… but it takes investment to learn how to use it wisely.
It’s a couple of weeks since I last posted and I’ve been busy with lots of things but mostly reading, reading and more reading. Looking back at my last post when I made the statement that forms the title of this post I thought I’d share some of my recent challenges with trying to use technology to support my reading.
It all started a number of months ago when I finally got around to changing my surname with the University of Limerick’s library service. Unfortunately, this action had the effect of wiping out my favourite articles that I painstakingly pinned and labelled and I was told, could not be retrieved. While this in itself wasn’t a major disaster as I would have had a note somewhere of these resources it prompted me to consider alternative technologies to log articles, books and other resources as I embarked on my studies at the University of Edinburgh.
Fast forward to semester one and IDEL, a double credit course (or module for those more familiar with that term) meaning lots of reading on different topics over 12 weeks or so. I was merrily downloading articles from the library’s databases and making sure they were named correctly and filed in an easily accessible manner on my devices. I was also pinning and meticulously labelling them in my library account learning from my previous experience that no matter what, I shouldn’t change my user name!
Time came to work on the end of semester assignment and I decided that a refresher on referencing and citing was in order. Both universities offered an account for Endnote Online and off I went! I was able to create groups for my research interests, manage papers effectively, get rid of duplicates (it’s amazing how many times I managed to save the same paper!) and potentially share resources without breaking any licensing laws! I also found the MS Word plug-in particularly useful that allowed me to cite sources as I was writing my drafts. Of course there were some edits that needed to be made in places but for the most part I was happy with my Endnote Online experience and will continue to use it until something else comes along or the need arises. This aligns with the theme of time investment since all new tools and technologies take time to learn and I must admit having a bunch of study buddies with more or different tech experience to mine makes life a whole lot easier!
Aside from technologies that support citing and referencing I’ve been trying out a few new ones to support my upcoming face to face class. I’ve managed to create quizzes with MS Forms and student feedback with Socrative. Still lots to learn but I’m on the right path!
Featured image courtesy of: https://pixabay.com/en/hand-commercial-3044387/
Sandra Flynn 