Weekly Reflection Report Week #12

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the final week, this class has been a great experience and this week is the last hurrah. The class has really helped me understand the necessity and path towards making a positive digital Footprint.

I learned that as a digital citizen I must follow the nine elements of digital citizenship, Access, Commerce, communication, literacy, etiquette, law, rights and responsibility, health, and security. And although all the elements are equally important in their own rights I found five of the nine elements particularly resonated with me. Those five elements are Digital Communication, Digital literacy, Rights and Responsibility, etiquette and law.

I learned the importance of communication through participating in the group project. As such the project will effectively go down the drain if there is no proper communication is not maintained between the group members. Proper communication is especially important when the team is not in the same room as you.

I have used this many times in by previous blogs but I never get tired of saying the fact that with great power comes great responsibility (I love Spiderman… so excited that he will be in the new movie). But as much as this sentence holds true for getting superpowers from a radioactive spider it is equally true for the having access to limitless knowledge through the internet. To be an effective digital citizen one must follow the outlined guidelines. This very effectively brings me the next element digital law, despite popular belief the internet is not the Wild West (which recent studies have shown was not that wild anyways). The law also applies to the internet and that fact that it is such a transparent system it is actually very easy to track down the wrongdoer. I am sure that none of my audience is in any shady business, however, as student the main concern we should be in areas surrounding academic misconduct and the only thing I can say is DON’T DO IT!!! (For all the auditory learners I have attached a catchy song to one of my previous blogs).

 

In terms of promoting appropriate digital behavior in other and helping other to develop the knowledge. I believe the best things I can do is to is to continue my blog because as the title of my blog says “Working towards creating a positive digital footprint” it is a marathon and small things can make a huge difference.

Finally I week I don’t want to share an article from my Feedly but instead, I read an interesting article on the side effects of banning plastic water bottles (Click Here). Yes… just like you guys I too found it hard to believe that how can something like that have any side effects. But the results of a study conducted by a nutrition professor Rachel Johnson, of the University of Vermont showed that the even after installing water fountains to accommodate reusable water bottles students instead switched to soda and energy drinks. This can have real consequences as it leads to empty calories and excessive sugar intake which in turn adds to the growing obesity and health problems. I article just makes me feel cynical as it leads me to believe that people don’t want to be reformed and we are very good at trading one evil for another.

That’s all for today folks.
Kev

Weekly Reflection Report Week #11

Hello everyone,

Welcome to week 11 we are one more week away from completing this course I personally really enjoyed the ride and the course was a lot of fun. Through the course, I have seen my PLE develop in a well-equipped arsenal of tools. But on the matter at hand this week I created my first podcast it was an amazing experience, however, I did find it a bit difficult as narrating something to myself was harder than expected. To overcome this situation I created wore down the items I wanted to address and make a makeshift script this made creating my podcast much easier. I have a new found respect for people who do improve because I tried doing that and it was very difficult.

I used Sound cloud to create my podcast and as I was kind of biased towards it since many of my friends use it for posting their EDM music. But keeping all bias aside I really enjoyed using Sound cloud as it was quite straight forward and as an added bonus I could use my google account to sign in, so I did not have to go through the hassle of creating a new account.

I am not sure if I will be adding sound cloud to my PLE as although I enjoy listening to podcasts I think this one experience is enough for me. And since I will rarely be making podcasts I am not sure how useful it is to add it to my PLE. Maybe I can add a new section to my PLE diagram titled ‘rarely used tools’ (I might just do that).

This week on my Feedly I came across an interesting article “how to: survive on a desert island” (click here). Everyone has seen survivor and thought this seems easy and can easily be replicated or am I the only one? Either way, this article shattered my dreams because it is anything but easy. The article is about the rescue of Alexander Selkirk a man’s whose adventure inspired the story of Robinson cruise. I always use to think once you have your food and shelter figured out you are pretty much set. However, I forgot to take into consideration one the main concerns loneliness. As humans, we are social creatures and thrive off social interactions, living on a deserted island the same loneliness will come to haunt you. I never considered loneliness as a factor but the more I think about it the more I come to grip with the gravity of the situation. That’s all for today folks see you next week

Kev

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Podcast

Hello Everyone,

Today I created my first podcast, hearing myself talk was weird but by all means, it was a great experience. I really think podcasts are a great way to communicate with your audience as it adds voice to the classroom. As we all know that everyone is a different learner auditory, visual, kinesthetic and verbal. Podcasts and screen casts are a great way to communicate with users who are auditory and visual learners. I also noted that podcasts offer a much personal touch, a blog is a great tool for getting your message across but unless you are an awesome writer it can sometimes be boring and dull. This is a common problem I have seen and experienced with a digital classroom, yes it allows greater communicating and collaboration. However, it always seems to be missing that feeling one gets when he or she is in a physical classroom (for some the feeling might be boredom but we are not including them in this example). I think podcast bridges this gap as it effectively brings the personal touch that a usual digital classroom is missing.

That’s all folks

Weekly Reflection Report Week #10

Hello Everyone,

This week we learned about copyright and why is it important. Intellectual property protection is an important part of the digital age as the easy access to information has made us less aware of the work created by others. Back when libraries still existed and people use to read books we the users were very self-aware that the information we are using is not ours, as we were getting our information from something physical like a book. However, the information we access on the internet feels personal as we can access it on out personal computers.

The use of information that does not belong to us is by no means off limits that being said whenever we use that information it is important that we give the proper credit to the author. As in failing to do so we can face charges such as intellectual theft and academic misconduct. While researching this topic I came across an interesting video. The video in a creative manner explains the reasoning behind the importance of attribution.

This week is also used the tool Animoto, I can’t say that I was impressed by the tool as first it is not free so I am not sure how practical it is for a student who is living on a shoestring budget. However, I did find the tool to be innovative as it is a different take on presentations. I really enjoyed using it as the user-friendly and doesn’t require much time to understand.  I am not sure on how useful this tool can be for academic presentations as you can’t really write much on the slides. I had to use creative means to incorporate the citations in today’s presentation, I wrote the citations in Microsoft word used the snipping tool to create a picture and add it to the presentation.

This week on my Feedly in keeping up with the change in weather I read an article call to cruise or not to cruise (Click here). Every year I start making plans for going on a cruise and like every year I get scared. Even after being an excellent swimmer and a certified lifeguard I am terrified of the ocean (it has sharks in it). Besides being terrified I have also noticed that cruises are extremely pricey and I am as broke as Wimpy from Popeye (I will gladly pay to Tuesday for a hamburger today). If you don’t get that reference then I am sorry but that guy was hilarious. But on to my conundrum to cruise or not to cruise because of my Co-op I am not as broke as before but the fear of the ocean is still real. I would love to hear your opinions.

Kev

Animoto

Hello Everybody,

This week's lesson made me ponder a few questions. The questions I started thinking about were simple yet required quite a bit of analysis. In this blog my understanding of these question and I look forward to hearing from you so I can expand my horizons. On to the questions

1) The Internet A free for all Pit

2) The most transparent medium

3) Why now?

4) Why is copyright important?

5) The truth behind the drapes

Is the internet a free for all pit of information, in my opinion, it depends on the what you want to use it for. Yes, it is a vast ocean of information, but one can't just fill his/her pot with the water with paying for it or, at least, acknowledging the metaphorical 'ocean'. So what does that make all the talk about the internet being a public domain a lie? Well yes and no the there are certain websites that are public domain but since the internet allows such easy access people often forget that the information they are using is not theirs. This also ties into my third question of why now, well the answer is simple today we are more connected than ever and this is only going to increase day by day.

Whenever I some got fired because of a video they posted on the internet get a good chuckle from the hypocrisy of the situation. On one hand everyone is up in arms about privacy and yet people are stupid enough to post incriminating evidence on the transparent medium of the modern age. the some concept applies to plagiarism don't do it people the lie will get caught by a simple search

Finally to my final two questions. Copyright is important because it allows the creator the ownership of their content. the law protects creators from intellectual theft as the damages can be just as serious a physical theft. That being said there are a lot of grey areas in the law, areas which many company and individuals take advantage of. A prime example of this is patent trolls, a new scam that is going around that involves companies patenting common processes/ideas and sue a smaller business for monetary gains (watch video for further info). I would like to conclude this blog by saying intellectual property laws protect people from being the victim of intellectual theft, however, it does have grey areas that still needs to be addressed.

Kev

Weekly Reflection Report Week #9

Hello Everyone,

This week I was introduced to a new tool called Voice Thread. It is a collaboration tool that allows users to upload different media files and create an interactive presentation. The tool allows users to give feedback using different mediums such as comments, Video and audio. I found that since VoiceThread allows users to make comments on specific slides of the presentation it makes it highly interactive and allows a high level of collaboration.

I think strictly judging this tool for its interactive ability it offers a lot more versatility than google docs, as first it allows slide specific comments and secondary it allows different ways to leave feedback.  To begin imagine a scenario when you are part of a big team working on a presentation to attract a new client. It would make the presenters life a lot easier if the team gave feedback on specific slides rather than a generic comment on the overall presentation. The second reason on why I think the tool is great is because users to use different mediums to leave feedback. Explaining something by writing can be a challenge but leaving audio / video messages is great as it makes it much easier to get you point across.

This week I also analyzed a technology use scenario, I selected to scenario #16 as I that using cell phones while driving is a current issue and is extremely dangerous.

This week on my Feedly I read an interesting article (click here) regarding how to be more creative. This article stumped me as ever since I was young I was taught to think outside the box. However, this article asks me to do the exact opposite, upon reading the rationale of the article I am inclined to agree with it. Sticking to the life lessons we are also taught that everyone is good at something and it that is true than then forget the outside of the box look within the box and you will find it.

That’s it, everyone, it is a short blog today as I am swamped with work.

Kev