13.7 Knowledge Check
Technology skills are invaluable for your success as a student.
- Use word processing software for your assignments and get to know the tools and features of the program so you can utilize maximize efficiency, visual appeal, and function.
- Use spelling and grammar check tools to make sure your assignments don’t have unnecessary errors.
- Use synonym finders, online thesauruses, and digital dictionaries to keep your writing expressive and your reading meaningful.
- Researching information on the internet for your course work requires finding credible sources and up-to-date information.
- Using electronic bookmarks to create short-cuts to favourite web pages help to organize reference material when researching a topic for an assignment.
- Libraries are useful places to find information such as online academic journals and databases.
- Use electronic communication such as messaging, texting, emails, and video chats, noting that different types are better in different situations.
- Organize your documents into file folders according to courses. Keep them organized so they are easy to locate.
- Saving documents regularly and backing up documents onto external storage such as USB memory sticks, external hard drives, or cloud services ensures that documents don’t go missing or get inadvertently destroyed.
Reflective Practice
What word processing software do you use? Is it the most popular software? Does it help you collaborate with others?
When you gather information from the Internet, do you ask yourself “can I trust this information source?” or do you accept what is written at face value? How could you assess the reliability of the information you are reading?
How professional are you in your communications with other? As a future healthcare professional, you should start now and be professional in your communications with your instructors, fellow students, and college staff.
Applying Your Knowledge
Exercise: Technology Skills
Choose a topic that interests you. Some suggestions are: student success, technology, the value of education, a career you are interested in, a health topic, a sport or hobby, a political topic, faith, a controversial issue—whatever you like. If you are having trouble choosing a topic, speak to your instructor. Write approximately one page about this topic.
- Use a word processing program to write out your assignment.
- Use spelling and grammar checks to locate and fix errors.
- Research your topic on the internet and use information from credible sources in your paper. Make sure to bookmark your sources on your web browser.
- Utilize your school’s library online to find information about your topic.
- Save your document into an appropriately labelled folder.
- Back up your document to at least one external storage device.
- At the end of your paper:
- Note the sources that you used. Use your bookmarks to go to the sites and copy the links to include here.
- Note the name of the folder you saved your document in and where it is stored on your computer.
Glossary
“8.5 Chapter Review Activities” from Student Success by Mary Shier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
The quality of being trusted.
A study that defines something by describing its characteristics, behaviours, or actions.
A conversation over time about a topic.
Answers the question “Does something exist?”
Elements such as bolding, indenting, bullets, different font sizes, styles, and colours, underlining, italicizing, shading, inserting captions, and highlighting, to make your documents visually appealing and clearer to read.
The task of drawing inferences from the facts that you collect in your research.
Knowledge products that communicate a broad range of information. The author is often not identified, sources are often not documented, and language is not technical. Because they are commercial products packaged for wide sales, they often use colour and have numerous ads.
Involves identifying relationships that make it possible for us to speculate about one thing by knowing about something else.
Knowledge products that are written for professionals in a field; the author is most often identified, sources are not always documented, and the language may or may not be technical.
Knowledge products that are written for scholars in a particular field.
A word or phrase that has nearly the same meaning as another word or phrase.
A resource that provides synonyms and related concepts.
The quality of being logically or factually sound.
