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.  

Permalink to Article

Weekly Report & Reflection blog post #7

Collaborative Experience

Using Google Docs, me and my group partner was not only able to create a presentation PowerPoint together, we were able to chat with each other at the same time doing it. Unlike the instant TodaysMeet chat website, the group chat is integrated within Google Docs. While working on the document, I can chat with any other person who is viewing the document. 

I noticed that many important features, such as applying selected transition to all slides, makes Google Docs an ideal tool that can be accessed any time and any where with a computer and internet. This tool seemly sets as an alternative tool for PowerPoint, which does not enable collaborative work, nor is it free to use. The interface is somewhat hidden but extremely intuitive, without stamping all the buttons across the top of the screen like the Desktop PowerPoint does in design.

Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

Google Docs can easily be used within a classroom to allow groups of students to have a digital medium in generating discussion and thoughts, before presenting to the class. Google Docs can also be a great tool for students within a class to work as a group together in creating a classroom project. Moreover, Google Docs allows different topics to be created, and instead of switching topic between groups to write on a pinup board, the students can simply switch shared topic links to add their discussion onto different topic files.

I would add this tool as a communication tool within my PLE beside the Twitter tool. This tool can be used collaboratively as well as for means to organize information. I feel that TodaysMeet is also a great tool. Althrough Google Docs embedded chat works in the same way that TodaysMeet does, Google Docs chat does not appear to have a easy way to create Transcripts of the chat that is done.

Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

The experience this week working collaboratively on both TodaysMeet as well as Google Docs gave me a first person experience in working virtually. It also gave me a sense of working as a team, at the same time. Things appear to be very fast paced. We would discuss what work needs to be done. We would then instantly switch over to do work, while able to instantly check on each other's progress, while also being able to see exactly what slide a person is working on, and what changes they are making. We are able to come back to the drawing board and discuss further steps, or modifying existing content, before continuing on working without any pausing. I feel collaborative tools like this not only promotes teamwork and a sense of cohesion, but they also improves group performance and work efficiency. Our collaborative presentation was completed today with a very polished product. I feel that this is a part of my experience in gaining digital literacy, by collaborating and producing a collaborative sharing of information in the form of a collaborative PowerPoint presentation. 

Feedly #

For the first time, I saw an article in my Feedly inhibiting a hashtag # for the article: 

#NotThere: International Women's Day marked with tributes online

http://news.yahoo.com/international-womens-day-tributes-dear-me-not-there-210857699.html

Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

I first learned about this hashtag from the Twitter's #ADED1P32 group shares. I realize now how this social media phenomenon can be something of a curative tool in itself. Curators around the world may use hashtags to tag not only images, but also news articles and events around the world so they reach other people who seek relevant information at the same time. I think whoever invented the idea and working of the hashtags has made a thunderous contribution to Digital Citizenship in the world. To this person, I have to say: Thank you!

Weekly Report & Reflection blog post #6

EverNote
This week, EverNote shined above any other mentioned tool in its amazing ability to collect and organize data. It can be used to record and store the articles I find. More importantly, the chrome add-on web clipper allows me to screenshot with simple ability to edit the screenshots as I am taking the screenshots, and before saving the screenshot. See picture below.

Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

Despite the usefulness, I was hesitant when I find that this web clipper tool is for Google Chrome only:

Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

While linking Twitter with EverNote help with collecting social media materials, the EverNote web clipper does the same and more in regards to all of the contents on the internet, including twitter. I find that using EverNote web clipper is more than enough to conduct collection of all information found online. I can also use it to screenshot twitter contents or select tweets while adding in custom text and notes along colorful arrows. Without a doubt, EverNote is now my number one information organizational tool! This will be added onto my Personal Learning Environment alongside Lightshot, the screenshot software that also does some similar edits in comparison to EverNote. However, EverNote creates a database that is accessible on all computer that has an internet connection. This makes it essentially a portable storage of data that you never have to carry around with you. On any public computer, you will be able to add into different notebooks within your EverNote. This tool is the best organizer ever!

Valid and reliable online bookmarks stored using EverNote allows me access to important online information and being able to share them with other audiences. Tools such as this allows me to participate as a content sharing digital citizen as I share my findings with other students in my research group.

Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

Feedly
Coincidentally this week, my Feedly reading list had an article about digital tools: Smartphones. Apparently now there are smartphones selling for as little as $25. Moreover, it is expected that about 2 billion units of Smartphones will be sold in 2015. This provides an important infrastructure for discovering digital literacy, and for many users, digital citizenship. It makes me think about this idea of digital literacy. Is Digital Literacy simply going to become the common sense of the future?

A century ago, what was once emerging after the spread of type writers and printing press are mass produced writing content. Reading literacy has since then become an important subject of academia. Back then, reading literacy is not close to what it is today at all. There is a wide concern and social classification of those who can read and write as educated and literate citizens. Many of the people living during those times are considered to be illiterate. However, with the growth of newer generation who grew up with an abundance of books and written material to read, reading literacy is no longer considered to be a critical skills that many lacks. It seem almost as if Digital Literacy has now taken over as the new literacy. With newer generation growing up enjoying an ever increasing availability of digital content, digital tools, and electronic tools such as smartphones to explore and discover the digital world, would it be likely that a few generations in the future, Digital Literacy will be as common as reading literacy is today? What do you think?

Weekly Report & Reflection blog post #5

Social Media

This week, one of the news from my Feedly was about the release of video showing beheading of Christians in Libya. In the day where Twitter and PLEs are used to foster Personal Learning Networks, not only do we learn about the things that help with our personal growth, media such as these beheading videos are also spread. While it is the agenda to discover information, there is some information that is damaging to society and promotes the agenda of those who seek to instill fear in others. In a situation such as this, would the New York Times be responsible for reaching the subscribers with this ill news, or is it the maker of such content? There are much bloody or inhumane content created by immoral individuals on the internet. I think the New York Times is one of the many central hub of information where decisions needs to be made on the appropriate kind of content they should share, and whether these contents are beneficial to society. I think that Personal Learning Networks are similar in a way that the network is only as smart as the people within it, and only as resourceful as the content that the members decides to share. Like the New York Times, the Twitter's 1p32 Personal Learning Network serves as a hub of information. The members of this network have the ability and responsibility to decide what kind of content they would share with others.

Twitter Learning

So far, I have discovered insight from other members of the 1P32 Personal Learning Network.@missbrittanyeva especially, shared a tool she used to make diagrams which I find to be very useful. I will try to use this tool to make the PLE diagrams in the future. 

   Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

Twitter also allows me to re-tweet the content with link to the original user. Adding a hash-tag with the name of the personal learning network group allows me to conveniently share this resource back with the group. I realize this is a duplication of an old resource. However, as mentioned in the lesson this week, good contents can and are repeated in Personal Learning Networks. More importantly, my twitter page becomes a collection similar to my Feedly reader. Unlike Feedly, which subscribes to sources of information, Twitter is a place I can collect and store specific content that I want to look at again later. This contributes to my ability to not only follow information, but to save and share any specific content of knowledge. I would categorize Twitter as a communication tool. I will be adding Twitter alongside the Blog tool. If I am to add this tool to my Week 2 PLE, I would add it on the left side between my information tools and my PowerPoint tool. 

Twitter further defines the internet as a place to not only seeks, but to share information. Twitter allows me the ability to listen in and receive information. it also allows me to share information and the source of the information. It promotes a collaborative group and enables the members of the group to learn from each other, collectively. I firmly believe that Twitter is a must-have tool for all who would like to gain digital literacy as well as participating as a digital citizen. 

$$ Weekly Report & Reflection blog post #4

Reader Article
This week, one of the articles from the Science section of my feedly reader stood out for me. The article is called: 

"To Get Parents To Vaccinate Their Kids, Don't Ask. Just Tell"

    Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  Click the screenshot above to visit the permalink.

It is very interesting to see that when doctors allow for discussion about vaccinating children, for the parents, the parents tend to not vaccinate their children if they were on the fence. Coming from a public health background, I feel that freedom of choice can be dangerous for population that does not have the knowledge or experience to make the best choice. Vaccination is not meant only to protect the person who gets it, but to act as a crowding effect that prevents disease transmitting within a population. The more people that vaccinates against a disease, then the less able that disease will be to travel to other vaccinated population. Therefore, the more people that are vaccinated, then the more protected the un-vaccinated population will be. I believe that like universal health insurance, vaccination need to be integrated at the system level for the entire population in order to protect the entire population, and lower the overall risk. This is the basic principle of the universal insurance coverage. This should also be the principle in using systematic vaccination in a population to reduce risk of disease in the entire population.

Reflection

In my exploration of bookmarking tools and the use of tagging, i realize that bookmarking only goes so far when using the browser. Having a cloud sync bookmarking tool allows me to retrieve and use bookmarks I add at home when I am away from home. This increase both convenience and access. From now on, I am able to add resources I find anywhere into my feedly reader, an online bookmarking service, or my snoop.it, if it is something that I feel I could use in one of my school projects. In the future, I can also revisit these bookmarks in looking back at the information that is used to inform my learning and projects. The curation tool is a great way to sum together different online information to share with others. However, I envision using the curation tools to sum together topics related to each one of the projects I have for class or work for myself to view and analyze. I can envision using these summary curated resources to locate, identify, and make sense of different social media information. I can also envision myself using the custom formatting tools to present this information to a group of people in a presentation. 

I would place these tools under the category of Organization or Curation tools. This is a new category I am making within my PLE diagram. My PLE is now changing dramatically! It seems that becoming a digital citizen and gaining digital literacy is a changing process. The tools we use to navigate the internet can change as much as the ways we perceive how we can interact with information online. It is no longer just about searching and using information. Now I have the tools to organize the information I find! I am so very happy! I do wonder how digital information could be best used as a tool to inform parents about vaccination during an implementation of a systematic vaccination program for the population. Instead of having paper cards for immunization records, perhaps the population needs a tool that organizes the vaccination information.

For example, each province has its own health insurance card. The health insurance card could be modified into a tool to collect and organize an individual's lifelong vaccination information that can be accessed with the card, or remotely like a cloud bookmarking service. Now wouldn't that be great! People will never have to spend time and money to "find" their vaccination information when they need it!

$$ Week 3 Thoughts & Reflections

I find that I could share the contents, as well as the direct link of feeds I receive with my readers through a Blog post. This informed my learning in a way I didn’t expect: it made me think. At first, I simply thought the general idea of the article is admirable and good, as it involves helping children. However, sharing it in writing, I am reminded of the first class in Health Economics I took with Dr. Ward as a part of my Public Health curriculum. In that lecture, we were asked to think about whether lives have different values. We were confronted with scenario of a hospital treating a baby not doing well in health, or an old man who is also sick. The cost of treating that baby may be a hundred thousand dollars, but at the same time, the money could be used for 50,000 vaccines that would save the lives of 50,000 children in Africa plagued by an easily treatable infection. So the question came to be asked of us is why are some lives seemingly more valuable than others, and if it is right. We learned that health care systems should be about allocating the resources available to do the greatest amount of good in a population. Sometimes this happens. Sometimes it does not. Human emotions play an important role in determining which path the decision making follows. With the looming mental health issues and illnesses shooting exponentially to the front page of every health care agenda, I feel this is something we are neglecting when we implement new initiatives. As we focus on one population group, another is forgotten. Often, such as in this case, the burden of responsibility in time and effort is expected of the parents. I think this is interesting as well, since many parents expect the system, such as teachers and schools, to be the ones responsible in educating their children.

     Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

The RSS Feed Readers have many real world news feeds about events and happenings that I would otherwise never know about if I were not to have this feed. It allows me to be a part of the conversation as a listener, and gives me an opportunity to share and contribute to digital citizenship by sharing the news, and my thoughts. Moreover, this may generate further discussion. I am interested in what others think about this issue as well.

The RSS Feed Readers is definitely a curation/organizational tool. It helped me put together information after gathering them for me. I can use it to sort through information among all of the sources that I find. This means that my PLE is now obsolete! I am changing the structure of the PLE to include different categories of tools. I realize that this may mean the PLE is going to change quite a few times. I will have to develop different category of tools, and arrange the existing tools into them. The categories have to be flexible, and based on type of usage. More than anything, I am simply fascinated by the Feedly Reader!

My Experience with RSS Feeds

After adding Rachel’s Blog into my RSS feed, I read through other feeds I’ve been getting. As of this week, there are about 71 total feeds I’ve received. 28 of those are news. One of the news articles I thought was especially interesting is the “Reach Out and Read program promoting childhoodliteracy” article by The Toronto Star. Reach Out and Read have a goal of having every child processing a home library of at least five books by the time they enter kindergarten. I think this is a really good idea, and can contribute to higher literacy for children. However, I think their idea of having parents read with children is unrealistic for many families in Canada.

                                  Fan, L. (CC) 2015.  

While children have school and can read after school, parents have to work when their children at in school, make grocery trips after work, pay bills after work; shovel snow, mow the lawn, clean the house and cook after work.  What would the parents then find time to relax, have romantic time and generally time for their own mental health and well being? At a time where mental health issues are exploding across the Canadian population, I think it is easy to grasp onto the interest of a specific group of people while forgetting others. Health care, health promotion, or capacity building is not about re-allocating resources to increase the health of only a segment of population that can afford to spend as much time with their children as they like. The ultimate goal should be to improve the overall population health of everyone.

$$ Week 2 Thoughts & Reflections

PersonalIn 5-10 years time, I envision myself to be a tech savvy full time employee making effective and easy to understand visual reports. I would like my workplace to be anywhere that has little traffic. Describing myself now, I am starting to make visual reports at my part time jobs, and school placement work. The traffic isn't very bad, but I have yet graduated and found full time work. 
LearningTo get to where I want to be, I must learn different variety of digital tools to expand my capacity in making better visuals and informative reports. I will need search tools, such as Google, to find information. I also need capture tools, such as Paint, to capture information. I will also need compiling tools, such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Powerpoint, to put information together into reports. Sometimes, I would also need editing tools, such as Adobe Photoshop, to edit and create visuals from the information I gather. EnvironmentTo adapt my environment to learn better, without adding effort, I have cleared up my work desk to reduce distractions. In the future I intent to adopt more digital tools, such as Wordle, to better organize information and present them. Currently, I have adopted using Pinterest, Blogspot.ca, Google, and Sakai in gathering learning information for this class. I use Microsoft Powerpoint as a medium of converting text and images to edit in Paint and Adobe Photoshop. To compile assignments or reports, I use Word, and exports to PDF that can be viewed with Adobe PDF.                             Fan, L. (CC) 2015.                              Word CloudI have seen these visuals before, made of words. Sometimes the words are colored; sometimes they are of different shades of the same color. I never knew what they were called until this week. Word Cloud is an amazing way to not only express information, but to also make sense of information, amplify certain key points, and bring attention to the content with a new perspective. I learned that this tool can definitely do all of this and enrich my learning experience. See below for my Word Cloud made by Wordle!  Fan, L. (CC) 2015. 

As you can see above, I decided on capital letters for a font. It is a summary of everything I have written in the Week 1 Blog. I realized that the words I used are a lot more related to the mind than I would have thought. This may be because of my background in Public Health, where mental health and well being are an important aspect of today's healthcare priority. The words "world" and "voluntary" also resonates with my belief in personal choice and my dream of world peace. I realize that a person's writing can indeed speak a lot about their personality, beliefs and attitudes. Wordle is indeed an important tool to use. I think this could also be important in the human resources field as well, to learn more about a potential employee.

I have also learned from feedback, that having the right copyright caption is very important. I hope I did it right here in this week’s blog! By the way, it’s almost the end of January! Can you believe it?! What are you planning to do for reading week?
 

$$ Week 1 Thoughts & Reflections

Digital Footprint

            This week, I learned that digital footprint is just about any mark we leave online. The online world in this way is so very different than reality. In the real world, we may walk past an empty church during the summer, and no one, and nothing, would even know that we walked past. Online, when we are to visit a certain website, even if no one is monitoring the website, there is a record of our visit, and what we looked at. If we write any words, such as these I am leaving on this blog post, the words may be archived forever. Reality suddenly seems anonymous in comparison to the Internet. What do you think? Is the digital world more anonymous, or reality?

Netiquette 

            I like to highlight this topic as well because Netiquette did not exist for me as a vocabulary until this week. I would have thought this was the making of one of my co workers, such as the term: “Mangings” for “Men leggings”. On a more serious note, etiquette on the Internet definitely can positively define a person’s digital footprint, and become a resource for their offline experience as well. A well established online digital footprint can lead to opportunities, such as employment, offline. As more and more of our offline personal information and professional information are transferred online, such as with some employment sites, I wonder how we can use digital tools to improve society overall and encourage the population to be healthier.

            In Public Health, I’ve learned about current research that has shown how a person’s brain with mental health conditions (e.g. Schizophrenia) differs biologically in comparison to those who are mentally healthy. More importantly, I’ve learned how simple activities such as yoga and meditation can change the brain’s biology in a matter of a month or two for these people. And amazingly, all of these has been captured and is distinguishable by brain scans. While the technology is not yet perfected, this is a clear indication that mental conditions can be modified. And as these experiments could distinguish the changes in the parts of the brain that portrays a person’s personality, from how patient and humble they are, to how strong willed they are, brain scans may be the future in determining the mental condition of any potential employee.

     

               Imagine a company like LinkedIn that gives people voluntary choice whether to create a personal profile, and allows companies to access their profiles in selection of a future employee. Unlike LinkedIn, their voluntary profile will come from a voluntary brain scan, where the information is a true mental snapshot of what constitutes the individual’s mental capacity. Employers will know to near perfect accuracy the things such as how empathetic the person is or how patient they are. While individuals may not do well in creating their profile for the first time, they can meditate, exercise, do yoga, study, and do all the things to improve their mental health before doing another brain scan to “update” their profile. This could potentially become a tool not only to match employers in society with employees of high caliber, but also promote individuals in society to commit to personal development in the process. Moreover, there would not be a need for a drug test that could show either false positive, or false negative.

Notes

            After completing the Secondary Digital Driver’s License Exam with 20/20, I do realize that my computer does not even have a virus scan software nor do I know what brand is effective today. Any suggestions?

Week 1 - Some thoughts about Mental Health, from Public Health

Hi I'm Logan and this blog will be used for tasks related to the class ADED1P32 Learning in Digital Contexts. I have never done an online course before, so this may be a little challenging for me to adapt to at first. I will include links, images as well as videos in some of my posts, and hope that you will thoroughly enjoy reading what content I will produce here. I hope to learn about different information systems and tools used today to further my personal skill sets for the working world. I hope also to learn more about social media to adapt to the Health Promotion aspect of what I study: Public Health.

There may not be any other Public Health students in this class. So perhaps I should give a little introduction to Public Health as well as the importance of some concepts, if you are interested. Here are a few thoughts I have in regards to Mental Health:

I have learned throughout the years that Public Health is about prevention of disease as opposed to treatment. While developing health services to treat and take care of those in need is morally attractive, I believe that building a strong internal individual resiliency and capacity starting in early childhood deserves more resource allocation in the future of preventive healthcare. I believe it is much more cost effective and beneficial to society to work with young children and youth to prevent substance-related disorders, for example, as opposed to  as opposed to bearing the cost of treating a thousand people over a decade . If left to the latter option, the need for resources to take care of mental health issues will exponentially increase in comparison to the limited resources available over time.

Last year, I learned that about 50% of Canadian youth have used marijuana by 10th grade, as well as having had at least two serious alcohol over-consumption. However, in the case of people I have known that went to a boarding school, an introduction to addictive substances at such a young age was unheard of due to the remote location and the unavailability of these addictive substances. Perhaps future research needs to focus on modifying the setting of everyday life for young children and youth. We need to learn how to better prepare all population of the future to be resilient and protected from well-known addictive substances known to lead to serious mental health issues.

I feel that media today portrays everything in a way that puts responsibility on everyone else except oneself. By accepting that mental illnesses are the result of biological causes or lack of social support, are we then negating individual responsibility, and therefore reducing a person’s own need to develop individual ability and capacity to cope? A man who has to work for everything in life growing up will have better ability to do it than someone who has been handed everything their whole life.

Public Health policies are often created based on available objectionable data. Yet when it comes to mental health, there appears to be two different measurements: the signs and symptoms identified by the training and textbook respectively, which we can observe or measure during a person’s mental health evaluation. Some of my class readings touched upon the fact that citizens can also evaluate their own well-being.

So which type of measurement should be a standard in Public Health? Would it be what health professionals believe, or what an individual believes? This may be related to the pain scales that medical professionals use to gauge how much pain an individual feels compared to the worst pain they have ever experienced. I think that in Public Health, we need to create standards and policies governing the different ways data is reported to take these factors into account.