Weekly Report & Reflection # 3

SpaceX Rocket Failed Landing

Independent space travel leader SpaceX was in the news again today January 18, 2016 after a failed attempt to land a rocket on a barge in the middle of the ocean. Although the rocket, which was in orbit, landed vertically on the barge (as planned) a malfunction occurred in the one landing arm which did not allow it to fully extend, ultimately resulting in the rocket to crash from loss of balance. Although this mission was not successful it did show that this can be done in the future. The purpose of this article was to introduce cost saving measures to NASA showing that rockets that come back from space can be reused once they land instead of just being crashed in the ocean.

This article is important to learning because the rocket that was sent into space was sent for a very important geographical reason. The rocket was sent to space is measuring current sea levels. This is important in determining the current El Nino effect and can alternately measure the La Nina effect. The satellite the rocket carried is not only measuring sea levels but temperature changes in the ocean as well.

Todays RRS posts contributed to my knowledge in digital literacy because it was right there in front of me when I opened Feedly. Instead of normally going on Yahoo and searching through the numerous news stories they have, with the possibility of skipping it, the article was recently posted to Feedly where I could access it with the click of a button. This saved me time because I would have checked multiple sites first before going to yahoo news.

The tool utilized here was the tool of convenience. Feedly does all the hard work of searching for top stories and updates the list frequently while I just log in and scroll down a single page. This contributes to digital citizenship because I am now being exposed to more articles at my convenience. I can get through more articles on one site by scrolling down then I could by going through multiple sites and having to scroll through all them.

My Personal Learning Experience this week was set around Feedly and the convenience it offers. This tool will be helpful when researching a specific topic because I can categorise blogs based on many things. Once these are categorized, they will update and articles will be presented to me without me having to search for them. This is making digital learning a lot easier.

Brett