I did my reflection as a timeline in dipity. TechnO’Hagan looks at the way technology has changed over the course of the lives of my family members, and how it has affected the way we work, play, and interact with each other and the world around us. I think focusing on my family allowed me to show the impact of technology on multiple generations, as well as show when technology impacted people on a large scale (assuming my family is average), rather than simply when the technology was invented or became available.

I see many advantages to doing my reflection in this format: it allowed me to show change over time in a visual, easily digestible manner, and it allowed me to include video. The ability to show change over time can help the viewer reach conclusions they might have otherwise missed – for example, how technological advances have speed up over time, increasing exponentially. The ability to show the viewer the actual video of my interviews also can demonstrate more than a transcript or summary might have. For example, the viewer can see how matter-of-fact my father is about having once bathed weekly in water from a well that he heated over an open hearth – something that I, and I assume most of my peers, find strange and foreign.

However, there are certainly disadvantages. It took me much longer to prepare this reflection than any of my previous reflections. It will take you much longer to examine the entire reflection that it would if I had just written a few pages of summary. In fact, while I might have directly drawn conclusions in a longer written piece, by doing my reflection this way I am forcing the viewer to make connections and draw conclusions for themselves. For example, I do not specifically say anywhere in my timeline that as time passed and technology became more integrated into society, people became exposed to it at a much younger age. However, this can be inferred from the fact that my younger siblings all got their first phone/computer when they were younger than I was when I got my first phone/computer. The affect this has had on them can be gleaned through my final video, where my family reflects on the good and bad things about technology. Forcing the viewer to find the meaning themselves can be a positive aspect of such a project, because conclusions that one reaches on their own, having examined the raw data (in this case, the interviews with my family) may resonate on a deeper level, further the viewers understanding, or simply make a more memorable impression.

Overall, I think the benefits at least counterbalance, if not outweigh, the detriments. Either way, I had a lot of fun putting this reflection together. If I had had an infinite amount of time, I would have loved to have added many more points on the timeline, as well as fixed up my editing (it was my first time using iMovie – very easy, but my skills could definitely be improved!). I hope you have as much fun viewing my reflection as I had making it.

A guide to my family tree, in descending age order:

Hugh – Father

Kathy – Mother

Kaitlyn – Me!

Erin – Sister

Connor – Brother

Colleen – Sister