Week 9

Long time, no blog!

Rabin, R. (CC) 2014 Retrieved from: http://nyti.ms/1kT9qqN

I feel as though it has been weeks, when it fact it has been a week and a half since my last reflection. When visiting my Feedly I found something that ‘caught’ my eye. J I have always been told that I do not eat enough fish, and that fish is brain food. WELL, I thought that I had found an article that would prove my parents wrong! It discusses how the increasing level of mercury in fish is a growing concern, detected with some advanced technology no doubt! It could potentially do more harm than good. I thought I was going to win this battle, until I read on. I realized that they are saying that because of this people need to be more conscious of what kinds of fish they eat and make sure they don’t have high levels of mercury. This means that people should avoid eating predatory fish, or larges amounts of it, because they have high amounts of mercury built up. So for now, I have lost this battle and will just keep swimming along, telling you all about my discoveries this week!

The 2 tools that we explored this week were VoiceThread and PollDaddy. VoiceThread allows people to make interactive presentations. They can use text, voice clips and videos to express themsleves and make learning easier and more interesting. Also, the audience of the presentation can comment and add their knowledge using the methods I mentioned above and also have the option to call in or upload a file. This can be very useful when trying to get input and collaborate with others. PollDaddy is a tool that easily allows people to ask questions and poll the results. It is free and is easy for both the creator and the user. This is very important because usually when you are asking someone to do a survey they are going out of their way to do you a favor, they would not be as willing if it was complicated or if there was a fee. Both of these tools are very useful and serve their purpose for those people who need these services. I am currently in my last year of my undergrad(finally!). At this point in my life I do not do the type of work that would need this kind of collaboration. However, like technology, life is always changing, and there may come a time when I may need such tools. I will not be including them in my PLE now, but I will keep them in mind moving forward.

It seems that VoiceThread’s main purpose is to get the thoughts, knowledge, and opinions of an idea from many people, understanding different arguments, and working through any ambiguous information. While a collaborative tool such as Google Docs is there to facilitate the work between people, working together to complete a common project or task. The work I do in school is more geared towards reports and presentations in a team environment, making Google Docs my preferred choice. I think there is starting to be a pattern here… I am now a HUGE fan of Google Docs, but no need to fret, I am still keeping an open mind for all the other tools!

TTFN