Week 4 - Online Content Curation

Hey reader,

This week, we learned about the importance of effective content curation on the Internet. Rouse (2012) defines content curation on her post (http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/content-curation) as the gathering, organizing and online presentation of content related to a particular theme or topic. As young people, we do this all the time through our social media - if we see an article on CNN or any other source, we share it on our Facebook pages after giving our own commentary on it, and then put together information relating to the topic, and finally, we share that. We also do it in social situations (doing research, sharing it with our friends and family) and in classrooms (in seminar presentations). Content curation is a key part of our lives as social, intelligent creatures, and being able to take advantage of the multiple tools available to us on the Internet to do so more effectively is a key skill. The following image describes content curation in a social context: 

(Folon, 2013) 

(http://www.slideshare.net/FOLON/introduction-aux-outils-de-curation)

Fiorelli (2011) (http://www.iloveseo.net/content-curation-definition-and-generation/) states that there are 3 steps to effective content curation. The first step, he states, is to find the most reliable content, and use only the highest quality content. It is also important to know who your target audience is when you are curating information - you want to have information that is relevant to where you are posting your information and to the readers. For example, in this step, using a source such as CNN would be a good way to find reliable content. Next, Fiorelli believes that we need to add our value to the information that we have found, by adding comments and perspectives, and providing a context in which the information is important. In continuation of my past example, that would be adding your own feedback when sharing the CNN article of your choice. Finally, Fiorelli states that curators needs to provide clear links to additional resources, and to provide credit for where the information is from. That would simply mean providing proper citation or even a sources used section. 

                                    

(Karter, 2011) 

(http://www.bethkanter.org/content-curation-101/)

We were presented with multiple online tools that we can use for online curating this week, including Paper.li, Storify, Google Alerts, LiveBinders, and Jog the Web. The one tool that stood out to me most was Scoop.it. Through that website, we are able to create an online magazine that caters to our specific interests - we can combine all of the information that comes our way (as indicated by articles we have 'scooped' before) and put it together in a way that reflects all of the information that we have found interesting. The website is easy to use, colourful, and interesting - all of the information that is presented to us on the website is interesting and reader-friendly (i.e. no expert journal articles). Scoop.it is a great tool for me to curate information that is interesting to me, and I will absolutely be using it excessively in the future as a productive online citizen. 

As I explored bookmarking tools this week, I noticed the incredible amount of information we have online that we would like to read in the future - there is actually so much information on the Internet that event the world's largest library could never physically contain it! Therefore, it is very important that we are able to go back to the sources that we initially found interesting in the future, because we don't always have time to read it when we first get a hold of the website. Recent bookmarking tools also have incredible features that allow us to annotate, highlight, and sort our bookmarks. The most helpful tool that I've found after exploring multiple bookmarking tools this week was Diigo.com. This incredible feature allows us to not only bookmark, but screenshot, highlight, search, share, and more. Most importantly, we can access all of these bookmarks simply through the Internet on any device. In the past, I have had many bookmark randomly scattered on my Google Chrome browser, but when I wanted to read it on another computer, I was never able to access it. With Diigo.com, I can access my bookmarks anywhere. I am truly amazed at how incredible this tool is, and am so grateful to be able to use it for free!

As I looked through my Feedly reader this week, one of my feeds showed an article, from a Scoop.it page (interesting how Scoop.it results show up on my Feedly reader, by the way), that talks about a tool called rather (http://getrather.com/) that allows one to "easily filter out info you don't want to see from your main incoming news streams...in an age of information overabundance. (Good, 2014) (http://curation.masternewmedia.org/p/4014210198/2014/01/15/filter-out-anything-you-don-t-want-to-see-again-with-rather)" Similarly, a fellow student, Mark, puts the concept in a humorous way, saying, "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. (Chong, 2014) (http://marksaded.blogspot.ca/2014/02/week-4-reportreflection.html)" The importance of content curation this week was to find the most useful information in a world where there is an overabundance of information, as Good put it, so a tool like rather is absolutely crucial for us to filter out information we have absolutely no interest in.

All of these helpful tools contribute significantly to the organizing content section of my PLE, which was truly lacking before (when I just had Google Chrome bookmarks on it). I am very glad I get to continue to expand my PLE. 

Again, I am very glad I now have access to all these fantastic web tools that will help me increase my learning productivity! 

Thanks for reading! 

- Lewis 

Week 3 - Growing my PLE with an RSS

This week, we learned about the effectiveness of RSS in expanding our PLE as students and lifelong learners. Before this session, I had always seen the little orange half-diamond with white lines across them, but I had never taken the time to learn what it was, as I just assumed that it would be too complicated and would take too much time to learn. After this session, however, I've discovered that RSS can actually save you time spent doing manual online surfing and searching, so I found myself wondering why I didn't give this tool a shot earlier, as efficiency is one of my main goals as a learner.

(http://www2.macleans.ca/rss-feeds/) 

According to Rowse (2010), RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Rowse's article about RSS (http://www.problogger.net/what-is-rss/), in addition to Lefever's (2007) video (http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english), helped me significantly with learning about what RSS were. Lefever's initial description of RSS caught my attention immediately, considering the importance of efficiency to me, and his use of the Netflix analogy of describing this fascinating tool made me feel stupid for not knowing about this technology earlier. Even as a high school student, I loved to browse online for information I was interested in, and compulsively organized my hundreds of bookmarks into neat compartments. The RSS fits in with my passion for seeking information very well, as it "sends up to date and relevant information to you to read in your own time" (Rowse, 2010). Shareski's (2008) analogy of RSS also helped convince me that I could take advantage of this tool and that I should incorporate it into my PLE, as he likened it to having a free team to help me do up to date research (http://ideasandthoughts.org/2007/04/19/whos-on-your-research-team/). As a psychology student wanting to go into graduate studies to do research in mental health, having this tool in my PLE will allow me to keep up to date to the newest information in the field. I have a significant interest in learning about PTSD, and immediately after learning to use the RSS, I was able to subscribe to blogs written by real-life individuals influenced by PTSD. Learning about mental health issues from a textbook is one thing, but to read descriptions of real life experience is absolutely invaluable and reminds me of the real reason I got into psychology. Having an RSS update me on these individuals' process and expanding my PLE to incorporate real life experiences and knowledge is without a question an incredibly valuable asset to my learning! I am beyond excited to apply this tool into my learning this semester!

(Ó Sionnaigh, 2013) 

It is very hard to group the RSS into a specific category in my PLE, mainly because it involves so many different aspects of my PLE. As seen in the image above, it involves practicing digital literacy (searching for information with wikis and news sources, and content management), organizing content (with bookmarks), and collaborating and socializing (with Flickr and blogs). While I wouldn't necessarily put it in only one part of my PLE, it will be a recurring element of it.

With RSS providing us with more opportunities to interact with others through our increasingly wide PLN, digital responsibility and citizenship has an increasing role in our lives - we must use the resources we have safely and respectfully. With power comes responsibility, so it becomes more important that we behave as responsible online citizens, and element 5 (digital etiquette) (Ribble, 2011) becomes especially important as we interact with various posters from websites that we are subscribed to.

Furthermore, one of the blogs that was given to us as an example was Edutopia, and through that, I was able to find some very interesting posts that contribute to my work this semester in building digital literacy, responsibility, and citizenship. Johnson (2014) (http://www.edutopia.org/blog/creating-learning-environments-ben-johnson) discusses the prevalence of digital literacy in young people, with students easily able to retrieve information in a incredibly short amount of time. The role of the instructor, he argues, is to help students understand why what they are learning is important - which is definitely how I feel the role of the instructor is in this course. Marcinek (2013) states in his blog, also on Edutopia, (http://www.edutopia.org/blog/the-path-to-digital-citizenship-andrew-marcinek) that "students must understand that there should be no difference between how they act online and how they act offline." I could not agree more with this statement, and I've noticed that we've all been educated to behave in kind and civilized ways throughout our journey in the public school system, so if young adults of our age could transfer the knowledge and skills they've learned for behaving respectfully towards each other, there would be much less abuse of the magnificent tool that we have available to us.

In all, I'm incredibly glad that I got to learn about the RSS this week, and cannot wait to apply it to my academic and personal learning this semester!

My Experience with RSS Feeds

This week, I learned to use RSS Feeds, and the tool of my choice was Feedly. One of the sites were were instructed to subscribe to was the Brock Press website. One of the top articles that showed up on my Feedly page was called "Brock University a top choice with Ontario high school students" (Mayer, 2014). It interested me because when I applied to Brock, it was a school that nobody else had much interest in. As I read the article, however, it became clear to me that the title was slightly deceptive, as what was actually found this year was that Brock actually increased its market share of students who made it a top share, while its competitors lost market share. Nowhere in the article does it tell us exact numbers of applicants this year compared to other schools. Articles like these make Brock Press seem biased and unprofessional. It is clear that we need to keep in mind the sources where we get our information, as institutionally-based news websites (such as The Brock Press) will have articles that present information with large amounts of biases, even misinformation. Skepticism and critical analytical skills are a big part of being a successful learner in a digital context!

Source:
Mayer, T. (2014, Jan 22). Brock university a top choice with ontario high school students. Retrieved from http://www.brocku.ca/brock-news/?p=25987

Week 2: Personal Learning Environments

This week, we investigated the concept of a personal learning environment (PLE) and why it is important to us as students. Candice Figg described a personal learning environment as, "the set of digital tools to support your personal learning (Figg, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaxpCFuPNcQ)." From the multiple sources studied this week, my general view on a PLE is that it is the group of tools we use in our lives that help us enhance our learning, by providing support for us when setting goals, helps us manage and process content, and communicate and interact with others with a goal of enhancing our mutual learning - in other words, creating a personal learning network (PLN) through our personal learning environment (Digenti, 1999). With the Web 2.0, which emphasizes online cooperation and sharing among users to promote cooperative learning, there is no reason for me to not take advantage of everything that is out there and expand my personal learning environment!

This content studied this week included a discussion on the difference between the LMS and a PLE. While I have slowly gotten much more comfortable with using Brock's LMS Sakai, I have yet to truly develop my PLE. A website presented in this week's session (http://microbiologybytes.com/tutorials/ple/index.html) looked at the differences and similarities between the LMS and the PLE. While the LMS is an effective management tool, the PLE is much more individualized and allows students to more efficiently use online resources their OWN way. In my opinion, though, both are absolutely necessary, especially because of their similarities in enhancing our learning, and an LMS provides guidance for students still new to the idea of building a PLE (in other words, myself). The following image suggests the differences between the two:

("PLE," 2011)

(http://juandomingofarnos.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/lms-vs-ple.png)

In his Prezi presentation, Andre Malan quoted Micahel Welsh as saying that, in the 21st century, it is more important to be able to find, sort, discuss, critique, share and create information (being knowledge-able), than to be able to recall information (being knowledgeable). I completely agree with this suggestion, and have observed its influence on higher education in the recent years - professors have been increasingly stressing research skills and ability to retrieve information on top of learning textbook information. With the technology we have today, it is much more efficient to be competent in searching for important information than trying to memorize every idea and concept, which is why it is extremely important to develop and expand my personal learning environment as a student. Looking at my current PLE, it contains only very basic resources, and I am getting the sense that I am not completely embracing all of the available technology out there that can enhance my PLE. I especially lack resources that help me organize content and practice digital responsibility, which is increasing my personal learning environment by getting comfortable with using different online resources is one of my main goals in this course.

As a psychology major, it is especially important for me to expand my PLE in terms of practicing digital literacy. I need to increase the amount of sources I have that will allow me to retrieve information from credible sources, as research and information retrieval will be a key element of my learning in coming years. The following image shows the difference between scholarly and popular sources - Wikipedia, for example, would be a popular source, and sources like those would not add much to my personal learning environment, as they are not academically credible.

("Popular vs. scholarly," 2013)

(http://www2.potsdam.edu/libdocs/images/RDTutorial-popscholarly.jpg)

I found the YouTube video uploaded by Wendy Dexter to be most helpful in helping me learn about how I can build my PLE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XwM4ieFOotA). The narrator listed the crucial steps to be taken to building a PLE as (in no specific order) (1) finding valid sources, (2) ensuring their credibility, (3) searching for scholarly sources, (4) posting findings to social bookmarking sites, (5) searching blogs for opinions and other people's perspectives, and (6) posting one's own blog to share reflections about what the student has learned. These are all steps I will experiment with this semester to develop my PLE. The final suggestion, in my opinion, was the most interesting - the narrator suggested that one of the sources that students can add to their PLE is to use podcasts such as iTunes U. I tend to have my headphones in a lot, and I have been searching for ways to learn even when I'm walking down the hallway listening to something, and the podcast idea just seems to be the perfect suggestion! I am often a verbal and visual learner, also, so using auditory learning during my spare time will be refreshing and interesting.

We were also instructed to try out the use of WordCloud this week. I find this tool extremely interesting and helpful - students can identify the key concepts of the text in a visually stimulating and interesting way. I will be using this device before studying a text to get a general sense of the key and important concepts that I should be paying more attention to.

I look forward to further expanding my personal learning environment throughout this course, but for now, that's it from me this week!

Lau, L. (CC) 2014. 

Lau, L. (CC) 2014. 

Week 1: Digital Footprints

Hi internet,

I am creating this course as part of my learning process for ADED1P32 at Brock University. In this course, I am hoping to develop the skills I need to create a positive digital footprint and use the resources available to me in a productive and positive manner to enhance my learning.

Source: http://www.digitalfamilysummit.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Digital-Footprint.png

The first week of this course has been quite an eye opener for me. Learning about positive digital footprints and netiquette truly shed light on a part of my light I haven't truly studied objectively. Obviously, as 21st century students and young people, we use online networking tools excessively, such as Twitter, Facebook Youtube, Linkedin, etc. Unfortunately, very few of us realize that every small action we do online can be traced. The irony is the fact people are so much more comfortable online posting and expressing whatever they think and feel (often negative, many of the things they would never say in 'real life'); however, every action that is done online can be tracked, unlike their actions in 'real life'. The following video, shown to me in this class, is truly an eye opener: 

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=79IYZVYIVLA 

Without a doubt, everything we do on the internet can be monitored and trace, and after learning about this, I have decided to truly commit myself to working towards building a positive digital footprint. It is very important that everything I do online reflects me in a positive manner, and that I am as serious about treating others the way I want to be treated online as I am in 'real life'. 

A digital footprint is every action we take online, every post, and everything we upload, as I have learned from this and several other videos I have viewed in this course. A positive digital footprint is just as important as having a positive footprint as we take steps every day of our lives by doing things that contribute to the world. A positive digital footprint is similar to having a positive social identity - we should be presenting our best selves, showcasing out talents while recognizing and respecting others, in a digital setting. 

In the past, I have made some mistakes and broken some of the core rules of netiquette, as presented in the following link: http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html. Netiquette is one of those things that they quickly go over in elementary school, but it's just so easy to forget about it because so many people on the Internet do not follow them! For example, as a massive fan of pop music and culture, I have joined pop music discussion websites and have created accounts in various online media outlets to comment on pop culture news and events. The culture in these online boards is quite toxic - people say things there that they would never say in 'real life'. Not only do commenters and board members often speak brutally of public figures, they also mistreat each other when others' comments aren't in line with their views. Rule 2 (adhering to the same standards online as you would in real life) is rarely followed, as I can confidently say that most of these folks would never speak so badly of anybody in public. There is a certain security that some individuals perceive when they are sitting behind their screen - they feel that they have a total sense of anonymity, when, as we have learned this week, it is not true (everything we do online can be traced!). Rule 5 (always make yourself look good online) is also rarely followed. People have a sense that they do not need to present their best selves on the Internet - while, in reality, they should be working just as hard to present their best selves online as they do in real life! Some of these negative, toxic online habits are definitely the norm in online pop culture discussion forums, and I have undoubtedly conformed to those norms in the past. However, given what I know now, I will be MUCH more conscious of anything I post anywhere online! Netiquette is an absolutely crucial part of creating a positive digital footprint. 

Ribbel (2011) calls our activity on the Internet 'digital citizenship'. I couldn't have labeled it better - we need to behave as harmoniously and as positively in digital settings as good citizens of the world as we do in 'real life'. Out digital footprint (as we learned from our online resources) is a result of our digital citizenship (from the textbook). A positive digital footprint is a result of positive digital citizenship. Our identity is defined as much by our actions in digital settings as it is by our actions in 'real life'. Ribbel (2001) states, "Digital citizenship does not stop at the classroom door. Digital technology has become part of every person's daily life, and it should be our goal that individuals will use technology appropriately in all settings…" It is very important that I am as good of a citizen in digital settings as I try to be in 'real life', so I will work towards using digital resources available to be in a constructive and positive manner. This is what my blog will be about - my journey towards that goal. 

In the future, based on my results from my digital driver's licence exam, I hope to learn more about the other elements of digital citizenship, including digital commerce, law, rights and responsibilities, and most importantly (as a psychology major interested in mental health) digital health and wellness. 

SOURCES: 

Ribble, M. (2011). Digital citizenship in schools. (2nd ed.). International Society for Technology in Education.