IK's final thoughts in the final week

I really enjoyed this class, exploring new technologies that I did not know before and their potentials in the classroom. They are helpful not only for my professional development but also for my personal use.

Thanks to bloglines.com, I do not need to spend time visiting all the different news sites or blogs. Recently I added some more interesting blogs and podcasts, and will keep adding. At the same time, unsubscription would be done if the blogs or news do not attract my attention any more.
Delicious is really awesome. I can access to my favorites anytime and anywhere. It is great to share the useful web resources that other classmates added under the UFET tag. Also, it helped me to organize a great amount of web resources that were too much to store in my local favorites.
The most exciting thing is that I could create the web site by myself, which was daunting at first. I hesitated to decide to do a web presence as a culminating assignment because I worried if I could learn how to use an web editor. But, yes, I did! Although it is a small and simple site, I believe that it is a good start to make it grow over time.
As a learner, blogging was helpful to summarize my learning and look back what I did. I am thinking to keep blogging not just about technology but also about my learning or thoughts in the U.S.
Wiki is also a good experience to know. At first, wiki scared me, but after contributing our class wiki, I could figure out how it really works.

These technologies would be out of date someday. When I really work in the real classroom after graduating next Spring, new technology might be introducing in the classroom. How can I be updated in a pace technology develops?
I am thinking to explore some podcasts related to technology to subscribe in my bloglines so that I might be able to catch up with it. Please let me know if you have a good podcasting site about it or any other resources.

Finally, it was a great experience to learn not only from the instructor, Dr. Dawson, but also from the classmates, devoted teachers who are willing to train themselves for their students despite of a heavy schedule.

Beta blogger

I moved to a beta blogger and tried new features. It seems more user-friendly. You can edit your template more easily.

White fonts with black background in my previous blog was kind of hard to read, wasn't it? I think this template looks better to read than the previous one. Anyone who tried the new beta version and found a super function that we didn't have before but I do not know?

Oh, you can add labels for each post. What are they for? Is it to make my post be searched by search engines easily??

Knowing technology is one thing; using technology is another.

At first, I want to share what I feel as only a week is left by the end of the course. Now I feel like becoming a tech savvy user from an average tech user who just knew how to surf the net. It is like a new world! I think that I can put myself into an advanced user, compared to my friends around me who do not know anything about social bookmarking, RSS aggregators, podcasting, creating a website, plus wiki. I am proud of myself to teach such things to my husband who is in the technology industry but do not know anything about that. :)

However, it seems that knowing technology is one thing; using technology is another. Although I reviewed the articles about Wiki, it was hard for me to understand how it really works and how it is different from a blog. Technology is just fearful technology until you experience so that you can actually use it at your convenience for your own purpose. I may finally figure out how wiki works next week while I actually participate it.
To make contents I am learning in this course meaningful, I always try to search how they are used in ESL/EFL areas.
Here are some wikis for ESL/EFL.
http://e-poche.net/?p=65
http://wiki.eflgeek.com/
http://www.opensource.idv.tw/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
After learning how to participate wiki next week, I am thinking to contribute to one of wikis, (I was surfing around those wikis but cannot figure out how to participate, and had an impression that wikis for this area do not exist as much as other contents areas. :-O) through which I might be able to not only study more about it but also build up a community with other teachers.

Furthermore, although you know how to use technology, it does not mean that you can use it in your classroom successfully. As one interesting blog entry talked about "failure of wiki in classroom," it would be a common concern for teachers who tried to incorporate technology into classrooms but the technology turned out frustrating. Any experience like this?
I remember one ESL class I took a few years ago. I had the Internet class once a week, when a teacher just instructed students to visit her ikeepbookmarks.com and surf the useful websites to learn English. I felt that I could do that even at my home. The Internet should be used in a useful way, but I worry if I will be able to maximize the Internet potential in the classroom. I may experience trials and errors until I find an appropriate technology tool for the classes.

I did it!

I am so excited now because I uploaded my new webpages on the UF plaza site successfully(http://plaza.ufl.edu/ikyang/ ). Yeah~~! I cannot think of a right expression to tell my emotion in English. LOL. I feel sometimes like writing in Korean at the moment like this. :-)
I hope my new webpages are better than before.

I spent most of my weekends working on my website because I wanted to make this look better and make things done. I could not wait to know how other classmates could upload local files to a remote server successfully, and how they could make their websites look neat.
My classmates were wonderful to help me with my work: Brooke taught me a NetG online course so I could take online tutorials about Dreamweaver. Jessica and Victoria taught me where I could get great free GIFs and animations, and gave me information about coreFTP software to transfer my files to the remote server.

As working on creating a website, I realized that a photoshop would make a website look more professional. But it would be too much to learn this software at this time. I am thinking to learn a photoshop this winter vacation with online tutorials.

My culmintating assignment update

This week I want to share how my culminating assignment- creating a website, is going on. As a novice creator, I think I am pretty struggling with technical issues, such as designs, colors and graphics. However, since Dr.Dawson said that she does not expect me to create a mammoth website, I am trying not to hurry up. It would take longer time to make my website look fancy.

To submit my draft last week, I scanned the module of week 6 and storyboarded my website like below.
1) Purpose: It is a personal and educational website to share information with the intended audiences rather than a classroom web presence.
2) Audience:
- Students who are learning English or Korean as a foreign/second language (Targets might be young adults or adults.)
- ESL teachers
- Anyone who want to know me
3) Functions:
- Provide resources for the intended audiences
- Share my interests
- Communicate with the intended audiences
- Discuss the topics I am interested in with the audiences who have the same interests
4) contents:
- About me (personal & educational background)
- Bilingualism
- TESL
- ESL
- Korean
- a messageboard or forum

Well, it seemed okay so far but I was not sure if my website would look good with those ideas. Next I searched free web editors to create a web page, and found a Mozzilla free web editor that is equivalent to a Netscape composer. (Actually I tried to download the Netscape composer, but could not find where to download. I just realized that it is bundled in a Netcape browser software.)
I decided a left menu with a fixed top. The web editor looked easy to use just like a word processor, which made me think "Not a big deal!" As working on it, I realized that things are not going well as I thought. After finishing a rough draft, I spent hours uploading my pages into a UF plaza server, but failed. I guess it was because I did not have much information about FTP application. Well, if something does not work well, try other solutions.

A blog entry from Crystal helped me think about a free web hosting, so I searched the Internet and found one, which provided me an easy step to transfer my files to the server. After a while, my website was uploaded online successfully at ikyang.fateback.com. I was very proud of myself to accomplish a task. However,it looks so ugly. :( Comparing to my classmates' websites, mine seems worst. :-O
Now I think that I need to study a web editor more with online tutorials and a book. I will borrow "The non-designer's web book" to study, and may try Dreamweaver.
Although being challenged technically, I enjoy becoming a producer of WWW as I was just a consumer all the time, which is like transferring from a passive user to an active user. It is exciting!

Please keep your fingers crossed for me and let me have your feedback on my work whatever it is.