Weekly Report & Reflection #12

Hey everyone!

So this is going to be my final post for my online class. The time has flown by and I have learned so much about being a digital citizen, and leaving a positive digital footprint.  When it comes to leaving a positive digital footprint behind, I have learned that I need to be mindful of what I am posting, and take a minute before I upload and post if I can stand behind it 100%.  Another way that I can help my digital footprint is by being active online.  By this I mean posting on various web 2.0 platforms such as blogs, and online discussion groups.  Whether my posts are comments or opinions I need to make sure that they are going to be insightful and constructive in a positive way.  Another way to help me keep my footprint positive is by following online laws such as using creative commons properly and being mindful of copyrights and crediting others where credit is due. 

When it comes to promoting online interactions between others it can be a difficult task.  Just because I feel that this is something that needs to be taught to the children of today so that as they grow up they know how to properly behave with others online.  People now days feel as though they can say whatever they want to others online since they will never meet face to face and can remain anonymous behind a screen name.  We need to teach children that even though they are just posting words they can be extremely hurtful to the person reading them. 

I have always gone by the saying “If you have nothing nice to say then don’t say anything at all” I am that way in person and in how I conduct myself online. If I don’t agree with what someone has posting and I can’t find a way to phrase it nicely I just won’t post anything, because I don’t see the need to get into a heated discussion online with someone. 

So all being said and done, I feel that I have learned a lot about how to conduct myself properly online during these past twelve weeks, and have gained a variety of knowledge on the different tools that are available to people to use and grow their digital footprint. 

Well, this brings my last post to an end. I hope that you enjoyed going on this journey with me as much as I did.

Take Care

Aarti 

Weekly Report and Reflection #11

Hey everyone,

Week 11 is over, and one more week to go! This week I got to explore a variety of webcasting tools such as SoundCloud, Screenr and Audacity.  All of these tools are ways of people sharing their opinions and thoughts on topics with the digital world. I had fun playing around with the different resources and landed on doing a podcast. Podcasts have always seemed interesting to me, so with using a combination of two of the resources I created and uploaded my first podcast. These tools help people express their opinions and others gain knowledge. However, they really don’t allow for collaboration between others to come to a common goal.  This is the one thing that I enjoyed about creating a podcast is that it was all my own opinion and I know that there are others who may not agree with me and feel that I am wrong in what I said but that’s the beauty of technology.  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and has the right to share it, if you don’t agree that’s fine too. 

Creating a piece of work that is 100% original and mine, has been such an amazing experience, so in order to protect my hard work I added a digital license to my blog. This will help prevent others from taking my work and passing it off as their own, without my permission.  You can visit my Creative Common license by clicking here

Feedly Connection

http://www.theguardian.com/careers/careers-blog/graduate-careers-right-job-for-you

When I came across this article by The Guardian, it hit really close to home for me, given that I only have eight more months of school left and that I need to start thinking about my career. I have been working with the same company for the past eight years and have made my way through various departments and levels of management, it has been a great learning experience for me, but I know that I really want a job in the field that I have spent soo much money and time into obtaining this degree.  After reading that less than one third of students get a career related to their degree shocked me.  I know that the accounting field is highly competitive and I have made goals in accordance to that.  In that I’m okay with not working for a top five firm and going to a small to mid-sized firm so that I can grow and learn.  I’m not surprised that people change jobs many times during their lifetime. I am ready for a change from where I am working now, and am looking forward to what the future holds.

Brock University has wonderful resources for their students to help them have that job lined up come graduation, and I am planning on using them to help me come April 2016. I have already attended a variety of networking events put on by Career Services, to build those connections and have my name recognized when the recruiter is going through a stack of resumes. 

Have a great night!

Aarti 

Creative Commons License

Aarti's Blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at aarti87.blogspot.com.

Weekly Report & Reflection Post #10

Hey everyone,

Week 10 activities are done. This week I got to explore Copyrights and Creative Commons.  To be a responsible digital citizen I feel that knowing the laws for the online world are important.  I used to think that when things were copyrighted as long as I cited the source of where I got my information, pictures from I would be fine. However, I have come to learn that there is a vast difference between what I was doing and the variety of laws that exist.  I had no clue what creative commons were before this week started.  I have now come to realize that creative commons and copyrights are two very different things.  Creative commons allow the user to take an image, or music and modify it for their own purposes while still giving credit to the person who created it. 

Online presentation Tools

After learning about creative commons and copyrights I got to play around with a variety of online tools where presentations could be made.  I have used Prezi in the past for a group presentation, so I decided to explore a different one this time around.  I explored Animoto, this tool is super interesting in the fact that it has a database of creative common material that can be used in the presentation.  A variety of images, music, and text slides will appear in the set sequence that is decided by the user.  The one thing that I found could not be changed was the length of time that was spent on each image, because certain parts I would have liked to have a longer pause on so the viewer could read what was being presented.

Have a great night!

Aarti 

Weekly Report and Reflection #9

Hey everyone!

So another week is done, and time is flying by.  This week I got to explore VoiceThread.  It’s an online tool where a person can post a presentation and have others add various comments to it either by recording their own voice or just by text.  When it comes to me using this again, I personally don’t think I will, not because I didn’t like the tool, more so because I don’t think I will ever need to create this type of presentation.  However, I am glad that I know how to use a tool like this if need be.  In terms of this being a tool to expand my knowledge, I feel that it is a great one because it allows you to get other people’s opinions on the same topic and realize aspects that you might have overlooked. 

Collective knowledge tools are very different from tools where collaboration is concerned. In collective knowledge we are asked to answer a specific question on based on our opinions.  Whereas, in collaboration we are all working together to complete the same task.  So in both we are working alongside other. 

When it comes to digital rights and responsibilities, I have found that everyone has their own opinion on what they feel are important to them.  This week I came across a new responsibility that I had overlooked in the past as being very important, and that was the right to report cyberbullying and harassment online.  The bullying used to stop for kids when they got home from school because the bully didn’t come into their homes, whereas now day’s kids are being bullied at school and then it continues online when they are at home.  If this isn’t handled quickly it can escalate and reach a breaking point for the child, because it doesn’t stop.

This week has been full of learning new things, can’t wait to see what’s in store for next week.

Take Care

Aarti 

Technology Use Scenario 17

Scenario 17 pg. 94

Ms. Deal does not like having several passwords for all her accounts. Because she has so many she gets into the habit of writing the passwords on a sticky note on her monitor so she won’t forget. While she is out of her office, John, a student who had been in trouble in her class earlier in the day, comes by her office. He sees the passwords and writes down the one for Ms. Deal’s email account. John goes to another computer, logs in as Ms. Deal and sends several insulting emails to staff members. How could this have been avoided?

In this scenario technology is being miss used by going into another person’s email without their consent.  John should not have taken Ms. Deal’s password and sent out various emails to her colleagues.  Given yes John could have been upset from being in her office earlier that day and wanted some sort of revenge but I feel that he took it to a level where her job could be jeopardized. This could have been avoided if Ms. Deal didn’t leave her passwords out in plain sight where others can easily see them.  Now days with many different accounts, everyone has to remember a variety of passwords and which one coordinates with which account can be a tedious task within itself.  I know I have gone completely blank when trying to remember a certain password, when logging into a website. If Ms. Deal has trouble with remembering which password to which account, she should keep them in a secure place where she is the only one with access to them, such as a locked drawer or on her phone.  This way she has them written down but she is now the only person who knows where they are located.  This will keep her passwords more secure and away from the public eye.  

Weekly Report and Reflection #8

Hey everyone,

Week 8 has now come to an end.  Time is going by so fast.  This week I got to explore wiki’s.  Wiki’s are an interesting tool, they are a hybrid between a word document and a webpage.  To me that was fascinating, the way that one thing could switch between two different things.  When it comes to me actually finding a use for a wiki.  I think that I might be able to find a way to include using one.  I think the most useful time to use a wiki is when planning an event with friends.  This will come in handy for everyone seeing what tasks still need to be completed and which things are still outstanding.  As for when comparing wiki’s to blog posts, Google Docs, and Evernote. There is a vast difference, since the others are just ways of sharing information between different parties.  The only one that that can be altered by someone is a Google Doc.  Wiki’s can be altered by anyone who has the link which is the same as a Google Doc. When it comes to preference I like Google Docs more.  They allow you to see all of the changes that are being made, and see things that are being done in real time to the document as you are working on it.

When it comes to wiki’s and learning, they can be integrated in a variety of ways.  One of the most common ways for a wiki is when it comes time to collaborate with other students in the same class as you.  For instance, if I were to set up a wiki for ADED1P32 with major concepts and ideas, other students in the class can add to it and expand on topics that were already posted.  This becomes useful because everyone has their own ideas and thoughts, and by adding it to the post things that one might have forgotten about will be triggered in memory. 

Digital Rights and Responsibilities

Kapoor, A. (CC) 2015

When being a digital citizen, we have a number of rights and responsibilities that we should adhere to. I believe that the three most important rights and responsibilities of a digital citizen should include:

1. The responsibility to give credit where credit is due 
2. The responsibility to make ethical choices 
3. The responsibility to be respectful of others

The responsibility to give credit where credit is due, is important because it is so easy for people to go online and take anything, and then repost it as their own. The ease of gathering information, images, music, etc. online is taken for granted these days and people don’t realize that someone else put time and effort into creating that blog post, or picture, and if you need it for something you are doing then just cite the source of where it came from. 

The responsibility to make ethical choices, this falls hand in hand with the first topic in that when taking things from the internet we are faced with options on whether we want to pay for the new song to add to our playlist of download it from a free source.  Everyone has downloaded music from various sources, where we don’t have to pay for it, and then there are still many people who use iTunes to get their music.  It may seem easy to just take things online but at the end of the day if you believe yourself to be an ethical person in making the right decisions in your daily life, then what is stopping you from having that same belief system when conducting yourself online.

The responsibility to be respectful of others, now day’s people share every aspect of their daily lives with the world online.  There are those people who may be jealous of the things others are doing and make hurtful comments, and can get away with it because they are behind a computer screen, and have anonymity.  I think that people tend to forget that it’s another human being on the receiving end of those words and to properly conduct oneself online we have to respect one another.  

Have a great day!

Aarti