Final+DIFLIT+Reflection


 * My Experience as an Educator**

Before DFLIT, I would describe myself as a cynical and skeptical Info Tech educators. My perspective of Information Technology education was limited to the more familiar Web 1.0 technology and traditional programming concepts like procedure programming, data abstraction, OOP, etc. I couldn't see the significance of collaboration and resented the unfamiliar Web 2.0 technology. I was aware of the transformation of Information Technology Education but I was having trouble accepting and adapting to the new "order".

The reading, the consequent discussion, my experience with these technologies, my independent investigation on various technologies and the collaboration with the DFLIT community helped me overcome this struggle and embrace the current new "regime" of the 21st century Info Technology education. DFLIT also allows me to establish a routine to continue my professional development process through technologies like blog, WikiSpaces and Twitter.

I am satisfied by my professional development if DFLIT.

I am also privileged to experience the 21st century Info Tech classroom as a learner. My computer engineering background made me rather tech savvy so I never had any problem using any of the technologies we learned in DFLIT. However, my experience in these technologies sometimes made me oblivious to beginning learners' struggle with the technologies. When I was teaching an Info Tech in 401, I forgot to schedule sufficient learning time for the beginner students and had to extend my lesson multiple times. I was also quite impatient to the struggling DFLIT classmates (the newbies) initially. The prolonged collaboration and sharing time with my DFLIT classmates helped me to be more compassionate and considerate to the newbies and learn to communicate with them more patiently. I hope I can be patient and considerate when I am teaching Info Tech in 405.
 * My Experience as a Learner**

I was also thankful to have the opportunity to observe the emotional and psychological fluctuation of everyone in DFLIT community. At the beginning of DFLIT, some of us were a bit ecstatic about the learning opportunity, others were a bit worrisome with the steep learning curve, and others were remained fairly skeptical about the usage of technology in a classroom. Throughout the semester, we all had frustrating and disappointing moment and enlightening moments. The quality of our work also fluctuate. I personally didn't have time to work on my short paper and my blog due the course load and other responsibilities. I knew the quality of my writing was definitely affected.

My students can also have similar struggle and fluctuation in the studies throughout the school year. They can lose their passion in their studies, and even get quite negative and non-cooperative. I need to learn to look beyond their immediate emotional outcry and help them achieve their academic goals.

> Perhaps, I will continue to use it for my own professional development and use another service for creating my teacher's site. May be I can make use of the "tagging" feature as well. Rather than organizing website right away, I can tag the pages first and organize them afterward.
 * Misc. Thoughts**
 * //Blog - Should I aim for quality or quantity for my blog entries?// During the semester, there was time when I was too tired to think critically and write something that thought-provoking. At that time, I wondered whether I should lower the frequency of my blog. In the end, I decided to force myself to continue my weekly blogging habit. Based on my experience as a learner, it is usually easier for me to establish a regular routine by overdoing a task. I need to overdo my blogging to establish my blogging routine.
 * //WikiSpaces// - Great space for collaboration. Suitable for archiving data, such as summary report and portfolio but I am not very sure whether I will use it to develop my teacher's web page. First of all, spell check features of my web-browsers are not working properly in the visual editor wikispaces. Secondly, it is lacking of some educational features available in other online web publish tool like [|Moodle]. Finally, the layout and graphic designs of the template of Wikispaces is less appealing than [|GoogleSite].
 * //Delicious// - The tools is a fairly useful tool for recording my "footprints" on the Internet. However, I got quite overwhelmed by the large amount of bookmarks towards the end of DFLIT. I found it easier to navigate among the Social bookmark network by relying on the "tagging features".
 * //Contribution to the community:// I have no objection to grade my students' contribution in the community. Marks are very good incentive to help students to develop their collaboration skill initially. My question is how can we gauge their contribution that is conducted on emails, MSNs and outside of classroom dialogue? I think these forms of communication are crucial to students' learning. Perhaps we can ask students to record these contribution in a blog or a log book?
 * //"How will I use the above technologies in my teaching?"// Well, I need to remember the above are just my personal preferences. I can demonstrate to my students how to build their "toolbox" by sharing my experience with them but I shouldn't force them to adapt any one of the above tools. To help them become a life-long learner, I should encourage them to explore their need and preference and build their own "toolbox".

Alright, that marks the end of my DFLIT journey. I am looking forward to the new adventure as a teacher beyond this point!