$$ 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!