Before this semester, I was never considered deeply about the relationship between people and technology. I just always was amazed by the fantastic experience when I using emerging technology. Such as we can use social media communicate with our family and friends online and access to lots of interesting resources. What I usually do is just about using and learning from social media and finding more way to entertainment online. Besides, I also started to do a project about develop a mobile app about social media for a specific online game. For this purpose, I ‘m so interested in exploring different kind of information service environments. Since I’m an international student, I usually used some social media app which is just in china, and Facebook or YouTube are not available in my country. I look forward to learning and discovering from the online culture of Australia that may be different from my previews experience. So After I join the first lecture of IFN 612, I realized that it was a pretty good opportunity for me to explore emerging technology.
Although I had imaged what I want to do and how I could achieve my expectation, I still was given lots of surprises after I keep doing this unit. At the beginning of the units, when I find that all the information of this unit was posted on one teaching blog instead of the QUT blackboard, I realized that this unit is a special course that different from others. Most of the units that I have studied were related to programming and run in the similar modes: each week has one lecture and one tutorial, and in the whole semester students need completed two programming assignments and one final exam. And all the resources will be posted on the blackboard so they don’t need attend every class. But this also caused some problems. Two semester was gone, it seems that I was not improving my communication skills since in most cases I just browsed the lecture slides and work with my laptop. I was not always engage in classes and express myself when I learning. However, this unit gave me a totally different experience and I always feel I was part of our learning community~ I created my first blog and tried to join in our google+ community, each week is not just about learning from lecture or tutorial, also it promoted me to connect with my classmates, share what we have learned and more interesting things on the online group.
I still could not attend every lecture or workshop, but now there are more flexible ways that would assist me to join in the class. For example, I can join in our classes by using adobe connect session, which not only is a record about what’s going on in each week, but also run as an online session that students could truly join in class online at the same time and make some interaction with other classmates or teacher. There are also some interesting online workshops that help us solve problems and work together. It not always created by Kathleen, some of them from others’ share. Besides, our online community gives each of us the opportunity to learn with each other anytime and anywhere. I do not need worried about I have no interaction with my classmates and maybe some time misunderstand the meaning of our task. I have learned lots of new idea from others post. For the same topic, it is interested that I could find different altitudes which maybe because the cultural diversity or various experience back to each person. What’s more, because this is a compulsory unit with credits rather than just an online learning environment, it still needs some assessment to evaluate the learning outcome and stimulate all the participants keep working on this unit. On my previews experience, sometime it is hard for me to take part in one unit continually, like completed the task within each week. I would be so anxiety before each due date of assignment since I need review all the lecture slides and tutorial just in one week or even less. I know this is truly a bad learning habit, but when I try to change, I still cannot stick to do that more than 3 week…: (However, this unit forced me to always follow the schedule of our courses and tried to reflect what I have learned twice a week. Though not all the posts will be marked, but I still want to try my best to finish each play and reflection because they will be published in our community group~ I’m not good at writing so it always cost lots of time, but when I posted my work and received the comments from my classmates and Kathleen, who support my idea or were going to discuss some issues of my blog with me, I got a strong sense of presence in this online community, I just felt I was the part of this unit and have the responsibility to contribute in and make it more prosperous! So when I did the persona and final report, I have lots of idea from previews learning experience instead of confused a lot what I have done, this make me confirm that follow a clear plan will improve my learning efficiency and outcome. Thanks to this unit.
The most interesting weekly activities for me is “Create an app” in week 4. The topic of that week is about ubiquitous technology. It seems that no one could escape from technology in this age of the internet. Most of the People respect and admire technology because it will benefit them. Almost every people have their mobile, and a successful mobile app would truly help people access to technology. Actually, this is not the first time I work for an app. I have studied one unit named mobile application last semester, my impression about creating an app is that it is truly a pretty difficult task and I need learn how to use one certain programming language and developed on the mobile app platform. Our group cost whole semester to finish one iOS app, which is still have lots of unsolved problems. So I was surprised at first because this activity asked we build an app in such a short time. Then after I browsed all the resources from the teaching blog, I realized it introduced to us some amazing tools to assist people build their app even they do not have programming background. I explored most of the mobile app makers which listed on that blog; they all were easy to use and provided lots of interesting templates. People just need pick the type of their app, design it and put their own information on it, which is just as simple as creating their blog.
This is a perfect example that suggests technology is not the issues only for scientists or software engineering, almost every one could use technology to come true their idea. As Darsh Thanki argued in his 2011 blog, technology have significant influence on human’s life, it changes the way that people live, it changes our understanding of the way things work and changes the way we interact with others. Although most of the innovation of technology was started by people who have the high level skills in a certain area, the meaning of a successful technology is that how to use it create more value for most of the people. So scientists always try to reduce the gap between technology and common people, now an increasing number of them could benefit from the usage of internet, personal computer, and mobile app! We would not be restricted by hardware devices anymore, the creative idea and big data become the most prevalent topic in today’s world.
I was so happy that after week 4 I could learn more about gather information and open data. I experienced MOOC and explored more about open data, open education, and data retention in Australia. I realized that I have learned before about open data was just like the top parts of the iceberg, which is just the most superficial level. The openness of open data means the data must be available and accessible, be provided under terms that permit re-use and redistribution, and be able to open to everyone without any discrimination (Richard,2010). So the main practical benefits of “openness” would be improving the ability about combine different datasets together and therefore to develop more and better products and services. Whatever open data, open education, it’s all about share, combine and create more. Learners share their resources, absorb other knowledge, and then create their own learning outcome. The companies gather user information from social media and then do comprehensive marketing for their products or service to cater for the user needs and improve their profits. However, technology always comes with problems. It is no doubt that open data also will result in lots of trouble like privacy issues, ethic issues and accessibility. Dose everyone would like to exposure him or her on public? Who own the data? Can organization sell the huge data that they have for money? To what degree people want to sticky to the information? Well, I still not clear how can we resolve these problems, but I could make sure that big data is something that have happened and will continue changing our life in the future.
What I want to suggested to this unit is that please keep update the contents of the unit with latest technology. Because it is about emerging technology, so I believe almost all the students want to realize and discover what’s going on now in this world. I think this unit has done a very good job in this parts, it opened my mind and promote me to think deeply about some new concepts about the technology. But technology always change fast, may be next year something new will emerge and replace the outdated technology. Although sometimes the core concept of some technology not always change, such as the theory of open data actually was presented as early as several decades ago(Chignard,2013). It still will be better if the team of the unit will add some latest news or research to our online community which related to our topic. I hope this unit will not only help participants gain skills and knowledge related to certain application and concepts, but also assist students to expand their views, change their thinking pattern and be more close to the real world. Well, it is maybe not an advice, just a nice wish:)
In general, I was so enjoyed in this unit. This post is not the end, just another start of my life…
Reference:
Thanki, D. (2011). Essay: What effect does technology have on us humans? https://darshthanki.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/essay-what-effect-does-technology-have-on-us-humans/
Richard, A. (2010). What is open data? http://opendatahandbook.org/guide/en/what-is-open-data/
Chignard,S. (2013). A brief history of Open Data.http://www.paristechreview.com/2013/03/29/brief-history-open-data/
Image source:
Nguyen, S. (2009). Welcoming a fresh start to 2010.
http://workplacepsychology.net/2009/12/29/welcoming-a-fresh-start-to-2010/
Cynthia's world 