Week 7 Report & Reflection

Hello fellow classmates:

This week, we learnt about a very well known platform also known as "Google Docs" I was always aware of  Google Docs but I never really took the time to learn or use the platform. I must say Google Docs is by far my favourite and the most useful in my personal life when it comes to academics. Google Docs is a free Web based application where various documents and spreadsheets can be created, edited and arranged online. Various files can be accessed from any mobile device or desktop by some login information. This tool is very user friendly, not too difficult to use. I thought it would be difficult making a presentation while communicating with group member at the same time. I basically had to learn the whole tool myself, because my group wasn't really cooperative. I had a hard time getting a hold of my group, therefore I just completed the presentation myself.

Google Docs is a very beneficial tool for my educational activities in various ways! Google Docs offers many option within one platform. I can work on document, spreadsheets, forms, drawings, and presentations. I can also share whatever it is that Im working on with other Google users online. This tools saves a lot of time. This is perfect for group assignments, because you get the option to meet your group members online and work and share the assignment at the same time. This is results in getting a lot of work done in a very efficient manner. For this weeks assignment we were asked to prepare a group presentation online using Google Docs.  With having the option to set the viewing to be public, you can link your work to your personal twitter, Blogger, Facebook and various other social media platforms. Google Docs essentially offers everything in one place whether it be presentations, word documents etc.....

Google Docs is obviously being added to my PLE under the sub category Create and Collaborate. There are many changes I would make to my PLE. I haven't still updated my PLE yet, but when I do I will remove Pintrest, TagCrowd and Popplet as those application don't come in great benefit to me academically compared to the other tools.

Week 7 has been a great week! Learning new tools that can help you work and communicate together while saving time both make it easy and expands your digital literacy as it did for myself.

This week on my daily Feedly review, I came across an article related to Google Docs. Through Google Docs Blog I learned that you can type, edit and format with the command of you voice on Google Docs. This is a new feature Google just implemented. Through the voice command technology making changes to documents, have never been any more easier. There is now no need for a keyboard and its a quick and easy way to get ideas out of your heard and onto an online platform.



Group Google Docs Collaborative Presentation:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1tU-CwhaCN3RQ9ladbWeh8unoBzbhGTXax4FT6eTl790/edit#slide=id.g742e3e7cd_1_16

Thank you,
Suwattzen Nithiananthan

Week 6 Report & Reflection

Hello fellow classmates:

Week 6 has come to an end, half the course is already complete. Can you believe it?
This week we learned about a new online platform called "Evernote". You may wonder what Evernote is, not a lot of people are familiar with this online platform. Personally this was my first time getting introduced to Evernote. Evernote is an online app thats compatible with computers and smartphones that basically stores everything on an online database without losing track. Evernote is essentially an app to keep everything organized and uniform. Evernote is an amazing outlet for academic, business or personal use. Evernote is contained with many interesting features. One feature Evernote contains is that the user is able to share your personal notes through Facebook and email or a direct link to your note. You have
the option to edit or delete you notes, and you can clip videos and web clips and attach them into your notes. Evernote is an app mostly focused on keeping everything together and organized.

This tool has many more benefits other that keeping the notes organized. This tool will be very helpful for academic purposes. When it comes to hand written notes, sometimes that may be a hassle. Having all your notes on papers may get a little frustrating. In addition to that, to maintain notes that are taken on paper. With Evernote, I can type all my notes in a uniform manner and maintained all in one place. I can categorize my notes by course and various sub-categories, so when it comes to studying for a quiz or test, all related notes are a click away. Furthermore I can use specific key words to navigate through my notes. Evernote would save a lot of time when it comes to study. You can study and get more work time in an efficient manner.

I would include Evernote add this to my PLE under the sub-category Organize. The complete purpose behind Evernote is organization. This is a great tool and I am eager to use this platform to work on future assignments in my academic career. I have already shared
my Evernote with my course instructor.

This week the article I came across was Feedly related. https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2016/02/08/4-effective-strategies-to-organize-evernote/. Through this article I learnt four effective strategies to organize notes on Evernotes. This article includes allot of smart tips to organize notes. You guys should take a look at it.




Thank you,
Suwattzen Nithiananthan

Week 5 Report & Reflection

Hello fellow classmates:

Week 5 has already come to an end. These weeks are just flying by. This week we learn what and how to build a (PLN). Personal learning network is a learning network that consist of people that derive knowledge from a personal learning environment. The first step I took in building my PLN was to create a Twitter account. I personally have never used twitter, so this was a very new and interesting experience. Twitter is an online social platform which allows the user to send and read short messages also known as "tweets". Twitter is a great platform to start building you PLN by tweeting message, posting pictures, and direct messaging people. You can use hashtags and form groups while tweeting. Since I never had a twitter account, this experience was very new to me. I realized that twitter has many benefits such as always
being connected to the real world. Twitter is a great way to give you an outlet to many things. Also Twitter is an amazing way to build a network whether it be school or work related. One main benefit is, Twitter can be used to build and upgrades ones PLN; its a great outlet to learn about interesting information, learn about their idols, stay updated on current world news and and market various businesses. Twitter can never get boring!

I have built my PLN in many different ways using Twitter. I started off by creating my own twitter account and uploading a profile picture of myself. Then I started tweeting messages with the hashtag #ADED1P32 following it. The use and importance of a hashtag followed by a tweet is to connect with a specific group that your tweet is related to. This is a very effective and fun trend to use to build your PLN. Twitter is one social network I would recommend for everyone because it has many benefits. Despite all the benefits, Twitter is a fun way to entertain yourself and not see time go  by...

Twitter will be included in my PLE diagram under the sub category Connect as this social network serves to connect and build a personal network. Through my Twitter account, I have reached out to many of my group member and classmates. With Twitter, by just a click of a button, I will learn so much about my classmates. Week 5 has been very interesting, and has had a positive impact in my digital literacy and digital footprint. Twitter is one tool I will use in my day to day life.

As I was going through my daily Feedly review, I came across an article Twitter Related.
"Making Customer Service Even Better on Twitter" Twitter has recently introduced two new told to help businesses provide even better service to their customers service on twitter. Twitter is already an amazing platform for marketing businesses. Many advertisers state that over 80% of the inbound customer service request occur on twitter. Twitter makes it more convenient for customers to online shop. One new tool twitter introduced is called "Tweets to Direct Message" This tool allows customers to have a private conversation with businesses. The way this tool works is, a normal tweet to a business can now transition into a private channel where personal information is then required. That transition is as easy as a single click. A business can now add a link to their tweets that automatically displays a call to action button which now allows customers to send the business direct personal messages. The other tool that Twitter has introduced is called "Customer Feedback". This tools enables the user to privately share their opinions with a business personally. This gives the the business and customer to build a personal relationship. Twitter has received many good reviews regarding these two new tools and continue to currently keep it.

Follow me @NSuwattzen
Thank you,
Suwattzen Nithiananthan

Week 4 Report & Reflection

Hello fellow classmates:



This week, we learnt and explored bookmarking tools and the importance and use of tagging. The two online platforms we learned about are Diigo and Delicious. These two online sites are social bookmarking, research and knowledge sharing tools created to make note taking while providing a network for sharing and discovering information. I personally chose to learn more about Diigo.




Diigo is an online platform which allow you to take personal notes from various web pages. The user has the option to bookmark and save the information the discover for further review while also adding tags to keep everything uniformed. The bookmarking feature allows the user to share information with friends and colleagues through Facebook and Twitter to allow them to access and view your personal notes. This information is saved online in the cloud, therefore; this information can be accessed through any computer, tablet or mobile device with browsing capabilities. As far as educational activities, this tool will be very useful and beneficial for students. This tool will be very helpful for various school assignments, homework, research papers, basically any work school related. This tool essentially act as a database. For example, if I'm at school working on a research paper and there are a few pages I found on the school computer, I can bookmark it and later view the same pages on my personal computer and complete my research paper.

Furthermore this week we were also required study 5 tools. Google Alert, Paper.li, Storify, LiveBinders and Scoop.it. I chose to study Google Alerts a little more in depth. Out of the five curation tools given to explore, I found Google Alerts to be the most beneficial to my needs! Google alert is easy to use once you have explored it; it is a tool that is automatically connected to your Gmail account so you do not need to sign up for it unless you do not have a Gmail account. Google Alert is a tool used to stay up-to-date on your topic of interest(s). This tool monitors the web and updates you instantaneously to your inbox according to the alerts you create. The pros of Google Alerts is that you can use it for your personal life or for academic purposes, it will keep you up-to-date and you will not miss any information on the web about your topic of interest. The disadvantages to this tool is that you will have an abundant amount of emails as the web is always expanding and it might be too much to go through all at once, so I would recommend to keep your list of alerts updated. Aside from the downfall, the pros do outweigh the cons and I would recommend Google Alerts to everyone who loves to stay up-to-date!

I would add both online platforms Diigo and Google Alerts to my PLE forsure. I would personally add Diigo under the sub category Organize because Diigo is a tool mostly intended for keeping all your information organized and uniformed. Google Alerts I would personally put under the sub category Connect as it is a direct connect to my gmail and I would personally use this tool in my day-to-day life as I this would benefit my daily life.

Through the various  tools and all the others I have gained knowledge in the past four weeks, I have gained so much digital literacy tips that will benefit me in many ways from my personal life to my academics. 

As I scrolling through my Feedly reader, I came across this article related to Brock University Goodman School of Business. "Johnathan Holland, a BBA student in the Goodman School of Business, is Brock University's first student to land in Canada's The Next 36 program" This article is basically about a national program and a current Brock grad placed top 36 entrepreneur in Canada. Feedly is a great way to update my knowledge with current events and news occurring around the world!

Thank you,

Suwattzen Nithiananthan

Week 3 Report & Reflection

Hello fellow classmates:

As I stated on my last post, we were introduced to a new platform called Feedly where we mange RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds. RSS can be used in various ways to connect distributions, it's most widespread usage is in distributing news headlines on the web. RSS is a platform the contains  content from news articles to blog entries to almost anything! However; not all websites are compatible with RSS.

One interesting article I came across while exploring Feedly was 7 Reason Why Students Need Technology This article talks about how the students of the twenty first century are at a huge advantage with technology. Due to the technology growing day by day, the future for education looks very bright. The younger generation can make use of more learning tools than ever before and endless information from various databases. From smart phones to the internet, theres various resources can enhance learning in the classroom and the knowledge of the future generations to come. This article states seven ways why technology is vital for student through Engaging, Practical, Transferable, Self-development, Knowledge, Convenience and Safety.

RSS is growing platform that delivers fast feeds on everything. The huge benefit to RSS is the individuals can chose content of interest, having full control of the flow of information that they receive. If the quality of the content isn't in their interest, users can simply remove the feed from their RSS. The RSS reader act as an aggregator, this allows the user to view and and roughly go over multiple content in a timely fashion.

Feedly is one platform that I should add to my PLE diagram that I created in week 2. Although Feedly is a tool used to search various content, I would personally use it to connect my RSS Feeds to my Feedly so I can view content later on in the future.

Thank you,
Suwattzen Nithiananthan