflection on internet learning tools.
This week's instalment focuses on becoming internet content curators. This is the compiling, organization, maintenance and archiving of relevant content pertaining to a specific field of interest. The difference between any average curator and a great one is explained by Gianluca Fiorelli's blog post named "Content curation: definition and generation". For some cliffs:
Finding the best content: A great curator knows who his target audience is and finds not only relevant but material that will sit well with the readers.
Adding value: It's one thing to just provide the link, but the curator that goes above and beyond will add commentary to the content that will add value to the provided work.
There's a lot of information on the internet. Some great. Some troll attempts. Looking up what the best exercise for your posterior deltoids can be like opening a closet full of skittles. Information overload if you will. If you want the best information quick or are just really gullible and want to know what sources you can trust, finding the right curator can save you a lot of time. By becoming one yourself, you can be that go-to person.
In this week's ADED session, we were required to create an account on a cloud based bookmarking tool. I chose Diigo. I used this video provided by my instructor to help me acquaint myself with the service:
Initially I thought this was going to be a near useless service as recent versions of Google Chrome have incorporated the importing of your bookmarks with your gmail account. I was proven wrong as the Diigo Chrome tool not only lets you saves your bookmarks, but allows to you annotate and screenshot portions of pages. These additional tools are perhaps why many people still use Diigo.
We were instructed to look at other web curating tools and I only had time this week to look at one, which was Jog The Web. What it essentially does is it allows you to create a package using various websites and allows you to annotate and edit the sites in one package. Personally, I think it is a tool more suited for teachers looking to present information in an easy way to their (likely elementary school) students in a near foolproof manner. If I were to use it, it would be in a similar fashion to the Diigo tool but because Diigo has everything I need and is a tad more efficient and convenient, it will be unlikely.
That said, Diigo will be a great addition to my ever expanding PLE. As for where it will be placed, it is going to go into my organizing/sharing content section. I envision using Diigo being a great tool in group projects. The annotation tool is key and sharing information is even easier than copy and pasting on a google doc. If more subjects in school were taught with more free online resources, I think my usage of the tool would be quite heavy as well.
Last week, we were required to set up an RSS feed, which I can say I have been using more recently than usual. It provides me with things that pique my interest more than it ever has merely because my understanding of the tool has greatly increased. That said, so far, it hasn't really contributed to my learning pertaining to my university major. Approaching the twilight years of my university life, advanced topics covered in accounting are difficult to find on the web. It has however definitely contributed to my knowledge of current events and other odd news that I find interesting.
As for my weekly Feedly contribution, this week it is the decline of popular teenage fashion retailer sales. From the NY Times, it highlights how the unemployment rate in teens is at an all-time high, online shopping has become more popular, faster trends and more money spent on technology, among other things contributing to why stores like Abercrombie and Fitch, American Eagle and Aeropostale are running into problems selling clothes these days. Without further ado, the link is here.
With a new week comes a new topic for me to discuss, and it just so happens to be on RSS feeds.
I remember when internet browsers started becoming more sophisticated and started to include an orange symbol with waves on it. I soon found out it was called an RSS feed. I've known about its existence for a long time now and use it occasionally but only for news sites like the Toronto Star (when it was free) and gaming blog Kotaku. It was only after I was required to create one via Feedly how useful and time saving an RSS feed can actually be. If you are a bit confused with how Feedly works, Sharon Hall made a great video explaining how you can make the most of it.
An Rich Site Summary (RSS) feed is a tool used to publish frequently updated information from your favourite news sites, video sites, podcasts, blogs, etc. and provides it to you live in headline format in a scrolling fashion. You subscribe to the website of your choice and the RSS reader will constantly browse the site for new updates and inform the user instead of manually checking.
With the world becoming increasingly integrated to the internet I do consider myself an avid reader/browser of it. There was actually an article from the Toronto Star stating that people now go to the internet more frequently than their elders or loved ones for wisdom. Unfortunately, I cannot link it anymore as the site now uses a paid subscription format, but here's a blogger's similar perspective. I can honestly say that there is a lot of truth to that. Truth I see even in myself. Instead of begging grandma for her killer recipes or asking our fathers/grandfathers how to he proposed to your mother/grandmother, most of us just look it up on Google. The power of instant gratification.
I also see a use for the RSS tool with my future, as accounting in Ontario is undergoing a radical change. The 3 professional accounting designations (Chartered Accountant, Certified Management Accountant and Certified General Accountant) are considering merging into one designation called Certified Professional Accountant, or CPA. With it comes new rules and constant new updates. Subscribing to this site on merger updates will keep me in the loop without having to tediously check on a periodic basis as new information is simply brought to me when available.
The RSS feed logo is already included in my PLE under information/inspiration gathering. I like to stay connected to the world and its current events and the RSS tool was a great resource to do that. After this week however, I definitely see the usefulness of it when it comes to fun and have started incorporating more of the sites I browse for pleasure.
We were asked to refresh our understanding of digital citizenship. Funny enough, popular Youtube oddball Frank Yang uploaded a video response to Fitness Guru Marc Lobliner on why people are so mean on the internet. While he does ramble on for a bit of the video, I agree with pretty much everything he says.
I'm uncertain if my previous blog post counts as my weekly Feedly contribution or not, so here is another one. Someone created a thread about why they look good in the mirror but not in photos (something I struggle with as well). Much debate goes whether the mirror or a camera gives a better portrayal of how you actually look that I found interesting.
Week 3 required us to learn and use an RSS feed. I decided to complete the required task using a very popular RSS tool called Feedly. After compiling several different sites to include in my feed, the first article that captured my attention was, "Can Mom's Pregnancy Diet Rewire Baby's Brain For Obesity?". The article stated that studies on mice showed that mothers who ate a poor diet that was high in fat while pregnant led to an increased risk of obesity in their offspring. To remain unbiased and impartial, the article did remind the readers several times that while the effects on mice are a good indicator it would also happen to humans, mice and humans diverged in evolution 60 million years ago. In other words, the research is good food for thought (no pun intended) but is not 100% accurate for humans.
If you're not exactly ecstatic about sitting through 3:44 of video to find out I'll provide you with some cliffs.
A PLE is a system or electronic tool that aids in facilitating and managing our learning
it allows us to set learning goals
it can act as a way to communicate with others in the process of learning
The third point leads into what is called a personal learning network (PLN).
With the rise of online courses will come a increase in students ability to self-learn. Also, in university, some of the most intensive courses are primarily self-taught, even when a professor does lectures on the required topics which are marginally helpful at best. I think developing a PLE is important for this very reason. There are many helpful and unused tools at a students' disposal to excel in our courses and perhaps change a B to an A.
I was asked to follow the following template in a recursive reflection in order to create an effective PLE.
Where I want to be 5-10 yrs from now
In 5-10 years, I would hope to see myself as a full-time worker. An accountant of sorts of course. Professional, one who can balance fun and play. Hopefully by this time I'd have done a bit of travelling outside of North America. My own living accommodations, perhaps a family and a new set of hobbies (as well as my old ones) are things you'd catch me doing. Of course, I'd also love to continue to be in great shape of course. Perhaps in better shape than I am now.
My current situation
A hopeful accounting student who gives it 100%. Tries not to take life too seriously, tries to make time for various hobbies and tackles obstacles in front of him one at a time. At least I have my own apartment already!
What I need to do/learn
Staying on top of my school work and getting good grades is somewhat of a given. Sharing and looking up content and ideas are a great way to do so and are achieved using google drive and facebook. Accounting is constantly changing and using social media and an RSS feed to stay in touch with important figures and changes in accounting is a great way to do so. I think fitness is everyone's second job and in order to take care of others, you need to take care of yourself first. Fitness ideas have not changed much over the years but new exercises or routines are great to keep up with and using the misc, a section of the bodybuilding.com forums, is a great way learn new exercises and make sure your sense of humour is still intact.
Improving my environment
The first thing I noticed I can definitely do is take some time out of my week to clean up my desk. At home in Markham or in my apartment in St. Catharines, my work desk is almost always an absolute mess in a matter of weeks and organization of my desk is definitely something I can improve upon. I often lose sheets or notes that could've been of critical importance in the mess and should take better care. Keeping a physical calendar that I can always look at is a good way to remember to stay on task and maintaining a daily to-do list is also a good way to reinforce a need to stay productive.
My habits
The first thing I will try to improve upon (and needs immediate attention) is cleaning up my desk and taking time once a week to maintain its neatness. Going to bed/waking up earlier can come second. Thirdly, making daily to do lists to increase my productivity can go a long way.
After the smoke cleared, this is the PLE I ended up creating:
Source: Chong, M. (CC) 2014.
This was primarily created by using my reflection as well as looking at my top visited pages in my web browser. In addition, Wendy Drexler posted a youtube video on how to develop your PLE that I found relatively helpful.
I think reading blogs to influence or broaden your perspective on issues is a great idea and should not be limited to forums either. I am avid reader of internet forums and I can easily say they have shaped how I think about certain issues and aspects of everyday life.
Lastly, I am required to create a Word Cloud of my first blog post, which is just below. It was created using a free service called Wordle.
Source: Chong, M. (CC) 2014.
Funny (and predictably) enough, "internet", "digital" and "footprint" were some key words of last week. I have seen these on the internet before but did not know how to go about making your own. Admittedly, this is a great tool to highlight key words in passages and essay-long readings that you may not want to read entirely. Upon further experimentation, this will be a great addition to my PLE when the time comes to construct a new one.
A digital footprint is the trail of data one leaves behind interacting with their TVs, mobile devices and use of the internet, providing to the public what you may have watched, clicked, liked, etc. The crazy thing about it all is that it starts nearly from birth. As the world is becoming increasingly digital, this footprint is becoming more linked to who you are as a person day by day.
After watching such an eye opening video, I now recognize the importance of a good and healthy digital identity. I looked back on things I have contributed to the internet that may not cast upon me in a positive light to find that (thankfully) there were not many. Improvements I can make on my digital identity can be posting and sharing light hearted, educational videos or links to facilitate my learning, try my best to maintain good relations with all users of sites I frequent as well as refraining from posting explicitly personal matters of my life on the internet. People have been caught with their pants down on the third one and as a result have had an extra headache to deal with and have permanently left the sites they once loved because "detectives" threatened to release their personal lives and identities to the rest of internet.
The second topic, netiquette, is pretty much what it sounds like: being courteous and respectful on the web. Albion provides 10 core rules to which to adhere. While many of these seem like common sense, we often forget many of these rules when the internet provides for people near uncensored and ungoverned places like 4chan. People on the internet are, for the most part, hidden by a veil of anonymity and have the freedom to say what they want, which, as you can imagine, is a breeding ground for controversy and flared tempers. In my opinion, the 2 most commonly broken on the internet are 2 and 10, with 2 being very relatable. Some use the internet as a form of alter ego, an escape from everyday life and a way to vent out opinions or thoughts they are either to scared to say in real life or are socially unacceptable. With the internet at our fingertips it is easier than ever to do so.
The link between digital footprints and netiquette is very clear. It is exactly rule 5 in Albion's core rules, which is to make sure you present yourself respectably on the internet. After a good refresher on netiquette and and the other valuable information provided to me this week, I understand how important it is to appear professional everywhere you go and will make a continuing effort to do just that.
Ribbel (2011) refers too our activity on the internet as "digital citizenship". Our digital citizenship is what shapes our digital footprint. We shape our digital footprint every day as the internet becomes more heavily engrained in our lives and this blog will be used to document my journey on improving my digital footprint and becoming a better digital citizen.
I know I have only scratched the surface in terms of required knowledge I need to know to become an upstanding digital citizen and am somewhat intrigued with what the rest of the course holds.
Until next week.
Sources:
Ribble, M. (2011). Digital citizenship in schools. (2nd ed.). International Society for Technology in Education.
My name is Mark Chong. Currently, I am attending Brock University's Bachelor of Accounting program in St. Catharines, Ontario in pursuit of becoming (you guessed it) a professional accountant. On weekends, I sometimes go back to my home town of Markham, Ontario to see my friends and family.
When numbers aren't on my mind, I like to indulge in a wide array of interests.
The piano was something I was introduced to as a young child and I played regularly all the way until the end of high school. Seeing as I cannot fit a piano into my apartment in St. Catharines, I do not really have any other way to continue. However, I have branched off into many other instruments like the guitar, bass, trumpet and drums and enjoy playing most of them on a regular basis. When I finish school, I would like to commit more time to learning and improving myself further with these instruments.
On the topic of music, I really enjoy finding new artists and bands, especially indie artists. My favourite genres of music are rap and indie folk but I am not a stranger to other genres.
Another thing I enjoy doing is lifting weights at my school gym, usually about 3 times a week. Bringing a gym buddy is even more fun! Whenever I go home for any kind of school break I also take boxing lessons and spar at least once a week. I enjoy watching the big PPVs and fighters.
_________________________________________________________________________________
So, you might be wondering why I'm bothering to babble on about myself? That's fair, I suppose.
I am enrolled in a course at Brock called ADED 1P32 and as a course requirement, I have to maintain a blog over a period of 12 weeks. This would be that blog. It is meant to be a tool to track my progress while learning about online behaviours and "digital citizenship". I am interested in seeing and discovering the many online tools at my disposal to improve my style of the learning and whether it can help me with the difficulties a modern accounting student faces.
That about wraps it up for me. Stay tuned for more about my adventure through learning.
