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I believe this final blog for the course, ES EPSY 1159 is a reflection of my experience that I gained from using technology such as online tools and resources throughout this semester for this course. I organized my blogs to help students through their first year of college. The details in the blogs are to provide them with ideas that will help them to reach their academic goals on a strong base.

At present, technology plays a vital role in our education life. In this class, I came across lot of online tools and resources that helped me to manage my academic materials in a timely manner. Tools like Google products, bubbl.us are helpful to become successful in college. As Google products, I prefer using docs, spreadsheet and the most valuable one is the calendar. Using the calendar, I can easily schedule my assignments, exams and other chores so I don’t miss anything. Moreover, Google spreadsheets or docs allowed me to share my notes with my friends instead of emailing every single file. From this class, I also learned to use online resources like study blue, YouTube, library.osu.edu. Often we have to site our source in the academic papers, in order to do so, we need reliable source. University library websites contain journals that can be trusted and can be cited easily. Similar to study blue, quiz let is another website that has the exam questions from previous years for a particular class or professor. This site also helps to study and understand the question pattern for a class exam. Through YouTube, I can watch scientific videos to understand a topic, which I might have not got it during lecture.

As I was doing the assignments for this class, I realized I am a visual learner. I like to learn things that I have seen. I don’t like memorizing long notes or answers for the classes. However, most of my classes require memorization so in that case, I make my long notes creative using online tools like bubbl.us to make maps or charts. I use colorful diagrams and create links among the steps of a big picture. I often relate my academic topics to real life. Seeking for feedback too helps me to improve and stay motivated for the learning.

The most meaningful experience in the course was writing the blogs. I wrote my blogs at https://u.osu.edu/ to help college students to learn new ideas through my academic experience so far. Creating those blogs made me feel like a reporter. It was fun. I am glad that some of my ideas that I have mentioned there might be helpful for a student or two. In the world of technology, this is one of the best ways of communicating with other students or people, who might share similar interests with me.

For my future classes, I will use the online tools and resources. This course taught me to identify a reliable source for the citation. I can use the search engine tools sensibly to get better results for my research papers in future. I all also use the Google calendar to schedule my classes in a way so I don’t have to struggle with any unexpected incident.

In short, this course was a wonderful source to learn about the wonders of technology, online tools and resources. I hope my readers will like my blog and try to adopt few of the ideas to earn better goals in college life.

Most of the time, students need to write an academic or research papers for their classes. In order to earn full credit, they should follow some important tips. For example, while writing a research paper, one should be careful in choosing the genre, topic of that paper. The paper will target a group of audience instead of everyone in the society. Including opposing view points and presenting strong arguments or support might make the writer’s topic interesting to read.

Moreover, reliable sources can be used to present opposition or support. But to do so, students must cite their sources at the end of the paper. Additionally, they might use the online search engines like Google, Bing to look for resources. One can find scholar journals or specific school’s articles that might be a better option to choose as resources.

As mentioned above, citation has to be provided. Students can use either MLA or APA formatting style.

In order to become successful in a course, students need to take notes during lectures. Notes help them to understand the key points of the topic. But note taking does not mean that the audience just copies everything the lecturer says in his speech. There are certain techniques that need to be followed. Some of them are mentioned below:

1. Print out the PowerPoint presentation of a lecture if that is available before the class

2. If the presentation is not available, then write down important points discusses in the lecture, instead of copying the slides

3. use online videos if the lecture is not clear enough to explain a topic, this will be helpful for visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning

4. good notes can be made using template or breaking the information into sections like what the professor said, what the student thinks, examples and questions,

5. students can also use online tools like mind maps or technology like iPods to make notes,

6. later they can podcast their notes in order to get feedbacks on them and learn new ideas

In short, note making is very useful for learning materials before exams.

The link below provides basic knowledge on Kidney:

http://youtu.be/qdP3zBaDCv0

This video uses visual techniques to make the topic more interesting to learn. The animation of the kidney and others help to visualize kidney and why it is important for human body. While taking notes, if somebody misses something, the text displayed in the video help to keep up with the lecture. I am a visual learner. This video was very useful as it used pictures and related the topic with our normal life. For example, it was mentioned that the kidney looks like a kidney bean. People who know kidney beans now know how kidney looks like.

The main key points of the video were structure and function of kidneys. Kidneys come in a pair and looks like kidney beans. They are an essential part of our body. The kidney is 5 inches (13 cm) long and 3 inches (8 cm) wide. Its basic job is to clean the blood flowing in our body. It removes waste chemicals from human body. The kidney along with the brain balance the water level so we don’t get dehydrated.

Online reading can be interesting if proper method is being followed. Before one start to read, he should review the syllabus and remove all distractions. While reading, student should identify main points by highlighting them. At the end, summarize the topic and quiz yourself. Being a student, one should spend more time in charts or lists as they help to remember study materials.

In order to make things interactive, one could use study tools like info graphics, animated videos, mind maps, timeline or flashcards. Through these tools students can help themselves to find relationships between or among concepts or organize and structure ideas to utilize in creative thinking.

All these methods of using tools aid students to memorize and understand their course materials. They are really useful because they use more brain power.

From this week’s assigned reading, I came across some helpful tips on Communicating and Collaborating on the Web. Staying involved with various social networking sites helps a student to create a digital image for him online. The term ‘netiquette’ meaning etiquette on web, plays a vital role in this section of technology. A person needs to keep in mind that posting something negative will badly damage his digital reputation among others. This will not only affect his social life but can also create problems on academic career. Thus, being a student it is important to stay connected while avoiding the dark side so he can successfully maintain a clean digital picture of himself. In short, we need to treat others the way we want them to treat us.

On the other hand, email is another way of communication. A student can contact his professors through emails. But this might not be the best option as there are some negative results associated with it. If a student writes an email, he might not get the reply on time due to some issues. Moreover, this method might create misunderstanding between the professor and the student. But if email is the only way to contact a professor, one needs to follow certain rules. He needs to avoid using other email account rather than the university account. The email has to be official giving respect to the receiver. Thus, no one should use any slang or demand while writing an email. But in my opinion, I prefer discussing my problems with my professors visiting them in their office hours.

Another way to become successful with online courses is using various discussion posts. Being a part of posts, students can form strong communication and comprehension skills. It will be really helpful to learn materials in online classes if one participates in online web logs or journals. This is a place where others can read and reply to each other’s blogs. I think it is a great way of sharing thoughts and ideas among classmates and others. Additionally, the blog also needs to be interesting so the readers don’t get bored. In order to do so, a student can use formatting tools, create impressive subject lines and also break main topics into paragraphs.