Weekly Report & Reflection blog post # 11

DIGITAL LITERACY

In my exploration of webcasting tools, I realize the importance of digital literacy. While the tools are free, they are not very assessable to the population that does not know about them, or how they work. The people who had no idea about the kind of tools that exists typically do not seek out for these kinds of tools. The ability to understand how these tools work also requires a basic level of computer literacy, which is lower than the general reading literacy rate. There are so many tools in the digital world that can benefit people socially and intellectually. The senior population especially would benefit greatly from this.

Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

Tools such as Muziboo, SoundCloud, RecordMP3, Garageband, Jing, and Screenr are great tools that can capture what I see, what I hear, and what I say. These tools are great ways to share a large essence of the information I process when living in this world with other people. These tools differ than the other communication and collaborative tools I’ve explored in that these tools focus more on audio and visual data than simply texts. Unlike the other tools, these also capture what I see, hear and say live. This gives an accurate and realistic reflection of reality as I experience it. I have already included Lightshot, similar to Jing and Screenr into my PLE. I am not including the voice tools as I am very shy, especially about my voice.

In learning about becoming a digital citizen, I realize this week that it is not only about sharing ideas and contributing content together. It matters what kind of content are being shared. It also matters what type and format of content we are sharing. It is possible for anyone to not only share information, but also their emotions. Their voice and a live reflection of their experience in the living world can be shared with a variety of tools such as the tools we learned this week. Moreover, people can protect their work with Creative Commons license. I have learned that this is a very easy and quick process. The key is in knowing how to do so.

Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

FEEDLY

Content sharing has its up and downs. We learned about Netiquette in the first week, and twitter use in the recent weeks. One article that appeared on my feedly reader this week was about the Memories Pizza restaurant whose owners serves anyone in restaurant, but not cater to the wedding they were asked to cater for a gay couple. A Concord High School golf, softball and basketball coach used her Twitter to call for people to commit arson with her by burning down the pizzeria in response as a part of an outcry for gay rights. Reflecting on what we have learned in class, this is an improper use of digital tools as the coach is threatening the safety and security of other citizens. A high school teacher promotes violence based on her own beliefs. But what happens if someone acts on them? If a community pizzeria owned by a black family refused to cater to a Caucasian KKK member’s wedding, would there be a similar outcry for discrimination? And if these KKK members retaliate with threats like burning down the pizzeria, I am certain they would be arrested and prosecuted. I am glad that the police department here made the right decision in recommending prosecution for the coach too. More importantly, I think this shows that digital citizenship is as much a public presence as a real citizenship. A person must conduct as they would online as they should offline. 

Weekly Report & Reflection blog post # 10

ANIMOTO/PHOTO PEACH

Instead of Animoto, I used Photo Peach to create my slideshow. The subject of the slide show is on Fair Dealing in relation to copyright issues. After finding about 8 images, I registered an account on Photo Peach. The registration process is very easy. It requires a username, password and an email. No verification was needed. The first step is to upload pictures from the computer. I did all of the references for images in writing. Afterward, I copy pasted the references into a paint document, and saved it as an image. This image is then added onto the slideshow at the end to give credit to the source of the images.

Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

Photo Peach has the amazing feature of embedding music within the video slideshow. It also allows you to click on each slide to custom edit what is said for that slide. A slide bar allows you to adjust how slowly or fast you want that slide to move. Moreover, transition effects and animation effects are applied onto the slides and images for you. This tool is amazing in its ability to save you time and in making a visually appealing video. After finishing the video, I saw that there are ways to share it on social media. More impressively, it has an option to embed the video into a website. After copy pasting the embed codes, I embedded it onto the top right corner of my blog. This can also be done on personal websites that allows html as well. I also noticed that at the end of the video play, watchers of the video can type in and submit comments to the video. This is a very useful automatic feedback system built into the video. More than just allowing the video to play, this tool makes it possible for audiences to provide collaborative feedback and channel two way communications between the creator and the viewers. I will definitely use Photo Peach for future projects!

Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

REFLECTION

Tools such as Photo Peach can be used by people who do not have a lot of computer background to create memorizing videos and share them through many internet mediums. Photo Peach contributed to my work in building knowledge by providing an audio and visual alternative in storing knowledge I have gained. Photo Peach is different than other collaborative communication tools in that it changes completely the type of media that is being organized. Not only does it allow customized comments on images and slides, it allows for a mixing of different types of media presented in a final video format. I will be adding this to my PLE under curation tools. Unlike other curation tools, this one mixes media and makes them into a video with music. After reading all about Fair Dealing and copyright this week, I am learning a lot about the reasons behind copyright exceptions. It is to facilitate and encourage digital citizenship for those who are low in digital literacy.

Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

FEEDLY THIS WEEK

Big Brother Canada was on the news this week. Like many reality shows, Big Brother uses live feed cameras to record activities engaged by the participants of the Big Brother House. More than just a TV show, interactive forum, comment pages and online websites are created where the audience of the show can engage in communication with each other, vote with each other, and provide feedback with each other. This feel like a digital citizenship exists within the Big Brother online community. I think this social tv show has some very interesting use of the internet in engaging its audiences and encouraging digital participation. Perhaps, something similar could be done for a class one day.

My Slideshow

Weekly Report & Reflection blog post #9

POLLDADDY

Unlimited surveys, unlimited responses were the marketing headline for Polldaddy. This is a great tool to conduct feedback from anyone using the internet. It does not require a specific website, or programming knowledge. This is a great tool in every way for those who are not educated on computer programming languages. The interface is clean and easy to use. I realize that this week, the theme may simply be what PollDaddy is designed to do: gather feedbacks.

Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

  

VoiceThread, like PollDaddy, is a tool where people who have the link to the shared document can comment with written text.  People can also comment with a video clip they took of themselves as they spoke. Like PollDaddy, this is a means of feedback. Unlike PollDaddy, the feedback is custom. In other words, the feedback is not based on the answers provided in a poll, but up to, and are determined by the users who are providing the feedback. There is a lot more freedom to VoiceThread than PollDaddy.

For my PLE, I may add VoiceThread alongside Google Docs, since both are similar in term of its ability to allow multiple users to collaborate and make changes. Unlike Google Docs’s Slides, this tool allows comments to be made, permanently and in different formats. I think this is a great way to provide feedback. PollDaddy, however, will be more on the periphery of the group. Unlike VoiceThread and Google Docs, the collaboration is limited in term of content that is provided by the maker of the poll.

Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

FEEDBACK

Unlike previous tools we have come to learn about, these tools this week are all to gather feedback. I understand that this may have to do with being a digital citizen in more ways than just a content creator. Being a voice that repeats itself again and again, without having ears to listen, is not a two way collaborative process. Collaboration is so important in that it can improve the quality of the content in the digital world by taking in feedbacks. Feedbacks from other digital citizens allow the content creator to know what is done right and what can be done better. This information requires tools to gather. So far, this week’s tools are the best in gathering feedback, and help facilitate the collaboration process of being a digital citizen.

FEEDLY – RENT INCREASES

This week, one article stood out. It is about a Parkdale apartment complex increasing its rent for its residents at about 4% per year. The residents are staging a protest. At first, I feel that a simple contract based agreement will resolve any rent increase. For example, rent during one contract cannot be changed until the end of the contract. At that time, if the people do not want to live there, then they can seek another contact at another location. However, as I get to the end of the article, I read that 16,000 apartment work orders have been resolved by the apartment since last year. That is a lot of work orders! It makes me wonder just what kind of issues these residents face, and whether there is a feedback system to provide better solutions or understanding to what the key systematic issues are. I think this is the kind of situation where a collaborative environment and collaborative communication from both sides can stand to address not only the issues the residents face, but also minimizing the word orders to a lot less than 16,000 a year.

Permalink to article:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/03/22/parkdale-tenants-battle-back-to-back-rent-increases.html

Scenario #7

Scenario 7: Mrs. Peters enjoys working with technology. She has been working with computers for several years now and has her own website to allow friends to keep up with what her family is doing. Every year she posts her family's holiday photo on the website. A friend who lives overseas contacts her and says that she saw her family's photo being used as an advertisement. Neither Mrs. Peters nor her husband know anything about it. How do you protect your identity?

Mrs. Peters is not using technology inappropriately because she is not going out of her way to violate the rights of others. The maker of the advertisement, however, is not using technology appropriately. The maker of the advertisement infringed upon their copyright and does not have permission to use their photos for advertisements. An appropriate approach would be for the advertisement maker to contact Mrs. Peters and ask for permission to use any photos to make advertisements with. They may also offer to compensate her monetarily. This is the least they could do in respecting her and her husband’s privacy as well as in being a responsible digital citizen. Preventively, I think Mrs. Peters and her husband could use a watermark or text across important areas of the photo with text of their website url, so that the images are not easily used for other means without at least clear statement of ownership. The textbook page 33 have examples of Illegal Technology Use. One of the example is software piracy. Like softwares, made by programmers, the photos were created by Mrs. Peters. The pirating of such digital content is wrong, without proper permission. What do you think Mrs. Peters or the maker of the advertisement could do?

VOICETHREAD

Today I used VoiceThread for the first time. After a very simple registration process, I opened the link to the shared powerpoint slide. Immediately on the left side, there are comments already made by people from before. Some made comments on slides with their own voice. Some commented with written text. Other people commented with a video clip they took of themselves as they spoke. Some of these comments seem to be from a while ago, but are as fresh as if they were made today. I think this is a great collaboration and communication tool. For my PLE, I may add it alongside Google Docs, since both are similar in term of its ability to allow multiple users to collaborate and make changes. Unlike Google Docs’s Slides, this tool allows comments to be made, permanently and in different formats. I think this is a great way to provide feedback.

Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

For example, a classroom may have group presentations in PowerPoint. Google Docs can be used to create the presentation collaboratively. After the presentation is created, VoiceThread can be used to elicit feedbacks from students in other groups. This way, students can help each other in making their presentations better. Other students can also provide suggestions, feedbacks, thoughts, and discussions on the subject. The students making the slides can then use the feedback to make their slides better, more informative, and at the same time, gaining knowledge from other students in the same classroom using this tool. It is a way to learn from each other in a two way communication kind of way, instead of the one way presentation if they were only to present their powerpoint slide.

URL for the VoiceThread:

https://voicethread.com/share/4264778/

Weekly Report & Reflection blog post #8

WIKI
This week, the introduction to Wiki has opened my eyes to the potential of collaborative work. I can see myself using wiki to conduct research with other students about any topic, and keep it available permanently online after we have finished the project for anyone to access. Unlike blogs, Wikis are more user friendly in term of linking information. Blogs also often provides limited access and not a collaborative environment. Google Docs is like Wiki in the way that collaboration is possible. However, collaboration is granted only to selected individuals. Moreover, the finished product is limited in their format and audience. Evernote is similar to Google Docs in this way, where the collaboration is limited. Wiki is the only tool that provides true collaboration of all digital citizens.

I can think of many ways that Wikis can be used to support learning. Like the idea I had last week with Google Docs, I believe Wikis can be used in classes as a medium for group work. At the same time, other students in different groups can look at the work being done by other groups. Smaller tasks can be provided instructing individuals to learn from other wikis or to link to other group wikis in a way that each group is learning from other groups.

Becoming a digital citizen is simple, so I thought. But I am beginning to learn that a great part of becoming a digital citizen is not only about having an online presence or trail. It is about participating in the content creation that generates ideas and values within the digital world. This is where I believe that rights and responsibilities come in. It is one thing to simply exist as a digital citizen. It is another thing to contribute constructively and collaboratively as a digital citizen.

Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Like being a member of a community, being a digital citizen may simply mean having an online presence. However, like we have learned in the first two weeks of the class, there are different levels of digital citizenship. Through my learning this past two weeks, I realize that these different levels corroborates to different responsibilities that the digital citizen can undertake, and implies the rights that must be upheld.

1.       The responsibility to protect children from danger as well as their own indiscretions. One that I think is very important is Cyberbullying.

2.       Netiquette, as we have learned in week 1-2, are more than just about learning the internet lingos, but also about how to conduct oneself on the internet.

3.       Digital Law, was something else we have learned over time. The importance of copyright procedures, how to prevent someone else from stealing your identity or taking credit for your own work, and how to prevent hackers from invading your computer.

FEEDLY
This week, CBC News had an article of a case related to cyber bullying. A man named Robert Campbell apologized for his cyber bullying campaign. It is important to realize that in the digital world, where Robert Campbell was a part of, bullying can extend much farther than the borders of a country. He has done what he did to dozens of people across Canada, the U.S. and U.K.

Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

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