Reflection

The very first thing I deeply appreciate about these 2 linked courses is the master list of Web 2.0 tool by category. Even I got to review just 1 tool , reading and commenting on peers' posts have broadened my knowledge on the tools every week. I was especially interested in the presentation of educational uses of the tools. I was glad to be able to count what I learned at the end of the day during the courses.

The tools that I have reviewed over the courses are: Dotsub, Zimmer Twins, Cacoo, Linkin, & Mendeley. As I mentioned in the previous post, my favorite tools on my tool review list are not one but three: LinkedIn for its professional networking value, Mendeley for its professional research management power, and Dotsub for its video translation and caption offers. However, if I have to rank these three tools, I would put Dotsub on top of my list for its community service value.

My plan for the tools that I didn't have a chance to read and provide comments on is to check out their uses and their applications in the English language teaching field.

I appreciate reading many mini research proposals being a TA. They have broadened my eyes with many new insights and ideas, some within my field and a lot out, which has made the experience even more valuable. I appreciated learning about multiple research directions and perspectives in the proposals I read.

Besides the content value, I liked the structure of the courses that allowed students to go from mastering the content (the tools) to thinking of ways to applying them into real educational environments and research, which made my tool package more diverse and complete than just knowledge about the tool.

If I would give some suggestions for the courses in the future, here are some:

1. For the tool review, I personally believe the students should be up to picking the tool they want to review each week. The list can be as amazing as it is right now. If a group of students end up picking the same tool, they can do a group work in presenting the tool, and individual work on the educational uses of the tool, based on their very own teaching and learning experience. A quality list of educational uses of a tool is the real value of this group work product.

Teachers can limit the number of group members up to , let's say, 5 to make sure not half of the class will choose to review one tool. Teachers might also increase the expectations on a tool review done by a group vs. by individual, for example, the depth of each part.

There's a likelihood that some tools might be left un-chosen, this is room for extra credits. Extra credits for presenting parts of the tool, i.e. how to use it, what's its educational value? etc.

2. For the mini proposal assignment, I would further specify and raise the expectations by asking for specific and more details on the methodology, type of data to be collected and data analysis. A lot of the ideas in the mini proposals are so worth further investigating, and this can be done only when the feasibility of the study is thought through and clearly presented, especially in such a cross-disciplined environment like our courses.

And finally, thanks professors and classmates for all the delightful learning experiences in the past 7 weeks.