My last page was deleted somehow??

Personal Background:

My name is Jennifer and I grew up in Mississauga, Ontario. I am currently studying International Development and Economics at the University Toronto Scarborough with hopes to graduate in 2016. As of right now I am unclear on how I want to pursue my career after my undergrad because EVERYTHING is interesting. I have aspiration to continue work in the field of development and I am sure I’ll enjoy stumbling further into my development path.

Interest in the course:

This course was interesting to me because it is so interconnected with our daily life. So often in some of the courses it seems that we are just regurgitating information that we have to struggle to make connections and associations to. By looking at technology and its potential that is so vital in my own daily life as a development tool it can be a bridge for theory and practice. I am excited to learn more about issues surrounding ICT technology and more about ICT technology and their inner workings.  I am a little worried about having to be an active poster online. The internet can be a distracting place for me as I am a great procrastinator.

Vision or Aspiration as an Active Learner:

The way I understand ‘active learning’ is that the individual has more autonomy and responsibility of their education/learning experiences. So in this way, I hope to be able to have a say in shaping our experience in the class and create more learning experiences for myself outside of the classroom. As an active learner I hope to be able to be involved in a variety of different mediums that we are not exposed to in a regular classroom setting. This however, is totally outside of my comfort zone. I am used to the lecture based styles of teaching where ultimately I am part of the audience.

I hope to be able to be more comfortable posting and communicating both through the web and in a classroom setting as I tend to be more reserved.  In my first year at UTSC I took the IDSA02 class, Experiencing Development in Africa, which also used the Wiki as a platform for the course. This year I hope to master it as I remember not fully understanding how to maximize its use. Additionally, I would like to learn some basics about the internet. As Professor Chan pointed out, we have the luxury to be connected to the web for the majority of the day - yet I have no clue how it works.

As for my skills that the can utilize, I am a little unsure. I have taken a course on women’s participation on the web and have had a taste test of various IDS courses as well.  I use Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, and various sorts of social networking. I regularly browse the internet and confess to being online way too much, probably to the detriment to my eyes. Hopefully my browsing can dig up some relevant stuff to the course and benefit everyone in that sense.