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