Weekly Report & Reflection Post #6

Welcome Back!

It is crazy to think that we are already half way through the term, wow! It is really flying along and it is the busiest time of the year: midterms. I cannot wait for reading week!

Evernote
This week we were introduced to the curating tool called Evernote. Evernote is a web-based tool that allows you to save and organize different websites, videos, and pictures found online and organize them into notebooks that can be synced between devices and accessed from our tablet, computer, or phone.  Most of the tools we have been introduced to thus far I have been able to not watch the tutorials and just "wing it" and have been able to navigate the tool with ease, but this week with Evernote was a different story. I had to watch the tutorials that were provided as well as seek out additional help on the Internet. Truthfully, I am not a fan of this tool. Although I think the idea of

Retrieved from: http://modernborefare.com/booo-2012-four-thumbs-down/

organizing different topics into different notebooks (and notes within those notebooks) is cool, I found that there were many issues with the tool that need to be resolved. I am a Mac user and sometimes find that with certain websites Safari is not compatible, so I have been using Firefox for this course. Even using Firefox I had issues such as clicking a button on the website and it not responding to what I am clicking. To add to my frustration I found it was very confusing adding notes to notebooks. If I was going to add this program to my PLE it would go under education, but I do not see myself using this tool past the mandatory use in this course and will not be adding it to my PLE.

Digital Health and Wellness
Our task for this week was to create a notebook about our presentation we are working on and my topic is digital health and wellness. Although I was not a fan of the tool Evernote, that does not mean I did not learn a lot on my topic. I had never put much thought into how the digital world can influence one's health, from their posture while using a computer, to being addicted to the internet. I found an interesting video called Digital Health and Wellness that explain the concept of it. As a university student who must be on their computer for many hours of the day I believe this is a very prevalent topic and needs to be taken seriously. I have got into the habit of being on my laptop before bed, which is not good as you should avoid screen time for one to two hours before you go to bed.

Weekly Article

Retrieved from: http://www.myaddictionhelp.co.uk/

As I was just talking about a bad habit I developed, I thought the TEDtalk video I watched was fitting. Although it is not an article, it is a video I found on my Feedly so I think it still counts! It is called A Simple Way to Break a Bad Habit, where Judson Brewer, a psychiatrist, discusses a technique to break a bad habit. He begins with how these habits start, take chocolate cake for example: we see the cake that looks good, our brain says "calories and survival," we then eat the cake and it tastes good, which makes us happy. Because it tasted so good, our body signals to our brain and says "remember what we ate, and where we found it." This process boils down to us: seeing food (the trigger), eating food (behaviour), and feeling good (the reward). Our creative mind takes this to apply it to when we are feeling bad to make us feel better, rather than to only satisfy hunger. This is where the bad habit starts. It can be applied to anything, like a smoking habit. To break the habit Judson Brewer suggests that you should continue doing the habit, but to be mindful of the habit as you do it. An example is as you smoke, take in what it feels like, tastes like, and smells like. This can discourage you from doing the activity. This was such an interesting video and I will definitely apply this to my bad habits. I encourage you all to watch it because he explains it much better than I ever could.  

Until Next Week!