Week 6 Collaborative Notes & Documents - Working in the Cloud

Evernot,[online image]. available at www.eachweb2.wikispaces.com

My biggest challenge in this week learning is to connect group member to get the assigned project going. I researched all kinds of material included articles, scholar journals, website sources, video and images that related to the topic “Digital Health and Wellness”.

The whole idea I found for week 6 is to collect all my research materials into one easy accessible file and be able to share with others; this is where “Evernote” comes as a great help.

Evernote allows people to view, store, and write note whenever they need to, we can also create a “Shared Notebook” to let others view everything we added into the Evernote account.

At this point, Evernote helped me manage my learning materials effectively. I can even tag, seat up shortcuts and notification to make organizing sources much more easier.

I think Technology promotes and enhance lifelong learning. The other thing that I like about using E-tools is the mobile app. Most of the tools that I learned from this course has mobile app.

These apps allow me to easily capture, document and share my files from any device including my cell phone and my tablet. With technology becoming an integrated part of learning, it is convenience that I have a tool that I can carry around. However, I am 100% agree with Hilary that “there will always be new digital technologies and tools for digital citizens to learn. I can conclude that learning to become a digital citizen is a process with not specific starting point and definitely no finish line.” (quote from Hilary Pollock’s week 6 blog post. http://hilarypollockaded1p32.blogpost.ca )

In addition, I thought about how this week’s learning enhances my PLE and I would probably add Evernote under “Gather Information”, emphasis on how it helped me organizing all my learning sources. However, one thing I haven’t been able to do is to connect Evernote to my other tools, such as Twitter. I think that will be fun and the tool will make it much faster to share my up to date learning status with my learning group.

Week 6 PLE update

Using Evernote is the first step for me to collaborate with my learning partners. We use Evernote as a platform to share our research findings and ideas. We communicate with each other and the tool we use helped keeping up the societal trends. I would assume my digital literacy has grown this weekcause I was able to use technology to achieve some of my learning goals including organize information on the internet, communicate with others through email and twitter and most importantly, I am now comfortable and more confindent of using these E-tools as a support to my learning. 

week 5 Microblogging and Building PLN

Twitter [online image], available at www.about.twitter.com

 Twitter at first was only a social network for me and I didn’t know it could be a great tool for supporting micro-blogging. In this week, I set up my Twitter and created a ‘1p32 list’, I connected with most of my classmate and the immediacy of the messages helped me feel like more of a group. Professor light in his video “most effective classes” pointed out that learners benefit from the diversity of students in a class by sharing their assignments and insights. I think tools like Twitter should be encourage among learners, especially for online courses, it allows learners to communicate, share ideas and learn together, it changes the dynamics of the virtual classroom.

Another great feature that I think I will keep using is to share valuable internet contents via my twitter account (most of the curation tools that I learned recently also support Tweeting). Twitter is a pretty good search engine, it helps me look for sources that fit in my search, I follow them, then new information will come directly to me and then I tweet them. What I like about it is that, my followers will see the contents right away and we can always expand our discussion accordingly. Collaborative learning is powerful and Twitter is engaging learners to step out of the box and learn together.

Kawai's Twitter page, 2013

Although Twitter helps building my PLN, it also involves in my PLE. I could add Twitter under ‘gather information’ and ‘application’ in my PLE and I am sure I would make good use of it.

no author [online image]

My PLN is growing and I started to realize the ongoing changes in technology is affecting everyone who gets in touch with the cyber world every day, and that means we, as an internet user, need to know how to model a successful digital citizenship and promote responsible behaviours in the digital contexts. For example, we should respects the freedom of the speech but we have to also aware of the language, images and symbols that we use when posting, blogging, tweeting … etc. “A good digital citizen seeks out feedback from other to evaluate their use of technology, and then makes personal adjustments based on this feedback.” (Ribble, 2011), I must remind myself about contributing and promoting the values of digital citizenship when using the internet.

PLE week 5 update

week 4 Curating the Web

Bookmarking is not a new concept to me, but the idea of “Curation” has bought me to a ah-ha moment in week 4.

 “Content curation is the process of sorting through the vast amounts of content on the web and presenting it in a meaningful and organized way around a specific theme.” (Bharati Ahuja, October 31, 2012, “If you can’t be a creator, then be a curator)

I explored a few digital curation tools this week and I found Diigo is a great social bookmarking tool for search and share references like articles, journals, news and blog posts. It allows me to bookmark and highlight important sources and organize in my account. 

Personal Profile Screen Shot,
(cc) Kawai Sabarillo, 2013

The other curation tool I like is scoop.it. it works effectively by just punching in a few key words in the search box, the site will automatically suggest sources that relate to the topic that I’m interested, all I need to do is “scoop it” and the sources will be framed and on my dashboard.

Scoop.it Screen Shot, (cc) Kawai Sabarillo, 2013

There are many many great digital curation tools available on line, and what I learned in this week is why these tools are important?

We can basically bookmark anything on any web page of our choice, however, the meaning behind bookmarking I think is to share the best of our content. We have equal opportunity to be involved in a digital world but as a good digital citizen, it is also our responsibility to handle the internet assess appropriately.

Fiorelli in his blog post “Content Curation: definition and generation”) states that, “the future of the social web will be driven by these Content Curators, who take it upon themselves to collect and share the best content online for others to consume and take on the role of citizen editors, publishing highly valuable compilations of content created by others” and to be efficiently curate the web, Fiorelli suggests curator to find the best content, add value and credit it.

The internet is like an open sea, and the digital information seems endless. I started to realize that a good search result is somewhat depends on how we curate. The internet and digital tools support learning by bring resources to others attention. It is critical that we know what and where information should be curated. The curator should always review the resources and make sure it matches the topics and purpose of the curation.

If you have time, please visit my link attached below and leave me some comments.
Thanks !!

Souces
Ahuja, B. (2012, October). If you can't be a creator, then be a curator. Retrieved from http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2221068/If-You-Cant-Be-a-Creator-Then-Be-a-Curator

Diigo -- https://www.diigo.com/user/kawai1p32

Scoop.it – www.scoop.it/u/kawai-1p32

Week 3 Putting the internet to work for you

I think the major task in this week is to develop my reading habit. I believe critical reading is important to our academic success, however, the engagement and interaction with the unlimited reading material are the keys. After learning how to use RSS and attach Permalink effectively, I came up with some ideas of how to retain my reading habit.

Limit my search – we all understand how much time and energy, as a result, reading will demand from us. To start off my feedly.com account, I followed 1P32 session guide and set up less than 15 reading categories. The amount of reading was acceptable and definitely helped preparing my independent reading reputation.

Organization – after I make sure the link that I want to add to my feedly.com, I put it under a related category immediately. I think this is an important and a simple step as it helps to store and file material that I need, it is easier to scope and aim and also I know where to pull out what I want whenever I want to.

Preview – new articles and information will automatically come to my feedly.com account when there is update, however, information overload can be discouraged. So I read around the webpage or the title of the article before I really start reading the whole thing. By doing so, I know what to expect and I can grasp a few ideas from the material before reading.

Read through my own eyes – I think “reading” should be a new item that added to be part of my PLE. In addition, I think I should be reading with my own point of view and ask questions constantly. How does the essay contribute to my study? How has my thinking been changed by this reading? Are the reasons that given by the author making any sense? Points are convincing or they are breaking down? Asking questions help to identify my concerns and know importance of the text and I am sure the attitude can keep me reading.

What interested me – keeping tract with topics that interested me retain my reading habit. I can’t read everything but I can choose what I like to read. “education”, “life style”. “Health and Wellness” “Information”….are categories that in my feedly.com at the moment and I enjoy reading things that are related to these topic.

Set Reading Goal – be honest and set a realistic goal that I can follow is essential. As an independent reader, I know what is best for me, right now I read 2-4 materials daily and I think this is comfortable to me.

Ok fellows..…. Am going back to feedly.com, keep reading !!! 

My Experience with RSS Feeds

Even though RSS is over a decade old, this is really the first time I set up one for myself.

RSS, “Real Simple Syndication”, is a powerful tool for conducting research and collecting web materials such as news, blog posts, articles and more.

RSS allows me to quickly access updated content from the website that I am interested. However, the materials pile up and were over 200 feeds in a few days and that became not too readable to me.

 My feeds are about different things so I group them under specific folders and that made a lot easier for me to recognize the texts. Feeds can be marked as “read” and that removes the context from the right pane and moves the next one up. I was annoyed by this because I lost a few articles (should have saved them!!!).

I am still exploring at this point and I realized the most important thing is to learn how to organize the links that I am following. Besides, RSS is a great tool and I appreciate those developers who keep publishing quality material for us.

Thanks for feeding.

Week 2 Personal Learning Environment

The biggest project in week 2 for me is to figure out my “PLE”.

From “A bridge in the cloud” presentation, I understood PLE is a system that helps learners take control of and manage their own learning. This includes providing support for learners to

•         Set their own learning goals
•        Manage their learning
•        Communicate with others

On the other hand, Personal Learning Network (PLN) is a network of people you connect with for the specific purpose of learning”  (Tobin,1998, as cited in Lalonde, C. 2012).

Both PLE and PLN have given a very clear direction to my own learning goal. I started to ask myself, ‘where was I?’ and ‘where did I go?’

I have always been a planner, however, in week 2, I developed a personal learning environment and that gave me a better picture of how and where I can improve learning.

My PLE starts with a learning goal. I believe education will be meaningless if we don’t know what we want to achieve and where am I now? Here are my goals for this course:

·         To research and learn different kind of tools that would help me using the digital resources effectively.

·         To build my online reading habit.

·         To share and expand my own knowledge with my friends, instructor and colleagues using various web tools.

I understand that I need supports to achieve the goals that I set up and so the next step is to gather information. Communication, references and internet resources are where I can get plenty information.

After I gather what I need, is the learning process. Take notes, brainstorming, discuss … are all common method for me to digest what I want to learn, however , I am sure there will be more to add in this part of PLE through my learning journey. Looking forward….

I believe if I can handle these digital tools, web resources, reference, and communication platform well enough, I will be able to apply and reflect on my work and also to share with other. And the most important is keep reflecting and hopefully that will being my PLE to the next level.

Achieve a learning goal is not the end point of my PLE (actually, there is no destination when it comes to learning) Growing a PLE is to make CHANGES, from DON’T KNOE to KNOW HOW, and I can imagine how much support and resources I would need to set a learning goal, achieve it and generate a new one, seems like there’s no end…By the way, this is not PLE, for me it is PLC…. Personal Learning Cycle.