Weekly Report & Reflection Blog Post #4

After exploring bookmarking and tagging tools this week through my exploration of Diigo, I was able to grasp a better understanding of why tagging information and adding descriptions to what I am bookmarking is super important! Not only did tagging allow me to organize what I was bookmarking in a way which will allow me to go back to the information and know the content of my bookmark, but writing small descriptions also allowed me to organize the content I was curating. Descriptions will also help me when I go back to Diigo to begin using the information I have curated for various courses I am currently enrolled in.

As you can see from the screenshot, much of what I curated and tagged had to do with papers I am currently in the process of writing. As an educational tool, Diigo is a great way for me to not only curate good content for my assignments, but the tagging and descriptions also allow me to organize the content based on the assignment each static bookmark is for. I can see myself continuing to use Diigo as a way to compile information which I can not only use for my courses, but also in a way which is accessible to me from any computer on days I forget to charge my laptop (which is more often than not!).

Stark, S. (CC) 2016

I think the best use of curation tools is for working on papers, simply because compiling research can be an expensive and not a very eco-friendly process! I dislike printing every article I find interesting as it not only wastes precious ink but also wastes paper and contributes to environmental issues. Curation tools like Diigo will not only allow me to be more eco-friendly when it comes to researching articles for papers, but will also allow me to put all of the information I need in one place, making it an efficient tool which I most certainly will be adding to my Personal Learning Environment (PLE). In addition to Diigo, I also found myself using the TRASH method to make sure the articles I was curating were helpful, current, reliable and credible with no biases. The TRASH method is a great way to make sure what is being curated is actually usable in a university learning environment and is a method I will continue to use!

My Feedly reader did bring my attention to an intriguing blog post on Educhatter about school buses and rural transit in Muskoka and how school buses should be used to provide other residents transit as well. As a Niagara Falls resident without a vehicle, I constantly battle with making it to Brock on a city bus. Expanding our fleet to include school buses not being used would make the commute much easier while utilizing a means of transportation that is readily available. Although Niagara Falls is not considered rural, I do think that many cities need to work on making education and resources more accessible to students and residents who do not live in the same city of the school they attend or work for. To check out this interesting read, click HERE!

Thanks for reading!