Week 4: Michelle's weekly report and reflection

Hello!

Last week you learned a little about what feedly is, what it does and how it is helpful with, well everything! This week we will be learning about something that is also helpful for retrieving information in a fast and accessible way.

Diigo

Article bookmarked via Digo with highlighted points to help find information

Ever heard of bookmarking?  You know when you visit a website that you like or that you frequently visit and save it on your toolbar so you can have easy access to it the next time you go on the internet. Well Diigo is a tool that does this but rather than only having access to that site on the one device, you can have easy access to this website on other devices as well. For example, say you find an article that can help you for an essay and you want to bookmark it on your computer so you can easily access it another time. Another time comes around and you are now at school  and want access to that article. Well, with a regular bookmarking tool you would not be able to have quick access to this article. However with Diigo, bookmarking a site or article enables you to have access to it wherever you are. All you have to do is go to your Diigo tools and since you have it bookmarked there, you can click on the article! On top of it all, if you find an interesting fact or quote, you can highlight it and revert back to the quote without having to feed through all the information on that site. For instance, I have an article called “an interpretative phenomenological analysis of stress […]” (Denovan.A., & Macaskill.A., 2013) that I have bookmarked to help me in one of my classes.  Needless to say, it just makes things much more simple and convenient.

Google Alter

Most of us have heard about google. Well Google alert, like feedly is a site that alerts you of any new information that is being added to a saved website. You can find information that you think will help you gain more knowledge or information that will help you with work and save that on your Google alert. Later, Goolge alert will warn you if any new information has been added. This is called content curation. You are grabbing and saving information that you find is the most relevant to you and creating a space to access the information. One thing to note is to ensure that the information that you are grabbing is valid and reliable because if you do not have valid and reliable information how can you trust the information being giving. If the information is reliable and valid then you can be sure that the information is safe and relevant. Also, if you find a site or article that you have grabbed and feel like you should share this information, then you want to make sure that other people that are reading this information are getting the right information. I for example found and have grabbed information about Diabetes. This disease is relevant to my daily life and I would like to have up to date information that is safe and reliable. So, thanks to Google alert, I can get any information about diabetes without having to go to different websites and feed through any information that is useless. 

Pros to content curation?

 Curation helps you find reliable and valid information and enables you to put all the information in one place. It quickly alerts you of any information that has been added so that you do not have to continuous go to that site to see if anything new is there.  It is convenient and fast and helps people to get the right information the time that it is needed. Having a curation tool will contribute to my work by building knowledge by encouraging organization skills and by enabling me to determine what is important and good information. 

Content Curation and my PLE

Curation tools include Google alert, Storify, and Livebinders. As I mentioned above, I have chosen Google alert as it is the most simple. When looking at Google Alert, I see that it can be put under the “synthesizing and creating” group on my PLE. I am putting it under this group because I am gathering information into one compacted tool and creating my own information toolbox! 

Anyways, as always I encourage you to check out Diigo and one of the curation tools I mentioned above. They are great time savers and easy to use.

Cheers.