Reflection 5: Curation

This week, the guest lectures covered two different topics. In the first lecture, we learned about annotation, and in the second, we learned about a very useful learning tool called Zotero.

Dr. Remi Kalir’s Lecture

I found this lecture really interesting, and learning about annotation was especially cool. I had never considered annotation as a learning tool before, but it turned out to be one of the most interesting concepts I explored this week. As mentioned in the lecture, I now understand how powerful annotation can be if incorporated more widely in education. I believe it should be integrated into every assignment, particularly when teachers provide feedback. Instead of writing comments on a separate document, it would be much clearer if they annotated directly on the student’s work.

Key Takeaways from This Lecture:

  1. Learning what annotation is and how much it is used around the world.
  2. Understanding that annotation is an everyday literacy practice.
  3. Recognizing that annotation can be a very useful tool in learning and can make communication with classmates and teachers more meaningful.

Jessica Mussell’s Lecture

In the next guest lecture, Jessica taught us about a learning tool called Zotero. Zotero seems really beneficial and appears to be a huge time saver. All the benefits of Zotero seem game-changing, especially having the ability to integrate it into MS Word.

Photo from Jessica Mussell’s Lecture

Getting a step-by-step walkthrough of Zotero was very useful and made it seem much more manageable. At first glance, it does look a little overwhelming, but after Jessica gave us the walkthrough, it made way more sense.

Before learning about Zotero, I had always used a website called MyBib. After learning more about Zotero, it seems much better and more efficient. The tool on Zotero that updates your reference list if you delete a quote in your writing really stood out to me. In the future, I will be moving to Zotero for my writing. I have downloaded Zotero and am very excited to start learning to use it, as I feel it will be a very useful tool for my learning.

Final Thoughts

I really enjoyed these two guest lectures this week and found them very interesting. I have downloaded Hypothes.is and Zotero, and I am excited to use both of these tools to benefit my learning in the future!