Weekly Report and Reflection Blog Post #4

Hello everyone,

This week I would like to reflect upon an article that caught my eye on my reader this evening. It was published by the Huffington Post and titled, "New Study Finds Link Between Children of Divorce and Obesity". Naturally, this sparked some interest for me, as my parents are no longer together. It turns out that Norwegian scientists studied 3166 third graders based on their weight and the marital status of their biological parents. The results were astonishing: children of divorce are apparently 54 percent more likely to be what is considered "generally overweight"  and have an 89 percent greater chance of abdominal obesity than children whose parents are together.
While these results seem rather large, I suspect that there is some third variable influence in this case- but maybe I'm biased. Not only in my (clearly unprofessional) opinion do all kids go through a "fat stage" (see below), I also strongly believe that if that is not the root cause of this large difference, it may be due to an unbalanced routine or even hereditary thyroid issue. In any case, I'm not sure I can back the researchers on this one. And what's with all the fat shaming.

(Okay, I was maybe a bit larger than most)

This week I also learned about the usefulness of bookmarking items of interest using various web tools. On a program called Diigo, I was able to add various resources to a list and provide "tags" and descriptions as an efficient way of organizing my web-related thoughts, so to speak. I'm generally a pretty simple person when it comes to computer usage, and the idea of bookmarking had never occurred to me. If I wanted to read a blog, I would try to remember it and type it into google. If I wanted an academic resource, I would search it in an e-library. If I had come across something interesting and wanted to share the idea with somebody, I would summarize it to the best of my ability. The bookmark tools take me to another level. I can now send people my saved links, I can find things based on their tags, and all of my favourite resources are in a nice online folder *happy sigh*.  No longer do I lose my place when I log off, and no longer must I aggressively search for the source I argued that undoubtedly proves my point. Life is good.

I also discovered a curation tool called Google Alerts this evening. It is kind of like bookmarks but better. It provides you a broad range of topics, all in nice little categories for your choosing convenience, and then provides you with alerts (clever) that inform you when something has been posted on that topic. This would be a useful tool for anyone who is not particular savvy, as you can access all of your interests in one place, and it provides organization to your online presence. My boyfriend's father, because he is obsessed with fishing, and is on an endless search for the next big idea about how to catch the big one. Perhaps this would stop him from calling me asking about how to use the internet. :)

These new tools I have discovered could easily be incorporated into my PLE that I created in Week 2, and would probably fall under a cross between entertainment and academic-type resources. These tools are shaping me as a digital citizen in that I now have the capacity to stay better informed about my topics of interest, and thus can form an educated opinion on matters of importance.

Until next week folks,

Amy

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/05/obesity-and-divorce_n_5454453.html