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.