Father's Use of Information Technology

After speaking with my father at home, I found out that his most important information technology was his “smart” phone. My father is a comedian and it is crucial for him to be aware of much information that is flowing around the world. Creativity is also important and internet from his phone provides him with innovating ideas. He is more productive and efficient in bringing “comedic” ideas to the table. Thus, new information technology is a great tool in his work life.

My father is a person who likes to communicate with the younger generations and has been constantly trying to keep up with the fast developing technology in order to communicate. Recently, my father has created a family SNS account from a social media network called “Band”, where our families are the only members and can be “presence-in-absence” to communicate with one another. This method of communication help to communicate not only with words but also with pictures and videos. Coming from an international background, this type of communication is essential when you are apart with on another for a long period of time. Overall, information technology has helped my father to be more productive both in his work life and family life.  

My Experience in LIS 201

            When I tried to look up other hybrid/blended courses online, at either UW-Madison or another university, I could not find anything. All I found were fellowship programs that seemed as if they were for professors. Nevertheless, I found this approach to teaching to be extremely effective. All of the online portions connected with what was taught in class and helped me when studying for the tests. I was able to recall the terms when I was creating my study guides without referring to my notes. I was able to learn a lot about my fellow students because of the combination of offline and online interactions. I do feel comfortable using blogs and wikis now, but I do not think that more professors should be using these resources until they apply to the course they are teaching.

            I think that the things I was asked to research for the blog assignments gave me a better perspective for my online activities. They forced me to research the information the Internet is collecting about me and become more conscious of my web activities. However, I think that online course components work differently in every class. For example, I would not gain a different understanding of my web activities solely because of a requirement to keep a blog. The actual content and assignments in this class caused this. Overall, I really enjoyed using different web components to complete assignments in this class. Everything coincided and was interconnected, making me extremely prepared for essays and exams.

hybrid

I did a hybrid class in high school where the lectures were online and we had to do those at home and the homework was also online but we worked on that in class. It wasn't set in stone as we still did lectures in class when it was confusing, but it was an interesting way to do class that was new to me.

I thought in this class, I felt more comfortable with working with students, especially in the peer review groups, in person rather than online. We didn't really have group projects obviously, but reviewing the power points was easier because it was in class and we could hear the author's opinions on it when we discussed each power point as a class afterwards. Doing it online for the essays was fine but I just think offline works better and the online assignments, for the most part, didn't necessarily help my learning for the concepts in the class, it just added things to what I had to do for the class and maybe I learned some new things but not really things that I would incorporate into a midterm or a paper.

I thought the readings and lectures helped a lot with the papers and midterms obviously, but I felt like the online stuff was separate. It was related to it obviously, but if they weren't there I don't think I would have missed much if anything from not having them. Some were solid assignments though that I didn't mind the write-ups. I think the class is structured pretty well.

big read event

I went to the big read event on 12/3. It was a very interesting event where students in a particular speaking class gave speeches on whatever topic they wanted too (I don't think they were assigned topics). They were good and interesting speeches, and the main professor for the class was also there and talked occasionally. One of my favorite speeches to listen to was one on bullying, where the speaker's main argument was that punishing bullies they way we do (isolation, like detention) isn't working and we should try other methods to punish them and figure out what's wrong. This was fascinating to me as I never thought about it like that; usually I think of the victim and forget about the one bullying, but maybe that's the problem and we need to figure out why bullies are doing what they do. He proposed we need to talk more to the bullies and try to get their problems or issues out in the open and help them because they are probably hurting and just dealing with their stress in obviously very bad ways. But if we can fix these issues then the bullies would no longer exist and that would solve the problem. Overall, other speakers were also good like one speaker talked about how we are not using water very well and how we could fix our water usage. The event was worth the time to attend and it's good to see speeches by other students on campus.

Hybrid Courses

This class was definitely a lot more work than I anticipated with its hybrid format of speeches, blogs, essays and projects.  It gave me a voice online and in-person when discussing new topics.  Another hybrid course at UW Madison is Biology 152.  It combines biological sciences with a com B component making it much more challenging than a regular Biology course.  I feel like I was a more effective student in class based on the fact that we discussed more topics in class than we actually had to blog about and ideas were expanded on in-person in class.  I definitely am more comfortable blogging now than I did before; mainly because I never really enjoyed blogging but now I feel like it's not that bad to blog every now and then to express new ideas and thoughts.  I think this class was effective using an online component so much because we discussed so many topics about information accessed online so it helped connect the course with the homework by using an online component.

Reflection of Blog Posts

After reviewing my blog posts, I’ve noticed that I apply myself considerably less than on other assignments. I take the presentations/papers much more seriously; viewing the blog posting as an informal assignment to throw out there whenever I had the time. Also, the formatting was completely different: on the blog postings I often use incomplete sentences, often have “paragraphs” of just 2-3 sentences, and my thoughts are often fairly disjointed, rather than trying to flow properly like in a paper.

Because of this, I would say that the papers and presentations are a more accurate reflection of talent, while the blog postings are more indicative of how I truly just think, since I just slap out a stream of consciousness onto the page; disjointed as it may be.

Blogtastic

After reviewing my blog posts I realized that I use my normal face to face talking voice. Which is different from my formal paper because well its not a formal paper. I also try to be a little comical but I do not know if I am actually funny. I just felt that a blog post is the least professional place to write. I just seemed easy breezy and so I tried to embrace that feeling. Also I feel like blogs are about talking about life so saying stuff in the first person is acceptable. I also notice that I did not actually answer the questions like a report I analysed them. And I'm okay with that that what I do all the time in real life anyway. Otherwise I actually enjoyed blogging it would probably be a lot more fun if I could just post whatever I wanted. So I may be a blogger in the future but otherwise this was a nice assignment.