Conroy,+Jamie

Major Contributions
1. Major content contribution on History of Pornography- Nov 28/06 2. Added Summary of The Rebel Sell online article- Dec 1/06 3. Added content about //The Tonight Show with Jay Leno// to the Talk Shows Page- Dec 4/06 4. Added Summary of Revenge of the Right Brain online article- Dec 5/06

Reflections

 * Some of my thoughts on WIKI so far...**

1. The only experience that I have had with a "collaborative learning environment" prior to this class was Wikipedia. I use wikipedia often as a way to gain knowledge about any topic for both schoolwork and personal interest. However, I have used Wikipedia soley as a reference tool and have never personally contributed to it. I think that the interactive and collaborative nature of this wikispace is a great idea, because students are not only responsible for their own work, they are responsible for helping their peers succeed as well. With the class continuously adding to and improving the wikispace, it will include a broad spectrum of ideas and perspectives. This is something that I feel is particularly important for the analysis of media. I hope to be a helpful participant of this wikispace by editing others' content as well as posting interesting content that everyone will enjoy and learn from.

2. I am still getting used to the idea of making changes to other people's work. I am most comfortable changing grammer, punctuation and spelling errors because these kinds of changes will not affect their overall work as a whole. Somehow, making large changes to others' work feels intrusive. I guess I just have to get used o the idea. Although I haven't done so yet, I will be adding major contributions to some pages. Many of the pages that are posted could definately be elaborated and expanded. I hope that the class makes regular contributions to my page- especially when it comes to arrangement, linking, and other aspects, as my technical expertise on wikispaces is still in a pretty early stage.

3. In my opinion, I believe that the collaborative wikispace for this class was a great success. I have never used wikipedia before this assignment, and I found that the whole class really got into it. Even though I procrastinated (as usual!) on adding major contributions, I was impressed with how easy it was to use after only a few changes. I really benefited from the massive amount of information that the class contributed as a whole. The review pages that were posted by others as well as the articles I reviewed proved to be extremely helpful for the final exam. Being able to veiew other classmates work as I was working on my assignments, helped steer me in the right direction- and it was cool to see some other examples of Culture Jamming. In reading and editing work done by my peers I learned a lot about New Media Outlets that I had never even heard of before! I found myself referring to the wikispace just to have a quick read on something interesting or humorous that somebody else posted in the MISC section. I think that this has much more beneficial to my learning when compared to other class websites like CCNET, Blackboard and Web CT. However, there was one limitation- a lack of privacy for viewing important information like marks. However, I believe that somebody will figure out how to do that eventually!! Overall, I enjoyed the experience of using wikispaces and I wish that this resource could be available for all of my classes. I think that it really has the ability to bring all of the students together and help each other out as a team, instead of stuggling along by ourselves!