Weekly Report & Reflection Post #4

Bloggers! 

This week we explored bookmarking and curation tools. If you enjoy structuring and sorting the information you receive online than I highly suggest taking a moment to explore these tools.

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My experience with bookmarking before this week typically involved the use of the bookmark tool attached to the browser on my computer. After discovering the tool Delicious, I can access the sites I have bookmarked on other devices rather than just my personal laptop. Delicious is the tool I found most appropriate for me to use. This user-friendly tool was simple to manage and set up. As briefly noted in the online module, in comparison to my RSS feed the sites I added to Delicious did not have an RSS read so I couldn’t subscribe to them as I would on Feedly. Another great feature of the web-based bookmarking tool is the use of tags. Tags are an efficient and effective way to organize the sites you have bookmarked. You are not limited to the number of tags you include for a particular site. For example, if I choose to bookmark the site Pinterest the tags that I could use include but are not limited to, social network, social media, pinterest, and web2.0. Tags work as a sort of categorization technique.

As a student, it is extremely important that we check the reliability, and validity of the sources we gather online. The Internet is a great source to use for research and building knowledge but with that being said you have to be careful. As digital citizens it is important to use reliable and valid content from the web so that we can ensure we are receiving accurate and informed expertise. I had the opportunity to learn about what it means to be an Internet Detective. This website tutorial was beneficial in explaining, and giving tips and tricks on how to identify valid and reliable content from the web.

I am sure many of you have heard of Google Alerts, but have you taken the time to know what it really is? Well, Google Alerts is a curation tool. Curation tools allow you to filter content on a particular topic of choice. Using Google Alerts, I connected it to my g-mail account for easy set up and created alerts for a range of topics. I have alerts for movies, sports leagues, Brock University, St. Catharine’s, etc.

Google Alerts, and Delicious will absolutely become part of my PLE to continue to build my knowledge and further form a digital footprint. Along with my RSS feed, I would categorize bookmarks under organization. However I think the curation tool Google Alerts would fit better under communication because the tool communicates with me through alerts.

Upcoming this week my midterms start for my classes. When checking my feedly read I got some study motivation from Brock’s student blog Studying With Friends. Let me be one to admit, as mentioned in this blog post, I too have been binge watching Netflix and should really get to studying. This post inspired me to get prepared and gather my friends up for a productive study session this week!