Week 12 Report and Reflection: Final Blog Post

Hello everyone!! 

Here I am again this week except this time it is the last blog post I will make.
As the year comes to a close, it is exciting to know summer is close yet also sad to be finishing my second year.
I want to share one last post of interest from Feedly as it about an event that I attended for Brock Athletics this past week.

Feedly
On Wednesday night at the Holiday Inn in St. Catharines, Brock Athletics celebrated the year. It was a very well organized celebration and many athletes and coaches who were successful in the past year were regarded for their accomplishments. 

Dave Degroot who is a rower at Brock won Male Athlete of the year, while Olivia Di Bacco won Female Athlete of the year. Both athletes have been very successful academically and athletically and deserved the awards.

The article can be found here: https://www.brocku.ca/brock-news/2016/04/di-bacco-de-groot-named-brock-athletes-of-the-year/

Dave could not be present for the picture as he is training in BC. 
Here is a picture of Olivia, the VP and the President of Brock.

https://www.brocku.ca/brock-news/2016/04/di-bacco-de-groot-named-brock-athletes-of-the-year/

My Digital Footprint
Throughout this course, we identified many online tools that could assist us in building a positive digital footprint. 
By being a digital citizen, it is important to be careful about what you are posting on social media, or any website for that matter. Through all of the interactions that we made online with classmates and others, we discovered many tools about how to work well with others. I plan to use these tools in the future to collaborate in my education and in the workplace. 

To promote appropriate behaviours in others, I will ensure that the friends and family that I have on social media are not posting any provocative things. It is very important to keep your profiles private and ensure that no picture is on a site that you would not want your boss to see. 

Google
When I type my name in on google now, I still see may titles about when I was a child playing sports. I also notice that my name is linked to the Brock Athletics website as I am on the volleyball team. This was the first title that came up which I am happy about because I want my employers to know that I was active within my university. My linked-in profile is on there as well which is very crucial for employers to see.

I hope everyone has a great summer!!

Thanks,
Sammy

Podcast

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone is having a great Easter weekend wherever you might be!

This week our job was to create a podcast or screen about one of the tools we learned about. I created a podcast about Garageband because it is a very interesting program that I wanted to learn more about.

Here is my podcast, I am sorry it is in video format however my computer was experiencing some technical difficulties.

Using podcasts or screencasts can help a person to be more in touch with the digital world for many reasons. It is a very effective way to produce and listen to content. Instead of watching long videos of learning or attending speeches or lectures, it is more effective to listen to what the person is saying through an audio file. When a person is reading a long file of words, it can be exhausting and uninteresting. Through using podcasts, it is personal information that is communicated making the content more interesting to the receiver.

Podcasting can also play a part in engaging with the social world. It is a technology that people can subscribe to and therefore become a place of social engagement. If a person subscribes to your podcasts or has you on a social media website that you are sharing the podcasts onto, it becomes a source of learning for them.

Podcasting also plays a large role in enhancing our digital literacy and responsibility by educating us on new topics that we are unfamilliar with in the online world. We can be on the go while listening to this new information and still intake so much information about new things. It allows us to also share our expertise with others about certain topics. We can easily record ourselves talking using many of the programs we explored this week to create a podcast.

I hope everyone enjoyed learning about podcasts this week as I know I learned a lot of information. 

Have a great rest of your easter weekend!

Thanks,
Sammy

Week 11 Report and Reflection

Hello classmates, instructors and peers!
This class and semester has flown by, cannot believe this is the second last week! Also Happy Easter to everyone, I am glad the weather has cleared up for Easter Sunday!

Feedly
This week, I decided to focus on an article about the Goodman School of Business at Brock University and some special guests that had joined students to talk about entrepreneurship. If you look to the picture below, you may recognize the two people from the hit show 'Dragons Den'.

http://www.brocku.ca/brock-news/2016/03/bruce-croxon-and-jim-treliving-return-to-brock-to-talk-innovation/

Jim Treliving (left), and Bruce Coxon (middle) are two members of the Dragons Den that have been very successful from starting new businesses. It is often interesting hearing about how you can be successful from those who are successful themselves.

It is now Tuesday at 1pm when I am writing this article and I missed them by an hour! Very disappointed as I am a student in Sport Management that is interesting in entrepreneurship as we had to take a class on that last year.

Check out this article at:
http://www.brocku.ca/brock-news/2016/03/bruce-croxon-and-jim-treliving-return-to-brock-to-talk-innovation/

Podcasting
This week, we explored many tools that can be used to create a podcast or screencast while learning how to create our own. If you want to learn about Garageband, check out my podcast which is included in my last blog post!

I intend to use podcasts to further my learning on topics in which I do not understand in the future. In my learning experiences when I struggle to understand a topic, I have looked at youtube videos to help me understand better. However, it can often be exhausting to sit and watch a long video about a topic --- This is why podcasting can be so effective because you can listen to it on the go. 

http://wiltonelder.com/what-everybody-ought-to-know-about-active-music-listening

This summer, I am working at a job that allows me to listen to music to keep me busy. Therefore, if I download many podcasts to listen to throughout the day, that will further my knowledge on that certain concept.

Garageband
By using Garageband and working with the features of the program to create my podcast, it allowed me to become more knowledgeable for future experiences in which I will need to record my voice or a person talking. I was not familiar with using Garageband to record voices as I had only used it in the past to create a song. It is another tool that I can use toward making my presentations more interesting in the future. 

I will add Garageband to my PLE as I will be able to use it to send voice messages to people that are far away or to educate others by recording my voice and creating a podcast. I will add it under the research section of my PLE as I intend to use it for educational purposes.


Have an excellent last week of school everyone!!

See you next time,
Sammy



This work by Sammy Wilson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://samanthafwilson.blogspot.ca.

Week 10 Report and Reflection : Animoto

Hello everyone!

This week we explored many presentation tools as well as gained knowledge on the idea of copyright. I will first talk about an article that was of interest from my Feedly reader, then discuss my use of Animoto as well as my personal learning environment.

Feedly
I apologize in advance as I have chosen another article from 'The Brock News' as I am very interested in learning about what goes on at school.
This past week, my friend attempted to break a world record by erging (another term for a rowing machine) for 24 hours straight and beating the past record of 271km. Jacob Thomas is a varsity rower at Brock on the lightweight mens team. Midway through his new record attempt in which he was on track to beat, his erg shut off and all record of his rowing for the first 8 hours was lost.

This is unfortunate HOWEVER,  Jacob continued and raised money for the Canadian Cancer Society as his girlfriend's dad recently had just died.
I know I cannot imagine exercising consistently for 24 hours!

Give this article a read as I promise it will show you the true meaning of an athlete:
http://www.brocku.ca/brock-news/2016/03/badgers-thomas-looking-to-break-individual-24-hour-world-record/

http://www.brocku.ca/brock-news/2016/03/badgers-thomas-looking-to-break-individual-24-hour-world-record/

Slideshow Tools
For my slideshow video, I used Animoto as it was a quick and efficient way to create a slideshow about copyrighting.
In the future, I can use Animoto to create a multimedia presentation for presentations or personal activities such as making a memory slideshow about someone. Using Animoto for a presentation is a good way to get the audiences attention as it is mostly pictures and music with little text. There is not much time spent on each slide as well so the audience does not get bored quickly.

Compared to other tools, Animoto is an easier tool to use as all you have to do is insert pictures and a song and the slideshow is done. On other programs, there is a large space for text or other features that must be edited therefore it can get boring. Google Docs for Example is just a big wide open page where text and media is usually implemented.

Please check out my video that I made about avoiding copyrighting below!



Personal Learning Environment
I will definitely be adding Animoto into my PLE as it is an essential tool in developing slideshows. I will not only use it in my educational environment, I will also use it in my personal life. I like to create nice videos for family on their birthdays or for celebrations. Animoto is such an efficient tool to use as it requires such little work.

Have a great week everyone,
Thanks Sammy

Animoto

Hello all!

This week I worked with an online video creation program called Animoto.
Animoto was a very easy to use and efficient tool to use to create a slideshow. There is not a lot of depth to the tool therefore a slideshow can be created quickly. However, the slideshow still looks very good and well done. It was interesting to see that after I created the video and found it very simple, the motto of Animoto which is to make it simple and make it beautiful.

From this exploration, I also learned about copyright and what it involves. The main principle is that you are taking someone's work without asking or giving them credit. Once something is published under a person's name, the legal rights belong to them.
It can include literary, dramatic, musical, artistic and other forms of intellectual works!

Most of you probably hear copyright when it comes to stealing music or movies from a source and streaming it illegally or creating your own copy without purchasing the rights to it.

When it comes to being a digital citizen, it is very important to be responsible and know what is illegal or legal to do on the internet as you can run into trouble if you are not careful. Simply watching a movie on an illegal site or taking music and downloading it without paying for it is a crime.

Be careful!

Please check out my Animoto below as there is some very useful tips on how to avoid copyrighting!



Have a good week!
Sammy

Technology Use Scenario #13

Hello everyone!

This is my second post this week I know it is a lot of information to read! 
However, I guarantee you it is worth the read to learn about digital responsibilities.

What happened?
Dr. Brown, a principal at Bluebird Elementary School, is concerned with safety in his school, for both his staff and for students. During the summer, Dr. Brown had cameras installed in each of the classrooms. The video from each of these cameras is viewable on the internet, so that parents can check on their students' classes during the day. Some parents are concerned that because these cameras are connected to the internet, other people could also use them to "spy" on their children. Do we have an expectation of privacy while at work, home, or play?


My Opinion
I do not think that technology is being used appropriately in this situation. There is an expectation that there will be cameras around the school. However, I do not agree with the footage being able to be viewed on the internet. Parents have to have a degree of trust with their children and the school that they will find out if there is a problem. Parents have a right to be concerned that people could use the footage to spy on the children. We live in a world where there needs to be a degree of privacy on the web. There are predators that go on the internet to find their targets. To ensure that we are not making it any easier for the students, the footage should not be live streamed online. As a principal, you should keep the school safe therefore he could have cameras that are linked to a computer in the main office. The principal does not need to allow the parents to see the video or anyone else on the internet for that matter.

An article that I found on the internet about online predators states many facts that prove how dangerous it can be to have footage of children on the internet. Here are just a few that stood out to me:

• targeting boys and girls over the internet because they can act like anyone they want
• if a child indicates frustration with parents or teachers, the adult will verify the child's feelings
• predators can easily find information about the child online based on facial images
• predators look for chat rooms on the internet
• they spend a lot of time online

If you want to see a few more warning signs, you can use the website below.

http://www.familysafecomputers.org/predators.htm

http://quotesgram.com/internet-safety-quotes/

Feedly

I also found an article on Feedly this week that is about Internet Safety for Kids and Families. 

This article brought up two questions that each networker needs to ask themselves before posting information for the public to see. 

These questions are:

1) Do I really need to share this?

2) Is it ok if the world sees this?

If you answer NO to either of these questions before you post something, it should be kept private to only those that you know well or yourself.

Here is the article that I used below.

http://internetsafety.trendmicro.com/back-to-basics-on-data-privacy-day

I am not done posting yet this week, one more!

If you have any comments to add, feel free I would love to hear your opinions!
How could this be made more safe? Is the principal making the wrong decision?

Sammy

VOICETHREAD

Hello everyone! This week, we used a new presentation tool called Voicethread. It was very interesting in that there are a lot of different uses and tools involved in the program.

Voicethread
Voice thread is a very useful tool in that you can use it for presentations as well as an interactive tool. It is an easy no downloading required tool that includes multiple features where you can create a presentation, document, images and videos. One interesting tool that is very specific about this website is the ability to comment on slides using many different options. You can use microphone, webcam, text, phone or you can upload a file to comment. Sometimes it is easier to get your thoughts out through voice and that is why using the microphone or webcam tool can be very useful. It is easier to keep thoughts flowing when you can speak it out instead of typing.

This could be used academically as a source for sharing documents to everyone in a class for open discussion. It could be used as a forum-based program for anyone that wants to comment their ideas and opinions. It can also be used as a presentation tool as you can create a slideshow presentation. You can also use it to discuss certain issues for planning. It could be used as a tool to come to a decision with a group of people in the workplace or in a classroom setting as everyone is able to leave their responses. Voice thread is similar to Google Docs in that it can be used as a collaborative presentation tool. What makes this tool stand out compared to Google Docs is that learning can be presented in multimedia forms which often makes it easier to learn.

In the future, I can use voice thread in the workplace, in an educational setting and for social purposes as it has many different features for all uses.

Here is an example of a voice thread that you can check out based on what our digital rights and responsibilities are.

https://voicethread.com/myvoice/#thread/4264778/21791877/30174177


Have a great week!!
Sammy

Week 9 Report and Reflection: Voicethread

Hello again everyone!
With the warm weather approaching, I hope everyone is getting excited for summer! It was a busy week in ADED 1P32 with 3 different blog posts. I have enjoyed this class so far because it is increasing my knowledge on digital learning and the different tools that I can use all through the web.

Feedly
This week, an article that caught my eye on Feedly is about how families with their busy lives do not get to eat dinner together anymore. It is very important to eat dinner with your family as often it is the only time to spend all together in a day. The person writing the article is asking multiple questions about why it never seems to work. For example, staying late at the office to finish up tasks.

I can relate to this article because growing up with 6 kids in my family meant that there was slim to none time to be together with everyone. We were all actively involved in travel sports therefore when we got time to be together, it was very special. It was impossible to eat dinner all together because we all had different schedules. However, I would notice that we had not spent family time together and would try to organize a time that everyone could be home for example Sunday at dinner.

From one of the Scenario's I had commented on from a classmates blog, I was able to make a connection to Feedly. One of the scenarios was about a child that was using technology so much that it was ruining their social aspects of life. This can be another issue in families as children are now on their phones at the dinner table. There are many distractions in the world today that can alter our communication with others, but it is important to keep in person contact prevalent in a digital society.

http://www.sgcofc.com/family-weekend-youre-invited/

If you want to view the article you can see it here:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/10/how-asking-5-questions-allowed-me-to-eat-dinner-with-my-kids/?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

Voicethread
Voicethread is a very useful tool for collaboration, alike Google Docs. I especially liked how with Voicethread you could use your voice or webcam to comment on slides. This is showing the increasing use of multimedia and how effective tools like this can be for group work. Voice thread can be used to collaborate on group projects, work meetings or new ideas and social means to decide on certain things.

Personal Learning Environment
I intend to add Voicethread to my PLE because I can add it into my Presentations part of my learning environment as well as a communication tool. I will use it for school group work within the next few weeks because it is a very useful tool that anyone can access. I have already used it as a communication tool by commenting on slides and collaborating with other group members. My PLE has grown immensely during this semester through all of the tools that I have learned about and began to use. It is interesting to continue to learn about all of the tools that can help us to further our education and learn more about the interesting parts of the digital world.

If anyone has anything to share or any more ideas for using Voicethread, please share!

Thanks for reading,
Sammy

Week 8 Report and Reflection: Digital Rights and Responsibilities

Hello everyone!

This week I will share with you an item of interest to me from my feed reader on Feedly. I will also talk about my experience with Wiki and the other activities that we completed this week.

Feedly
An item that I found astounding this week was an item from the Brock News about a fan bus to Ottawa to cheer on the Brock Men's Basketball team. This past week, the Badger men beat Laurier to earn a spot in the second round of playoffs at Carleton this weekend (March 5).

What was incredible to me is that the 'We Are Ready' team was able to organize a fan bus full of Badgers that wanted to travel to Ottawa to cheer on the Badgers. It is only 20 dollars per student to travel there and back on the bus. I found it hard to believe that a bus travelling 5.5 hours each way would only come 20 dollars per student. Brock Athletics along with the 'We Are Ready' fan organization at Brock, does all that they can do to ensure that the school has support at all of their games. Along with the bus load of fans that will be attending the game, there will also be a viewing party at Brock during the game for those that are not making the trip down.
What amazing school spirit!

Link to the article is:
http://www.brocku.ca/brock-news/2016/03/bus-trip-and-viewing-party-planned-for-badgers-basketball-playoff-game/

http://www.gobadgers.ca/news/2016/3/5/mens-basketball-brock-basketball-viewing-party-saturday-night-at-sean-o-sullivan-theatre.aspx?path=mbball

Digital Rights and Responsibilities
Through the learning activities completed this week using Wiki, I learned a lot about what the rights and responsibilities are of a person that is using technology. I found it difficult to limit it to 3 important rights and responsibilities as I think all of them are equally as important as the rest. There were many that I came up with including:

• freedom of speech but using it wisely
• right to privacy
• ethical use of technology 
• cyberbullying*
• use of citations to avoid plagiarism*
• copyrighting music, movies and television shows*
• the acceptable use policy of restricting access to certain things
• being aware of what you post is there forever
• mindful about not bashing others opinions on blog posts
• respecting others and yourself

The three that I chose to explain in my forum post are noted with an asterisk (*).

As we grow up, we are taught to be careful about posting on social media. However, you still encounter so many people that are not keeping a professional image by some of the inappropriate things they are posting. It is important to keep in mind that employers will usually search your name online therefore they can see anything that you have ever posted.

https://edtp504sum11.wikispaces.com/Digital+Rights+and+Responsibilities

Using Wiki to Support Learning
Wiki is another useful tool alike Google Docs that allows you to store information and files online. With wiki however, it is much easier to use if you are using it for attaching files, pictures and videos. You also do not need to add people to a presentation as a Wiki allows anyone to edit. Wiki can be used as a coordination tool as everyone can edit it and therefore they can plan something easier than in email.

Wiki can be used effectively however one must be careful that the information is valid. Since anyone can edit, it is often possible that there is falsified information. Wikipedia is a good example of this. It can be useful when looking up quick information about a subject but would not be a good tool for in-depth research. In elementary school, I can vividly remember we had a lesson on evaluating online sources to see if they were valid. Our teacher had used Wikipedia as an example of what not to use as it can portray false information. She also showed us that we can edit the information on the website. However, what she did not show us is that there are auditors on Wikipedia that go through edited information and take out anything that is false.

Enjoy the rest of your weekends!

Sammy

Week 7 Report and Reflection: Google Docs

Hello again everyone!
I hope everyone enjoyed their breaks wherever you might have travelled to or if you just stayed home with the family. I was stuck at school training for volleyball season! 

Google Docs Collaboration
This week we looked into Google Docs and what it has to offer. Google Docs is a useful tool for group work in that everyone can work on it at the same time. Group members can work on different parts of the presentation, with the new inputs showing up as you work. It is an group work tool in that everyone can work together by the use of a chat window on the side. This program saves group members from having to send each other everything they write and one person having to do the bulk of the editing. As people in the group see errors or things that they want to change, they can do so as others work. 
Very interesting concept isn't it?









My Personal Learning Environment
As you can see above, my Google Docs is very developed because I have used it before. This tool was already in my personal learning environment diagram because i have used it multiple times for presentations throughout my entire education. I was introduced to it in elementary school and it has been a tool I have used ever since. I will add all of the tools we have learned into my personal learning environment because it is important to broaden my knowledge so that I can use multiple programs and tools to complete assignments. Many of the programs and tools that we explore have their differences and there is certain features that make a program useful. It became evident to me that throughout the years, my presentation skills have increased. Looking back at old documents from elementary school and high school, the slides were very crowded and would not be interesting to an audience. These tools allow us to see the change in our learning if we use them for a long period of time.

Feedly
This week, I decided to read an article from the New York Times (NYT) about coffee intake. This article was written from the perspective of a writer for the NYT that does not drink coffee. As the minority in a country where 64 percent of Americans drink at least one cup of coffee a day, he wonders if he should start. Coffee has been linked to many benefits if in small amounts. The issue that I see that is not mentioned in this article is that if you drink one cup of coffee a day, you will start to rely on it. I know that I did not start drinking coffee until I started to attend university. Ever since, sometimes my body sends me signals that I need a cup of coffee. In the article, the writer talks about how people drink coffee after waking up in the morning to 'feel alive again'. This is the issue with coffee. It can be healthy if you are drinking one cup a day. But so many people use it for the reason to wake up and get their minds going. Although, many people do use it because of feeling tired and not awake. 
For coffee drinkers and non-coffee drinkers, I suggest giving this article a read as it could change your perspective on the myths of coffee!
The link to the article is:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/i-dont-drink-coffee-should-i-start/?partner=rss&emc=rss

http://www.thisiswhyimbroke.com/coffee-drinkers-spoon

Hope everyone has a great week back!
Sammy

Week 6 Report and Reflection: Evernote

Hello everyone!
Glad to be back and writing again! I had an interesting time last week dealing with twitter and learning how to associate with classmates through social media.

Feedly
This week an article that caught my interest because of my interest in world issues and why violence occurs. I have always enjoyed reading and learning about the minds of a criminal. The girls that bombed the Nigerian camp arrived and made it seem like they needed help from those who were staying at the camp. It is sad to think that the people in the camp were attempting at helping people and being a good Samaritan and they were punished for their kind actions. The people at the camp were vulnerable because they had just escaped from violence and they had sought refuge. 58 people were killed that had thought they were safe from the terror. I highly suggest reading this article as it made me more aware of how fortunate we are as Canadian residents to live in a safe place.
The article can be found at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/world/africa/suicide-bomber-girls-kill-58-in-nigerian-refugee-camp.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/world/africa/nigeria-vexed-by-boko-harams-use-of-women-as-suicide-bombers.html?ribbon-ad-idx=5&rref=world/africa&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Africa&action=click&region=FixedLeft&pgtype=article

Evernote
Evernote grabs information from all over the web and transports it to one program. This is a very beneficial program as it can be used to take notes in class which is something that myself, a university student does every day!
This program is especially useful compared to other note taking programs because you can include audio, pictures and text into one document which does not exist in most programs. You can download the program onto your computer instead of opening it up on the website. You can also create multiple notebooks on one program which helps you to better organize your notes! You can also create checklists to manage tasks which can help with time management. All of these aspects are very beneficial to a students life. You can also collect and organize articles for research instead of having multiple tabs open for many weeks while you are researching. I know we have all been in that a predicament before! You can organize all of these articles under evernote at easy access.
I am planning to add this to my PLE because I know I will use it for research purposes. Therefore, I will add it to the research portion of my personal learning environment. Although it is not a source of research, it can be used very easily to organize research. I will use my other research aspects such as the Brock Library and Google Scholar to research scholarly articles than I will organize them by using Evernote. I am excited about adding new tools to my digital learning.

Hope everyone has an exceptional reading week!
Sammy

Week 5 Report and Reflection: Using Twitter

Hello again everyone!

I hope everyone found the activities this week to be enjoyable.

Feedly
An article this week that caught my eye on Feedly was about the United States government's plans for the gun violence laws. Barack Obama (U.S. President) intends to clamp down on gun violence. This act requires everyone that has a gun to have a permit for it. The president intends to use his seniority to make a difference in the country by enforcing more strict laws on gun violence.
Some of the steps he plans to take toward doing this are:
- increasing mental health treatment and reporting
- improving public safety, and
- managing the future of gun safety technology and enhancing the background check system

The article was very interesting because of all of the recent shootings in the United States. Finally, Obama has a plan to take the problem and attempt at finding a solution. I highly suggest reading this article to gain insight on the political issues in the United States as they are our neighbour country.
The article can be found here if anyone wants to read it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/08/us/politics/obamas-lofty-plans-on-gun-violence-amount-to-little-action.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

https://publichealthwatch.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/president-obama-will-announce-new-executive-action-on-guns-in-2016/

Twitter
This week, we took on the concept of Twitter and creating a feed that we could post on. I am very familiar with Twitter as I have had my own personal account for 2 years. However, today through the learning activity, I realized that twitter can also be used as an educational tool. On my personal twitter account, I only follow the accounts of my friends and family. What I did not realize is that every company has its own twitter page. This also applies with each news website, famous people and anything you could imagine. Twitter is a form of social media that is already included in my personal learning environment. It was interesting to learn about how you can search content through a 'hashtag'. By typing in the name of the class, I was able to see many of my peers accounts. This tool can help us to be educated on everything we care to know about. It can teach us about what is going on in our personal lives, our social lives, our school and our world. Twitter is another digital tool that can be used to help us become digital citizens. Below is a picture of my twitter page. There is a tweet from a friend about my social world and a tweet about Interuniversity Sport. This is a great form of digital literacy.

Week 4 Report and Reflection: Diigo

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone's week is going well! I had a very eventful week myself with turning 20. It is amazing to think about not being a teenager anymore! I am sure there are people of all ages reading this so emotions toward my statement of feeling old will present a different reaction in some than others!

Feedly
This week, an article that instantly caught my attention on Feedly was about fugitives escaping from a California Jail an being caught 8 days later. Since prison breakouts are not very common, it was interesting to find out that they had managed to escape in the first place. Law and crimes is a subject that I have always taken an interest in and enjoy to hear about in the news. I related this article to the television series called Prison Break because that one of the only other successful breakouts that I have heard of which was fictional. I have continued to enjoy using Feedly and seeing the articles that come up from the websites that I have subscribed to.

The link to the article can be found below if any of you are interested in reading...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/us/remaining-california-jail-escapees-are-captured-in-san-francisco.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

https://interarma.info/tag/φοίβος-χαρίσης/?lang=en

Diigo

This week I explored Diigo as another tool to add to my digital environment. While exploring Diigo and what the website had to offer, I discovered many things. Diigo is basically the same concept as Feedly except it has may other features. On Diigo, you can create side notes off of the webpage using highlights and sticky notes. These tools can be quite beneficial to take down ideas throughout an article. Sometimes when you are reading an article, it can be difficult to remember all of the important ideas that came up while you were reading. By using Diigo, you are able to take down the idea that is in your head without losing the spot that you are at to read. By using bookmarks, you can open yourself up to new topics and interests that you did not know existed.

Curation tools such as Diigo, Feedly and Delicious are all very useful when trying to limit the overflow of information that is available through social media, the internet and other digital sources. Curation tools allow us to tailor content specific to the interests of certain people. This can be a useful tool in the future to give people exactly what they are looking for. These tools also help us to eliminate information that is irrelevant or of no use to us. We can conveniently look through sources of information that we want to look at rather than searching many pages for something that may interest us.

http://www.mathedup.co.uk/creating-a-positive-learning-environment/

Personal Learning Environment

Diigo is a crucial tool to include into my personal learning environment because of its convenience. I would include this website under research as well as social media because of the dual purpose that it serves. It is an information source as well as a source to view other peoples interests and bookmarks that they have created. Many of these tools are alike in the way that they are all used for sourcing information and tailoring the needs to what your personal interests are.

I hope everyone enjoyed learning about their personal learning environment and finding another tool that they can use to enhance their learning environment. Have a great week and good luck with midterms!

Samantha Wilson

Week 3 Report and Reflection: RSS Feed Readers

Hello everyone!

Throughout this week’s session, we explored a website called Feedly which is a newsfeed that allows you person to organize publications based on what you want to read. I found feedly very interesting as I did not know that such a website existed. I enjoy reading the news but the local newspaper can often be boring. Therefore, you subscribe to what you want to see and get to read about things that interest you. I will now use feedly more often now that I know it exists. 

As I had mentioned in my last blog post, I found an article that is of interest to me about Brock University Athletics. I am sharing this article with you today because many of you will also find it to be relative to your own lives. Since we are all Brock University students, we can all understand the depth of this article. To have such great recognition by one of the staff members in Athletics at Brock, I thought it would be interesting to all of you!

RSS Feed Readers

This news article along with all of the other publications on feedly allowed me to stay easily informed on the most updated content from the sites that I am interested in. This activity allowed me to expand my digital learning by using another online tool to learn effectively about what is going on in the world around me. RSS feeders contain a sufficient amount of information that is enough to understand the subject but also not overwhelm the reader with extra information. They allow us to spend our time reading about things that interest us so that we are informed on the things that we most care about. 

RSS feeders also provide people with convenience. It supplies articles for you to read so that the reader does not need to spend time searching for something that interests them. It is interesting to see that we can gain more knowledge on things that interest us by using RSS feeders. RSS feeders also allow the reader to stay aware and mindful about what is happening in the word around us so that we can make more conscious decisions. By reading the article about Brock Athletics, it might spark an interest in a reader to go to a game based on what they have read. 

http://www.mediachange.ch/news/rss-news-feed/

Adding Feedly Into My Personal Learning Environment

An RSS feed reader is a tool that I could add to my personal learning environment because it allows me to take control and manage my own learning. I would add feedly into the heading of social media for a few reasons. It allows me to create, share and exchange information based on my personal hobbies and interests. I would consider it a type of social media because I am grouping all of my interests together under one digital media platform. I would consider Feedly to be very similar to Twitter in the sense that there is a newsfeed filled with information of things that I wish to follow. 

http://www.etrainingpedia.com/students-say-they-are-more-motivated-in-digital-learning-environments-than-traditional-ones/

This week was very informative and allowed me to gain another tool that I can use for digital learning. I will continue to use feedly as a way to inform myself of the most recent stories around the world. I hope everyone enjoyed this activity and I look forward to learning more about RSS feeds next week.

Bye for now!

Samantha

My Experience with RSS Feeds

Hello everyone!

I found it very interesting completing the feedly activity this week using an RSS feeds of which I did not know that they existed. When I was searching through the most popular stories in my feedly today, I found an article of interest that is a news article from The Brock News. The article is titled 'Ontario women's basketball championship trophy to be named in honour of Brock's Critelli.

As many of you may already know, Chris Critelli is the Assistant Athletic Director at Brock University. She is the only player in basketball history to have won an NCAA and a CIS championship. For those who do not know intercollegiate athletics very well, this means that she won a championship with a University in the United States and with a University in Canada. She also went to the Olympics for basketball. This article was quite interesting to me because I was at the presentation before the game when the trophy was renamed to honour Chris Critelli and her excellence in basketball. I am also a member of the Women's Volleyball team at Brock therefore, I see all of the hard work that she does in Athletics now that she is a retired athlete.

It is interesting that this came up first in my feed as it was something that was of most interest to me because I was very knowledgeable about the topic of the news article. This news article also helps Brock University to become more patriotic and proud to be a badger when a member of our Athletics Department is recognized like this.

http://www.brocku.ca/brock-news/2016/01/ontario-womens-basketball-championship-trophy-to-be-named-in-honour-of-brocks-critelli/

The link to the article can be found below!

http://www.brocku.ca/brock-news/2016/01/ontario-womens-basketball-championship-trophy-to-be-named-in-honour-of-brocks-critelli/

I hope that everyone enjoyed completing this activity and was able to see what showed up on the reader based on their interests.

Have a good week!

Week 2 Report and Reflection : Personal Learning Environment and Goals

Hello again everyone!

It is great to be back at blogging this week and being able to share my knowledge of my Personal Learning Environment with you. I have learned many things this week through the many activities that were completed. We focused on many topics this week including a personal learning environment, social networking and web tools. A personal learning environment is a digital toolbox that involves sharing content online. It involves using technology for learning by using tools that support learning.

Where do I want to be in 5-10 years?

In 5 years, I hope to be completing my masters in Sport Management and have a career in the sport industry. My goal is to find a job that suits my interests which may take time after I am done school. I hope to be involved in the Brock University community and contribute to the school in any way I can. I also see myself moving out of the province because I enjoy changing my environment every so often. In 10 years, I hope to be employed at a full-time job that I enjoy. I want to enjoy going to work everyday therefore I will never have to work a day in my life. I also hope to have a family and if I do not live near my parents and siblings, I hope to visit very often. 

At this point in time, I am living with 5 other girls that also attend Brock University. I have no job and cannot travel due to lack of funds. I pay for all of my education on my own therefore I do not have a large discretionary income. I hope to be settled down in the future and not be worried about money in 10 years.

Present to future

In the next 5 years, I hope to learn more about how to be more independent. I am independent now but I go home often because I miss my hometown and family. I also want to learn more about the aspects of a business. There are certain skills needed to work in a sales job which is what I hope to do. This includes persuasion, knowledge on the products and hard work. I hope that i can be successful in the future and the skills listed above is how I will meet my goals.

Changing my environment

In order to gain more knowledge, I need to change certain aspects about my life. For example when I am studying for an exam, I need to leave my living room full of people and go in a quiet space. By studying harder for exams, I will retain more information about the sport industry which is crucial to my future. I can also plan out my days more effectively by leaving study time and social time. If I get up earlier instead of sleeping in when I do not have morning class, I can accomplish a lot more.

My PLE

This is my personal learning environment. I created four categories that I thought best fit my life and what I share online. To summarize my personal learning environment into words; I use many independent networking websites such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat and Twitter. From the social technographics ladder, (resource from session 2 this week), I put myself into the conversationalists part of the ladder which is the second highest rank on the ladder. I participate in social network websites to converse with people in the social world. I enjoy posting statuses and pictures but do not create my own pages therefore I am not a creator. I contribute to others ideas and comment on other people’s posts therefore I was above the level of a critic.

When conducting research, I use Google Scholar, Google search engine and the Brock University Library. To create slideshows for educational purposes, my favourite choices are Prezi, Google Docs, and Powerpoint. When I am communicating with others outside of phone calls and texting, I use FaceTime, WhatsApp and Skype. All of these aspects of my learning environment focus on the idea of lifelong learning as discussed in session 2 activities. These websites have and will continue to provide me with many tools that support learning.

Wilson, S. (CC) 2016

Wordle 

This is a word cloud that I created from my first reflection post about digital footprints from last week. This is an interesting representation of my blog posting from last week. It was interesting to see what the most common words that I used were. This is also more eye-catching than reading a page of text for viewers. Many people would prefer looking at something like this rather than a page of text as they can learn more from it. I learned that words can be more creative than plain text and that a representation like this can be quickly engaging. It is easy to develop themes about last weeks post based on this wordle. The common themes I can see from this are about networking, the digital world, data and social networking.

Wilson, S. (CC) 2016.

Anyways, that is it for this week! Hope everyone enjoyed discovering many things about themselves this week as much as I did. Bye for now!

Week 1 Report and Reflection : Digital Footprints

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone has been enjoying their semesters so far. I have found it challenging thus far to change from in-class learning to working in the online world. I think I will eventually be successful in this type of learning environment as the class continues. 

We focused on many topics this week including digital footprints, digital etiquette, and blogging. In my reflection, I am going to focus on two main ideas about digital footprints that stood out to me. Following that, I will discuss the results of my own digital footprint by searching my name on Google. I will then discuss my results of digital drivers license exam.

What is a Digital Footprint?
My digital footprint is something that I have always been very conscious of. My parents work in law enforcement and have seen the effects of a person having a negative digital footprint. Something that I found quite interesting when investigating the material about digital footprints, is that a digital footprint exists even before a person is born into the world. From the minute that the ultrasound is taken when a person is in the mother's womb, the digital footprint is created. As a person grows up, their digital footprint grows with them as they go through life. Digital footprint can be described as a trail, traces or footprints that people leave on the web about their personal information. Sometimes it is not up to the person to post something, as they could be tagged in it by one of their friends. Social media websites turn information and pictures into cookies on your computer which are forever traceable.

https://kurtishewson.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/evolution-of-digital-footprints/

Positive Digital Footprints

The previous thought in society was to have no online footprint, but as long as people make sure it is positive, there will not be an issue. Keeping a positive digital footprint involves making conscious choices about what is being put on the web for everyone to see. If a person does not feel comfortable with a future employer seeing something that they want to post, the best option is to keep it to themselves. People need to be careful what you are posting because future bosses tend to search up their potential hires on the internet before offering them the job. If their first impression of this person was a photograph that was seen on the internet of them being intoxicated, they are most likely to not be called for an interview. The content that is seen on the internet can either discourage or encourage a boss from hiring you. If the information on the internet is strictly professional and educational, having a digital footprint can be positive.

Another issue with digital footprints is that people are disclosing too much information about themselves to the public. On Facebook for example, there is an option to make the profile private or keep it open to the public. If there is information about where a person lives or they are posting on their wall where they will be in the future, someone who does not know them could see the profile if it is public. A digital footprint tells a person where you’ve gone, where you are going and what you have left behind. Another example of disclosing too much personal information about one's self is when posting an advertisement on Kijiji. When posting an advertisement, you have to fill in the address of where you are selling the item from. Many people do not realize that this can be unsafe. It was until last year that a man gave his exact address and he was abducted when meeting up with someone that was looking to buy something through a Kijiji ad. When posting an advertisement, there is an option to just type in the name of the city where it is being sold and meet up with someone in a public place. This is what people will do now to protect their own safety after the incident that happened.

My Own Digital Footprint
What I found most interesting about digital footprints was the results that came up by typing my name in on google. I had expected to see links to my social media profiles including Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. What amazed me was seeing newspaper articles that had dated back to 2007 about my sport accomplishments. Every article that had my name in it from my hometown had came up because my name had been mentioned in the middle of the articles. Google also came up with websites that had tracked my running career in high school when I used to run cross country. It was very interesting to see that they had grouped all my results together with other athletes in Ontario.


Digital Driver's License
I was happy to learn that I had no areas that needed to be worked on to obtain my digital driver's license. Since I did not get any questions wrong, I am being responsible with what I share to others using technology. I want to continue to have a positive digital footprint by keeping private information private and not disclosing too much information about myself to the online world. Although I did quite well on the exam achieving 20/20, my goal throughout this course is to learn how to continue to use technology in the most responsible way possible.

https://otis.coe.uky.edu/DDL/launch.php