Weekly Post and Reflection #4

Weekly Reflection #4

Hello readers,

Sorry for my “tardiness” with my week 4 post, although no excuse I have found myself under a pile of midterms and assignments!!! Anyways lets get talking about week 4, where the focus was on increasing our knowledge in digital literacy and building on the news gathering skills we learned in week 3 with the introduction of Feedly!   

Exploring Diigo: Exploring Bookmarking Tools and the Use of Tagging

Throughout the learning activities during week 4 our class was introduced to the media platform called Diigo, which is a system that allows you to bookmark, tag, highlight, and make notes on information found on the Internet. This system allows you to never lose notes, or pieces of information once you have located them, regardless of what piece of technology you are using (Laptop, I phone etc.). To date we have been introduced to many great online tools, however, personally I believe this is the best and most important one to date. I take this stance due to many valid reasons which all stem from being a undergraduate university student.

Being an undergraduate university student in sport management, the program demands many research papers to be written. This involves many hours of online research, going through many articles and numerous pieces of information. What this looks like at the end is lots of randomly saved links, and information all over the place which prolongs the writing process and increases the difficulty to properly cite all sources needed. By using Diigo, the features such as on page highlights, on page notes, and the bookmarking of each website, I will be able to use sources and cite them in an effective and efficient manner. I believe that if I use this tool for future academic papers and assignments, I will be able to write better papers, which will translate into better grades.

Curation Tools

In week four we were also introduced to curation tools such as Paper.li , Storify, Google Alerts, LiveBinders, and Scoop.it where the purpose is to organize news information in a way that fits a individuals likes and interests. Some of these tools also help a person create virtual “newspapers” which allows them to share their interests with other people in the online world. After exploring a variety of these options, my personal preference was Google alerts because it was more geared at making sure I am informed in my interest areas rather then me informing other people of the information. I enjoyed this part of Google Alerts because it is focused on my experience with exploring information on the online world, and it something that I can see myself using in my day to day life. Therefore, building on this point Google Alerts would be classified under the category of “Social”. I would categorize it as this because the sites that I automatically followed when starting Google alerts was all the different sport teams and leagues I have interest in, which I classify as my social life. In addition to this, I would also classify this platform under the “Educational” category in my PLE because it has the great potential to put to this use in the future. Due to the great ease and convenience of Google Alerts, this platform will come in handy when I do a paper on a current issue and want to follow what is going on to ensure that my paper is current to the events I am writing about. By using Google Alerts for this purpose, I will be able to write a successful paper with limited time researching the current events of the topic each day.  

Picture of the global connection made through this class
Picture found at: http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-global-connection-image11041152

In conclusion, throughout my learning in week four, and my learning to this point in the course, I have realized that digital literacy has never been achieved easier then it can be today. Also upon completing week 4 I feel more connected and informed about events going on in the world then ever before.  Through platforms like Google Alerts and Feedly, which was explored last week, I am able to read and learn about current events easier and faster which encourage me to continue to check and stay informed, transforming me into a better global citizen! 

Thanks for continuing to read about my journey in this course! 

Brandon