Weekly Report & Reflection #5 - Tweet tweet

Hey everyone! Thanksgiving is officially over and I'm sure all those who celebrated this holiday is now stuffed with more than enough turkey. In this past week I created a Twitter account and explored how tweeting can help me enhance my educational experience. But before I talk about Twitter, I want to touch on my experiences on how I participated in learning from others in a personal learning network (PLN). Using various methods and channels of communication, I was able to discuss tools and topics that we have covered so far in our ADED class. I find it very interesting to be able to hear my peers' opinions and thoughts on various topics that I have previously discussed in my blog. Whether it's a comment they have left on something I wrote or new discovery they made themselves, I find myself looking from a completely new perspective. I must admit that I have learned quite a bit from my PLN. Just the other day, a classmate shared an interesting application for phones that I have never heard of but find quite useful. In addition, another classmate commented on something I posted online and shared a perspective quite opposite to mine but I still found it quite englightening as it was something I never thought of. Overall, I think learning and communicating with others in my PLN is one of the best learning experiences I have ever had and I hope to continue to explore new tools and ideas through it.

Twitter was quite a fascinating tool that I explored this week. Not only is it a tool for social purposes, it is also a great and informative tool for educational purposes. Whether you are interested in business, the arts or something like technology, there is always someone you can follow to get live updates of topics you are interested in. I like how twitter helps you discover new tools with it's discovery function. Based on your web searches and internet activity, it will present you tweets that may interest you. This takes customization to a whole new level! For example, if I was looking up the migration of whales online, twitter can link me up with groups such as WWF that cater to my interests. This is a great learning tool because if you are majoring in biology for example, you can follow influencial biologists on twitter in order to be one the first people to hear their thoughts and discoveries. You can also follow organizations like your university department in order to get updated on the most effective learning tools available to you provided these institutions.

University of Chicago; right, Tami Chappell/Reuters

Today, I want to share something I recently discovered on my Feedly Reader. This article in the NY
Times talked about 3 Professors who were awarded the noble prize in Economic Science. I found this article quite fascinating as it discussed how these professors showed that in the short term the financial market moved unpredictably but in the long term the market "moved by a mix of rational calculus and human behaviour". As an investor myself, this was very interesting as it will affect how I will handle my long term investments. Feedly has proved to be extremely useful to me as it provided me not only news of interest (like the iPhone 5S), but it also provided me very educational information like this one.

That's it for this week! I will continue to tweet through my twitter account @bwang00 so please follow me as I continue to explore our vast digital world and share all that I have learned with you. As always, thanks for reading and let's kick off week 6!

Thanks,

Billy