Weekly Report & Reflection Post #3

As mentioned in my last post, I found Feedly Reader as a great tool to aggregate all my favourite blogs and websites into one convenient location. I found it very user friendly and it also helped me find articles/blogs of interest that I may have not found just skimming through the sites. One article that I thought was fascinating was Robots Taking Over The Workforce. I found this article particularly cool as I am graduating at the end of 2016 and will be soon hitting the workforce. As mentioned in this article, technology is slowly integrating into the workforce and jobs may become slowly automated. Even though this may be scary I do find it interesting on how far humanity has gotten. I remember when the Gameboy Colour came out and everyone was going crazy for it.  It was new, it was innovative, and incredibly it cost $100, which today probably worth $1. It is crazy to believe that one day robots will be doing the same work as we are doing, but if we look around aren’t they doing that already. You no longer need to go to a teller for money. Now you can go to the atm outside to withdraw money. Believe it or not, there was a point where people use to communicate by sending letters, but now texting seems to be the most dominant form of communication. Technology has grown so much and I do believe soon everything will be automated. This article was a great read and has opened my eyes to whether the career that I have chosen will be a necessity for human work in the coming years. This article is an example of one of many articles/ blogs I have found through Feedly Reader.

Bola, A. (CC) 2016.

In terms of a tool, RSS feeds are defiantly a digital tool. RSS feeds have helped me improve my digital literacy. From this week of class, I have learned how to use Feedly Reader and it has helped me to become more organized and informed. I feel that in this day in age, more emphasis is being put in bundling things together for convenience. Example of this would be Facebook combining both photo sharing and social messaging. Due to this ability to aggregate all these tools in one location, Facebook was able to dominate MSN messenger. People want their information in one location and Feedly Reader does just that.

As far as setting this up in my PLE, this would defiantly be an organizing tool.  It is an organizing tool since it allows users to place their information into one convenient location.  Also I can argue that it could be a creativity tool. I feel that Feedly Reader is similar to PinInterest in some sense. Both tools allows users to find and search items of interest and organize them in a manner they find appealing. I feel that people can express themselves through their Feedly Reader, hence I do see it landing in the creativity side of my PLE, but organizing is defiantly where it fits the best. 

This week has been very informative and I look forward to what next week has in store. 

Photo 1: http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/robot-tease-4x3.grid-4x2.jpg

My Experience with RSS Feeds

I found this week particularly challenging as I have never dealt with RSS feeds before. I have always seen that orange icon around web pages, but never knew its true purpose until today. Overall, it was a challenge at first setting up; however I found the end result very pleasurable. I will most likely continue to use this tool as I found it very nifty to bundle all my sports, business, and world news in one convenient location.

One article that I found particularly interesting using Feedly Reader was Smartphone Apps unreliable for fitness tracking . This article discusses how the most popular fitness apps are providing non-factual information to users. I found this article really interesting as I use a fitness tracking app. The current app I use is called S Health which at the end of the day gives me alerts of my total steps I walked. It also keeps track of my heart rate and how much calories I have lost. After reading this article I found it concerning that I could being deceived by this app similar to the apps in the article. As I am trying to lose weight, accurate information is a must and knowing apps such as the ones mentioned in the article may be deceiving others is wrong and would not recommend to anyone to download. I hope that in the near future these fitness apps will improve and provide more accurate information. 

Weekly Report & Reflection Post #2: My Personal Learning Environment

Looking 5-10 years down the road, I envision a better me. I envision a person who is done school, who is working a job that he is both happy and successful in. Additionally, I see an individual with family and good friends. As of right now I am working my best to achieve this vision. I am currently in my last year in school and I am confident I will graduate. In order to get to this vision I must improve my communication skills. Having great communication skills is key to be successful in the workforce. I will try to improve these skills by both not shying away from talking to people and by researching resources available in the internet to be an effective communicator. In order to achieve these goals I must create an environment that allows me to succeed, an environment where I can stay focus towards my vision. This can be done by first removing visible distractions in my everyday life. One thing that I believe I can do better is playing less videos games. By reducing the amount of time I spend on video games, I can focus on more productive items such as improving my communication skills.  I can also improve my environment by being more organized. Often I procrastinate on important things such as assignments. This leads me to both rushing and not outputting the best quality that I want. By implementing a more scheduled life, I feel that I would be able to both not feel rushed and to improve the quality of my work. I believe that best way to improve my environment is to creating positive habits through 30 day trials. Going forward I will create a schedule for myself and remove the TV in my room for the next 30 days. My hope is to be able to develop these as habits and to create an environment to support my goals.

My PLE is straight forward. In terms of socializing I use various mediums of social networks. I find that these apps both help me communicate with people and also keep me up to date on what is going on around me. Another aspect is organizing. As iterated above, I am striving to be more organized. My attempt to do so is by using Microsoft One Note, backing up old documents to Google drive, and using Google calendar to organize my day to day activities. An additional aspect of my PLE is creativity, from creating my ideas into visual imagery, through Microsoft Paint and Photoshop, to using websites like Pin Interest to express my creativity. The last category of my PLE is learning. I achieve the following through research from search engines like Google. Additionally, I found videos in YouTube as great tools to improve my knowledge. See below for my PLE. 

                                              Bola, A. (CC) 2016.

Using Wordle, I was able to create this wonderful piece of artwork. It gave a great visual representation of the first week reflection. I have seen many of these visual representations before, but never knew how to create them until now. Through the wordcloud tool I learned that I enjoy creating artistic works such as this. This would be a great tool to add to my creativity category for my PLE map. I am excited to use this tool for any of my future artistic endeavors. 

Bola, A. (CC) 2016.

Weekly Report & Reflection Post #1: The Importance of Your Digital Footprint

In today’s day and age, technology has taken a more predominant role in society, most notably the internet. As the internet is becoming more widely used, knowledge of your digital footprint and what information you want to put out in the internet is important. For this week in ADED 1P32, we were asked to pick one question or two in regards to digital foot printing, citizenship, and learning. The one question that I would like to address in this post is if I want a digital footprint. I believe that having a digital footprint is important, but more important than that is having control of it. The internet has made information more readily available and information you didn’t believe was out in the internet are becoming more easily accessible. From personal experience, I have seen the power of information leaked onto the internet. One time during work, one of my coworkers asked me how my lunch at Costco was. I thought that was awfully weird question to ask as I didn’t tell him about my lunch plans. I asked him how he knew and he told me that one of my coworkers that I went to lunch with shared a photo of us eating there. This is just one of many examples of the power of social media and digital foot printing. Knowledge of your digital footprint is important, not just in regards to your lunch plans, but also to employers. Employers are now searching information online during the hiring process before they pick out candidates. Having control of your digital footprint is key in order to get the job you desire. Additionally, I believe having control of your digital footprint, helps maintain a reputation you want society to see you as. If you want to seem more professional, creating a LinkedIn account or changing your social media to a professional picture is one of many ways you can control your digital footprint. Having a digital footprint can be beneficial if you control what information you put out to society.

Report

After completing the Digital Driver’s License exam, I will put greater focus on my digital security from the next few weeks of this course. I believe digital security is very important and is something I really want to improve on since I feel that a lot of my personal information is available on the web that I may not want to share. I believe increasing my digital security will allow me to put control of what information is available and present my information in a manner that I find suitable.

One connection that I made with the readings/resources and the Building Background section of the week one module is the following video “Youth and Media: Digital Dossier”. Digital Dossier refers to the idea of how information can accumulate from all of the way from birth and be available via the web. After watching this video it made me cringe because of how true it is. Information that we might believe to be lost or forgotten may be uncovered. Even though this may be scary to some extent, as mentioned above I believe that both digital security and control is important. Having both great security and control will help create a digital dossier that you want, but also present the information you want available to the web.

         
I found this week’s information informative and look forward to what next week has in store.

Amardeep Bola 

Photo 1: https://kurtishewson.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/digital-footprint.png
Photo 2: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6TUMHplBveo/maxresdefault.jpg

All About Me

     Hello everyone, my name is Amardeep Bola and welcome to my blog.  Currently I am a student at Brock University, pursuing a degree in Accounting. Under this degree I am also in the Co-op program, currently working for a large accounting firm. In terms of my interests, the biggest one hands down has to be sports. I love watching and playing sports. My favourite amongst these sports is basketball. Basketball has always been my passion, from watching Reggie Miller nailing threes from the arc to throwing basketballs towards vents, pretending they were basketball nets (elementary school didn’t have any nets). My favourite team is the Toronto Raptors, not only because they are my hometown team, but also because my favourite player in my childhood, Tracy McGrady, also started his career from that team. Basketball was both a gateway to pass time, but also a passion that I have thoroughly enjoyed. Other than basketball, soccer is another sport that I have also enjoyed. I love both the strategy aspect and the elegance of the game, how each pass serves a purpose to forward the play and the patience one must have. My passion for soccer started from the Adidas store when I was 11. When I went inside they had FIFA world cup 2006 for the XBOX available to play. I played that game against the other children around in the store and I really enjoyed it till the point that my parents bought it for me. From playing that game, I have always both enjoyed and appreciated the sport. Other than sports, another passion of my mine is music. Music has always served as a gateway to zone me out of my problems and put me into a calm state. My favourite genre of music is rap, most notably my favourite artist being the Notorious B.I.G. The reason why I enjoy his music is because of his ability to evoke emotions through his lyrics. I feel that today’s rap artists are aiming towards providing listeners catchy lines rather than providing meaning and evoking emotions  that old school artists such as Notorious B.I.G, 2Pac, or Nas were successful of doing.  Other than sports and music, not really much about to me other then I love trying new foods and I hope one day to travel different parts around the world.

     Now that you know a bit about me, I can explain a bit about what purpose this blog serves. The goal for this blog is to use it as an avenue to express myself. From this blog, hope you guys enjoy some of the pieces I write.

     Now that you know why I am making this blog, I would like to tell you the reason that I am taking ADED 1P32. The main reason I am taking this course is to both learn new mediums of social media and also be able to create a positive digital footprint. I believe having a positive digital footprint is key to strive in today’s professional work environment.